Brand Strategy & Identity
Don’t just tell them what you do. Guide how they feel.
Brand messaging and perception have a huge impact on conversions, and on business growth. Inconsistent or weak branding can tank your marketing efforts—and drive visitors away from your website. The most effective way to strike the right tone and communicate your ‘why’ to customers is a clear brand strategy.
We help organizations explore and document who they are, how they want to come across, and other key factors in an effective brand strategy. Whatever brand piece(s) you need, we’ll guide you to make the best decisions for your goals.
What’s Included
Complete Branding Services
Clients come to us with a wide variety of brand assets, from just a logo to strict, thorough brand guides. Our core web design process is intended to expand existing brands through simple colour and element-based explorations. If your organization doesn’t have a clear articulation of who you are and how you want to present, or if you want to rebrand, we have three packages that produce the documentation needed for the rest of the website project. We also offer logo design as a separate project add-on!
Expert Led
Our in-house senior designers have combined decades of experience.
Custom Creative
All of our design work is done from scratch, by humans (no AI).
Audience-Driven
We develop a look and feel that sets the right tone, and influences brand perception.
Collaborative
We work closely with your team at all times, so the final result matches your vision.
Services and Packages for Growth
Expert Advice
Our team is made up of senior designers, strategists, and engineers. We know what we’re doing.
Tailored Approach
We don’t work behind a curtain and hide our secret sauce. We collaborate with you at all times.
Proven Results
Your success is our success. We work hard to achieve your vision, and deliver the results you want.
No Contracts
All of our retainer services are contract-free. You can cancel or change your services at any time.
Essentials
Brand Strategy
We help you develop and document critical elements of your brand like personality, voice, tone, differentiator, values, audience, purpose statement, and market position.
- Strategic workshop
- Collaborative exploration of brand strategy
- Custom brand strategy doc
Enhanced
Brand Strategy & Identity
We help you develop and document both your brand strategy and your visual identity. This includes logo usage, typography, photography, colour palette, and other rules for your digital look and feel.
- Everything from the brand strategy package
- Additional visual identity exploration
- Enhanced brand book with visual guidelines
Elite
Full Brand Design
We create your brand strategy, identity, and additional visuals (excluding logo). These can include custom illustrations for website use, background or overlay shapes, social media profile images, and more.
- Everything from the brand strategy & identity package
- Enhanced brand book
- Additional visuals for website and social media
We’ll tailor the right solution for you.
Get a QuoteDifferent agencies have their own variations of a brand strategy. At Forge and Smith, this is a document that details the following:
- Your purpose or ‘why’
- Your values
- Your differentiator
- Your offering
- Your market position
- Your personality
- How you want to be perceived
A brand strategy can cover your visual identity, or it can exist separately. We offer these as separate packages because we can easily work through a website project with just a brand strategy, but we’re always happy to have the more in-depth details found in a brand identity document, such as a brand guide or book.
Different agencies use these terms in different ways. At Forge and Smith, this is the difference:
- A brand strategy details who you are (purpose), why you exist, what you do, how you’re different, how you speak (personality), and how you want to be perceived
- It may or may not also include visual design guidelines, such as logo usage, typography, photography, colour palette, and other rules about your identity
- Brand guidelines always include visual design guidelines
- This document may or may not also include the overarching brand strategy
Both are ideal to have for a website project, but just a brand strategy is also fine.
We love a brand strategy because it makes it easier to be successful with our first-round visual designs. But aside from website projects, a documented brand strategy serves everyone at the company who interacts with your clients or customers.
It’s a clear set of directions for how your business should come across, rooted in your purpose and goals, for anyone who:
- Writes for any part of your website
- Writes social media captions or engages with comments
- Chooses website or social media imagery
- Sends emails to clients or customers
- Takes sales calls
- Works at the counter or front desk
It’s also useful for onboarding new employees, because it’s a way to quickly catch them up on the brand.
Our expert designers can sometimes guide clients through the visual design stage with no documentation. But unless your team is able to clearly articulate design feedback that’s aligned around common goals, more often than not it leads to unnecessary frustration (and excessive rounds of feedback, which eat up project budgets.)
No. AI is not used in any part of the brand work, or in any part of our other design work.
Our Approach
What to Expect
Our focus is always on making the work that we do with you as straightforward and stress-free as possible. All of our services are driven by our hands-on, collaborative approach, led by our in-house team of experts. No jargon. No cookie-cutter strategies. We’ll be honest, transparent, and put your best interests first.
See How We WorkStart the conversation
Contact usOur Work
Brand Strategy & Identity in Action
These are just a few of the clients we’ve helped develop brand books, logos, and more.
“Hands down, the best developers I’ve worked with! Nothing compares to not only the service that Forge and Smith provides, but also their backend system. It’s clean, easy to navigate, easily scalable and robust enough for me to go in and tweak things to my exact liking. I cannot recommend them enough!!
Urvil Villaruel, Marketing Manager
Outward Bound Canada
See How We Did ItOur Case Studies
We’re proud to collaborate with clients in Canada, the US, and beyond. We truly value the many referrals and repeat clients we’ve had over the years.
Start with a Free Discovery Call
No high pressure sales tactics. Just tell us what you need, and we can discuss options. We’ll be honest if we’re not a good fit.
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In-House, Human Expertise
We’re Your Full-Service Partner
Websites don’t start with design and end with launch. We deliver custom service packages that cover every single step of your site’s lifecycle.