# Brand identity brief: [Company]

> Template by Funky Rabbit: https://funky-rabbit.com/resources/brand-identity-brief-template/
> Free to copy, edit and send under your own name. No attribution required.
> Replace every [bracket]. Two pages filled in is the right length.
> Write what is true today, not what the next deck will say.

**Written by:** [name, role]
**Date:** [YYYY-MM-DD]
**Final say on the identity:** [one name]

---

## 1. What we do, in one sentence

[What customers buy from us today, for whom, and what changes for them.
The sentence you say on a sales call, not the homepage headline.]

What we are sometimes mistaken for: [the adjacent category or competitor]

---

## 2. Why now

**The trigger:** [launch / raise / rename / product moved / two of our own pages disagree]
**Hard date, if any:** [date and what happens on it]

After the identity ships, this has to be true:
- [e.g. an enterprise buyer doesn't ask whether we're a side project]
- [e.g. the app icon and the favicon are the same mark]

---

## 3. Who has to believe it

| | Who | Where they see us first |
|---|---|---|
| Buys | [role, company size] | [e.g. a LinkedIn post, a partner directory] |
| Uses | [role] | [e.g. the product sidebar, an onboarding email] |
| Decides or signs | [role] | [e.g. a procurement review, the sales deck] |

---

## 4. The category, and where we sit in it

| Competitor | URL | What their brand says | What we say instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| [name] | [url] | [one line] | [one line] |
| [name] | [url] | [one line] | [one line] |
| [name] | [url] | [one line] | [one line] |

What the whole category looks like (the default we want to avoid):
[e.g. purple gradient, geometric sans, a rocket or an abstract node graph]

---

## 5. Personality, in pairs

Write each as "this, not that". Keep the "not that" honest: it should be a
real temptation, not a straw man.

- [Plain-spoken], not [jokey]
- [Precise], not [cold]
- [add more only if each one would change a design decision]

---

## 6. What must survive

- **Name:** [staying / open to change]
- **Colour:** [hex, if anything is fixed, and why]
- **What customers already recognise:** [mark, mascot, a phrase, a sound]
- **Non-negotiable, and who said so:** [item and person]

Everything not on this list is open.

---

## 7. Where the mark has to live

Tick what you'll need in the next two years. Count the squares: they decide
whether you need a symbol at all.

- [ ] Browser tab (16px)
- [ ] Mobile app icon
- [ ] Social avatar (circle crop)
- [ ] Product UI: collapsed sidebar, top bar, loading state
- [ ] Partner directory or marketplace tile
- [ ] Sales deck and docs
- [ ] Email: marketing and transactional
- [ ] Physical: print, merch, signage
- [ ] [anything else specific to you]

---

## 8. Constraints

- **Trademark and domain status:** [registered / filed / not checked]
- **Existing product UI or design system:** [link, and how much of it stays]
- **Dark mode:** [product has one / planned / no]
- **Accessibility floor:** [e.g. WCAG AA, 4.5:1 for body text]
- **Fonts:** [licences we already own, or "none"]
- **Anything legal or regulatory:** [e.g. regulated wording, a parent brand]

---

## 9. References, with reasons

A reference without a reason is a vote, not a brief.

| Reference | Link | What we like, specifically | What we'd drop |
|---|---|---|---|
| [brand] | [url] | [e.g. how the wordmark holds at small sizes] | [e.g. the illustration style] |
| [brand] | [url] | [one line] | [one line] |

Ruled out: [three to five styles, colours or motifs we don't want, and why]

---

## 10. How decisions get made

- **Final say:** [one name]
- **Consulted:** [names, and on what]
- **Feedback rounds per phase:** [number]
- **Turnaround on our side:** [e.g. two working days]

---

## 11. How we'll judge it

Write tests you could check on the day, not "we'll know it when we see it".

- [ ] The mark is legible as a 16px favicon next to other tabs
- [ ] It survives a circle crop, one colour, and our darkest screen
- [ ] Two people outside the company describe us the same way after the homepage
- [ ] Every surface in section 7 has a file or a template
- [ ] Colours and type ship as tokens our developers can use, not a PDF
- [ ] [your own]