Get Started with Brand Design

You love design. You’ve been thinking about starting a brand design business for months—maybe even years.

But every time you sit down to actually do it, you get stuck. How do you even start? What should you charge? Do you need an LLC?

Everyone tells you to “just start,” but where?

Here’s the truth: you don’t need everything figured out before you take your first step. Let me walk you through the essentials.

Get the Boring Stuff Out of the Way First

I know you want to jump straight into designing. But trust me—handling these basics now will save you headaches later.

Pick a business name. Use your own name. It’s easy for clients to remember, flexible as you grow, and simpler to secure legally. Grab the .com domain Godaddy or Namecheap and matching social handles. Don’t overthink this—you can always change it later.

Set up your business structure. Most people can start as a sole proprietorship or LLC. Start simple and upgrade as you grow.

Open a business bank account. Separate your business money from personal money, even if you’re just starting out. It makes everything cleaner come tax time.

Get a contract template. Buy one from The Legal Paige and customize it for your services. Use it with every client, even friends.

Buy liability insurance. It costs about $30-$60 a month and protects you if something goes wrong. Even small businesses get sued.

These aren’t the fun parts of starting a business, but they’re the foundation that keeps everything else stable.

Understand the Brand Design Process

Before you take on your first client, you need to understand how professional brand design actually works. It’s not just picking pretty colors and fonts—there’s a strategic process behind every strong brand identity.

Stage 1: Strategic Setup

This is where you dig into who your client is and what they need. You’ll send a brand questionnaire asking about their values, personality, target audience, and business goals.

Look for keywords and meaningful elements. Does their business name have a story? Is there symbolism you should know about? Is their brand playful or serious? Modern or timeless? Bold or subtle?

Then create a mood board to establish visual direction—this keeps you and your client aligned before you start designing.

Stage 2: Exploration

Start with simple shapes. Circles, squares, lines, curves. Explore different visual directions before committing to specific typography.

Sketch or block out 6-10 rough concepts quickly. Test multiple ideas without perfectionism. This is where you explore possibilities—not finalize anything.

Stage 3: Refinement

Choose your strongest 2-3 directions and refine them. Add detail, explore variations (stacked logos, horizontal layouts, icon-only versions). Pair typography thoughtfully.

Test your logos at different sizes—they must work at 1 inch wide and billboard-large. A logo that only works big isn’t a good logo.

Stage 4: Presentation

Present 3-5 strong options to your client, not 10. Include your rationale for each direction. Guide them toward the best choice with your expertise—you’re the designer, not just an order-taker.

Then work through structured revision rounds based on their feedback.

Stage 5: Deliverables

Deliver a full logo suite with all variations, file formats for every use case, usage guidelines, and complete brand identity assets (color palette, typography, patterns if applicable).

This process is what separates professional designers from hobbyists. And it’s exactly what we teach in depth in Design Strategy School.

Build Your Design Eye

Now for practicing. Before you can design for clients, you need to train your eye to recognize what makes good design work.

Start by studying brands you love. What makes them cohesive? How are they pairing fonts? What colors are they using? Screenshot everything and create a swipe file—not to copy, but to understand what you’re drawn to and why.

Then practice. A lot. Design a brand for an imaginary coffee shop. Create a logo for a pretend florist. Build color palettes for fictional businesses in your niche.

These practice projects might feel pointless, but they’re not. You’re building muscle memory. You’re learning what works and what doesn’t without the pressure of a real client waiting for deliverables.

Learn the Fundamentals (They Actually Matter)

You don’t need to go to design school, but you do need to understand the basics.

Typography. Color theory. Visual hierarchy. White space. These aren’t optional nice-to-haves—they’re the foundation of everything you’ll create.

When you understand why certain fonts pair well together, why some color combinations feel off, and how to guide someone’s eye through a design, your work immediately levels up.

There are tons of free resources online to get started. YouTube tutorials, design blogs, beginner courses. But if you want the full framework—the exact process I’ve used for years to create brands for hundreds of clients—stick with me until the end of this post. I’m sharing a resource that walks you through everything.

Pick Your Design Niche

Here’s where a lot of new designers get nervous. “But what if I pick wrong? What if I limit myself?”

Here’s the thing: “brand designer” is so broad that it doesn’t help you stand out or get better faster. When you pick a niche—photographers, wellness coaches, product businesses, restaurants—everything gets easier.

Your portfolio looks more cohesive. Your marketing becomes clearer. Your ideal clients can actually find you. And you get better faster because you’re solving similar problems repeatedly instead of starting from scratch every time.

You’re not stuck with this forever. But starting with a focus helps you gain traction. I’ve worked with creative businesses for over a decade, and the designers who niche down always gain momentum faster than those who try to be everything to everyone.

Build a Simple Portfolio

You need 3-5 solid projects to show potential clients what you can do. But when you’re brand new, you don’t have client work yet.

So you create it yourself.

Design a complete brand identity for a fictional business in your niche. Make it look real—create mockups, develop full color palettes, show font pairings, design logo variations. Follow the 5-stage process. Treat it like a real project.

Or reach out to a friend with a side hustle and offer to design their brand at a steep discount (or even free) in exchange for a testimonial and the ability to use it in your portfolio.

Your first portfolio doesn’t need to be full of paying clients. It just needs to show you can solve brand problems beautifully and strategically.

Decide What You’re Actually Offering

Brand design can mean a lot of different things. Logo only? Full brand identity with colors and fonts? Brand plus website? Social media templates?

When you’re starting out, keep it simple. Pick one main service and get really good at delivering it consistently.

For example: “I design complete brand identities for wellness coaches. You get a custom logo, color palette, font pairings, and brand guidelines.”

Clear and specific beats vague and complicated every time.

But here’s what most new designers don’t realize: how you deliver that service completely changes your business. Custom projects? Template customization? VIP days? Each one affects your pricing, timeline, and capacity—and choosing the wrong model can burn you out before you even get started.

What We Didn’t Cover (And Why You Need More)

This will help you get started. But there’s a lot more to building a sustainable, profitable design business.

Like how to actually price your services so you’re making money, not just staying busy. How to create a client experience that naturally leads to referrals and repeat work. How to manage your finances so slow months don’t stress you out. When to bring on help and how to scale without burning out.

After years of building my own design business—and teaching hundreds of other designers to do the same—I’ve learned what actually works and what’s just noise. That’s why we created Design Strategy School.

It’s everything I wish someone had taught me when I was starting out. The complete business foundation, the full 5-stage design process with templates and frameworks, the systems that actually save you time, and all the resources I’ve collected over the years that I still use today.

We’re not holding anything back. This is the real framework—the one that’s helped me serve clients, build a template shop, scale a team, and create a business I actually love running.

Want to hear when it launches next? Join our newsletter here.

Just Start

You don’t need permission to call yourself a brand designer. You don’t need a degree or years of experience to get started.

Pick a name. Set up your structure. Open that bank account. Start practicing. Build your portfolio. Then find your first client and create something beautiful for them.

But here’s the truth: figuring everything out on your own takes years. I know because that’s what I did. I made expensive mistakes, undercharged for way too long, and burned out more than once trying to piece together a sustainable business.

You don’t have to take that path. Design Strategy School gives you the roadmap I wish I’d had—so you can skip the trial and error and build a profitable design business from the start.

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