Branding and Brand Identity in Dorset
We design brand identities for independent businesses across Dorset and Somerset, from a studio on South Street in Sherborne. Logos, colour and type systems, packaging, and the guidelines that keep it all consistent. Most projects run four to eight weeks. Pricing is quoted against the work, because a single label and a full identity are not the same job.
What we design
A strong brand sets the tone for everything that follows, which is why we build the whole system rather than just the mark.
- Branding. The positioning and the decisions the visual work sits on top of. Who you're for, what you stand for, how you sound.
- Logo design. The mark and every variant you'll actually need: horizontal, stacked, single colour, reversed, favicon.
- Visual identity. Colour, typography and the supporting elements that make it work as a system across every touchpoint rather than as a single image.
- Packaging. Labels, boxes, print artwork and dielines, designed as a range rather than one product at a time.
- Illustration. Original artwork where a brand needs something drawn rather than arranged. It's the fastest route to looking like nobody else, and it works particularly well for food, drink and heritage brands.
Then the application: the identity on a website, on social channels, on signage, on anything else the business puts its name on. We shoot photography and video in house, so if the new identity needs new product shots, that happens in the same studio rather than being handed to someone else.
We don't do naming or trademark law. We'll tell you when you need either, and we'll tell you honestly if the name you've chosen looks like it will cause you problems later.
What a branding project includes
Every project is scoped differently, but the shape is usually the same.
Discovery - What you sell, who buys it, what you're up against on the shelf or in the search results, and what you need the brand to do that it currently isn't doing. This is a conversation, not a workshop we bill you three days for.
Design directions - More than one route, presented properly, with the reasoning behind each. You'll see the logo applied to something real rather than sitting on a white square.
Refinement - We take the direction you've chosen and build it out. Colour, type, secondary elements, the variants you'll actually need: horizontal, stacked, single colour, favicon, whatever the business requires.
Guidelines - A short document covering how to use it. Four to eight pages is enough for most small businesses. Long enough to answer the questions, short enough that someone reads it.
Files and handover. Vector originals, print formats, web formats, light and dark versions. Everything, in your possession, with copyright assigned to you in writing.
What it costs
We quote against the work rather than publishing a price list, because branding projects vary more than almost anything else we do. A single product label and a full identity system for a business with a shopfront, packaging and a fleet are different jobs with different budgets, and pretending otherwise gets somebody a quote that doesn't survive first contact with the brief.
What moves the number:
- How much of the thinking is already done. If you know exactly who you're for and how you want to sound, that's a shorter project than starting from a blank page.
- How many things the brand has to appear on. A website and social channels is one scope. Add packaging across several products, signage and print collateral and it's another.
- Whether it's new or a rebrand. Rebrands cost more, because there's existing equity to protect and existing customers who need to still recognise you.
- Packaging, and how many products. Designed as a system across a range, it's cheaper per product than commissioning each one separately.
- Print production. Print-ready artwork, dielines and press checks are real work. They're also the difference between a design that looks right on screen and one that survives the print run.
If you want market context before you speak to anyone, we've published the current UK ranges by tier, along with what each level actually buys. Read branding or just a logo, and what each costs in 2026.
Two things we won't do. We won't bill by the hour, because hourly billing means you pay more when we work slower. And we won't sell you a full identity when what you need is a logo and a set of rules.
Owning what you pay for
This part gets overlooked more than it should, and it's worth being clear about.
Under UK law a designer owns the copyright in what they create unless the contract says otherwise. Plenty of small businesses have paid for a logo and technically hold a licence to use it rather than ownership of it. We assign copyright to you in writing as standard, with the original working files, so if you ever stop working with us you leave with everything.
We also don't build marks out of shared stock content. Canva's own terms state that designs made from its template and content library cannot be registered as trademarks, because the same elements are available to every other user. The same problem applies to most AI logo generators. If your name is going on a product, a shopfront or anything you'd want to defend, the mark needs to be original, and we build it that way.
Registering a trade mark in the UK costs £205 for the first class through the Intellectual Property Office, and the fee isn't refunded if the application fails. We're not IP lawyers and we won't pretend to be, but we will flag it early if the name or mark you've set your heart on looks likely to run into trouble.
How the process works
Four to eight weeks for most projects, longer if packaging runs across a large range.
You deal with the people doing the work. There's no account handler between you and the designer, which is the practical difference between a small studio and a larger agency, and it's why projects here tend to move faster than the timeline suggests.
We work with businesses across Dorset and Somerset in person where it's useful, and remotely where it isn't. Sherborne to Yeovil, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Bruton, Castle Cary or Sturminster Newton is a short drive. Bournemouth, Poole and Bristol are a longer one, and we're happy to make it when the project warrants being in the room.
Who this is for
The businesses we do our best work for are independent, premium, and usually selling something physical. Cider, candles, homeware, jewellery, heritage building materials, food and drink. Brands where how the thing looks is part of what it's worth.
For those businesses the identity isn't decoration. It's a label on a shelf at a farm shop, at a food festival, or next to eleven competitors in a deli, being judged in about two seconds by someone who has never heard of you. That's a different design problem from a services business that only ever appears on a screen, and it's the one we're set up for.
Who it isn't for: businesses looking for the cheapest possible logo, and businesses that want a brand book more than they want customers. Both are legitimate things to want. Neither is what we're good at.
Do you actually need this yet?
Sometimes the answer is no, and we'd rather say so than take the project.
If you're still testing whether the business works, buy a logo from a competent designer and revisit it when you know what you're selling and to whom. If everything you produce already looks slightly different from everything else, you might not need a new identity at all, just the rules that should have come with the old one. That's a much smaller job.
The moment it genuinely matters is when you're about to print something. Packaging, signage, a vehicle, a stand at a show. Anything physical turns a design decision into a manufacturing cost, and changing it afterwards means paying twice.
What happens after the brand
An identity that never gets applied properly is an expensive PDF. Most projects here carry on into at least one of the following, and it tends to be faster and cheaper when the same studio does both.
- Website design. Websites, Shopify, landing pages, UX and wireframes, e-commerce. Fast, responsive and structured for search, built on Webflow or Shopify and handed over so you can run it yourself.
- User experience and SEO. SEO strategy, technical SEO, UX optimisation, site performance and CRO. A relaunch is the right moment to fix the things that were quietly costing you traffic.
- Paid ads. Strategy, Google Ads, Meta Ads, campaigns, creative and optimisation. New creative in a new identity usually outperforms the set it replaced, which makes a launch a sensible time to test properly.
- Social and content marketing. Social strategy, content creation, photography, videography, campaigns and scheduling. All shot in house, which matters most when the brand is new and there's nothing in the library yet.
See everything we do.
See the work
Identity, packaging and print work for independent brands across Dorset, Somerset and further afield. View our work.
