When two quotes arrive for what looks like the same job, the difference rarely sits in the hourly rate. How much branding costs depends on what each one contains, and that almost never appears on the first page.

These are the factors that move the price of a brand project. With them you can read any quote, including ours.

How much has to be decided beforehand

A project that arrives with a defined business — for whom, what, what sets it apart — is execution. A project that arrives with an idea still open needs a decision phase first.

Both situations are normal, and neither is better. They are different amounts of work, and that is why the price cannot be the same.

When that phase is missing and the project starts anyway, the decisions get made along the way, in the middle of the design work. That is where the revision rounds appear that nobody budgeted for.

What exactly gets delivered

“Logo” can mean a file or a system.

A system covers the variants for every situation — horizontal, vertical, small, reversed —, the colour palette with its values for screen and print, the typefaces with checked licences, the usage rules and the files in the formats every supplier will ask for.

That difference goes unnoticed on handover day. It shows up the day a sign maker, a printer or a media agency needs something and it has to be produced on the spot.

How many applications and how many languages

Every touchpoint is work: business cards, signage, packaging, document templates, social media profiles, presentations. They can be done all at once or in stages, and that decision moves the budget directly.

Languages work the same way. A brand that lives in three languages needs a name, a claim and copy that hold up in all three. That is judgement, beyond translation.

How much material already exists

A project from zero and one that reorganises what already exists are different jobs. The second brings an earlier phase: reviewing what stays, what gets adjusted and what gets replaced. Plus a plan so the change respects what already works — domain, profiles, printed material, the way people refer to you.

Using what is there can save work. Reviewing what can be used is work in itself.

What happens after handover

A brand goes into service on handover day, and then the questions arrive: which format the printer needs, how the logo carries over to a new format, what to do with an application nobody planned for.

Some quotes include that support and others leave it out. It is worth looking, because that is the difference between a brand and a folder full of files.

How much branding costs: where the price comes from

The calculation is almost always the same: an hourly rate and an estimate of hours.

That figure rarely reaches the client. The work is usually closed as a package at a fixed price, with usage rights included. The hourly rate is the internal calculation; the package is what ends up in the quote.

That also explains why a single figure for “a logo” says nothing. Without the scope behind it, it is only a number.

If the scope is clear, a fixed price gets agreed and you know from day one where you stand. If the project takes shape along the way, the work runs in stages, each with its own quote. Both approaches work, as long as it is said from the start which of the two we are in.

That is why it is worth asking even when the scope is still open. The conversation exists precisely to define it.

How to read a quote with this

Five questions are almost always enough: Which decision phase is included? Which files get handed over exactly? Which applications and which languages? What happens to what already exists? And what support comes afterwards?

With the answers, two seemingly comparable documents stop being comparable. Most of the time it becomes clear where the difference came from.

The Black Print includes the decision phase. The Green Print, when that part is already settled, moves straight into execution. What both share sits in the sentence defined at the start of every project.

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