The questions we ask before we design anything

The first phase of a serious branding project involves no design at all.

No logos. No colours. No type. No moodboards, internally or externally.

This is our Discovery phase. The whole phase is questions, interviews, workshops and cultural research.

Clients occasionally find this unnerving. They have paid for design and we are sitting in a room with a notebook. But every hour spent here removes several later, and it is the difference between a brand that is decorated and one that is built.

Here is the question set. Steal any of it.

Positioning

Five questions that sound simple and almost never are.

Why does this brand exist? Beyond making money.

What problem are you solving? Stated as your customer would state it.

Who are you solving it for?

What should the solution be?

What do you offer that no one else can? Not what you do well. What only you can do.

That last one stops most rooms cold, and the silence is the useful part. If a business cannot answer it, no amount of design will cover the gap.

The now

Timing is a question almost nobody asks themselves.

What has changed in the world, the market or the culture that makes this brand necessary at this moment?

Why is now the right time?

If you do not do this in the next two to three years, what happens to your business? To your audience? To the culture or scene you are in?

If the honest answer to the last one is "probably not much", we will say so. Sometimes the right advice is that a rebrand is not this year's priority.

Vision

What do you hope this project will enable you to achieve?

What does success look like? For you, your team and the brand.

What would failure look like? Surprisingly productive. People describe their fears more precisely than their hopes.

What are your long-term goals?

Foundation

What role should your brand play in the world where it exists?

Why is this brand important to you and to others? Founders light up here, and what comes out is usually closer to the real brand than anything in the existing marketing.

What is the story behind your name? There is almost always one, and sometimes it is the anchor for the entire identity.

How would you describe what you do to an eight year old?

What is something your brand can do that no one else can?

Cultural tension

This is where the interesting material lives, and where most briefs never go.

What is your non-consensus belief about your category or culture?

What truth do you see that most of your competitors are ignoring or afraid to say out loud?

What cultural forces surround you?

What feels off, unfair or broken in your corner of culture?

A brand built on a genuine disagreement with its category has something to say. A brand built on being slightly nicer than the competition does not, and it will compete on price forever.

Audience

Who are your realest fans?

Who are the people who would line up in the rain for you?

What do your best customers love you for that your slide decks never mention? This produces more surprises than any other question on the list.

What would your loyalists miss if you stopped existing tomorrow?

What is one thing you could give them that would feel like inner circle access and not just a discount code?

What is standing in the way of your audience getting what you offer today?

What is keeping them awake at night?

Two exercises that unlock the room

When the conversation gets stuck in corporate language, change the format. Both of these come from the workshops described in THE ECHO.

The sound exercise. Complete this sentence: "We do not sound like ___. We sound like ___." Contrast produces clarity that direct description cannot. Real answers Herrström has heard include "We don't sound like a corporate newsletter, we sound like a DJ-set intro" and "We don't sound like a press release, we sound like a group chat".

The band exercise. If your brand were a band: what genre, what is your breakout song, who is in the front row at your show, what do your fans wear to feel part of the scene, how would you announce your tour, who opens for you. It feels silly for about ninety seconds and then produces genuinely useful material about energy, audience and expression.

Why this comes first

Every question here is about the business and the people it serves. None are about design.

That is deliberate. Design decisions made without this material are guesses dressed up as taste, and they get argued about forever because there is no shared standard to judge them by. Design decisions made on top of it tend to be quick, obvious and hard to argue with, because everyone already agreed what the work is for.

Quincy Jones once said, and the line is the whole method: "I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk."

The takeaway: if a studio wants to show you visual directions in the first meeting, be careful. The good stuff comes from listening first, and listening properly takes longer than a week.

If you want an honest read on where your brand sits in your category, get in touch.