Logo & Brand Designers
We design logos and brands.
From artisan food producers to corporate clients, our logo design services will help you realise the most exceptional logo for your product or service.
Whether you are a start-up or a grown-up business, your clients are more aware than ever before about good branding, so if yours doesn’t match or exceed your competitors and your customers’ expectations, you could be being ignored
We’re the logo design agency that gets you noticed.
How can we help you?
Just the logo.
Often the first step for startups and smaller businesses, we design logos for clients of all shapes and sizes.
Our logo design service is just that: the design and artwork of a logo for your product or service.
Logo and branding.
A logo forms part of your branding, so this approach is a little more in-depth and can take in basic logo usage and brand guidelines.
These can form the foundation of your branding, covering off fonts, colours, social media assets, images, stylescapes and top-level design guides for marketing collateral.
Whilst it can be tempting to opt for ‘just the logo’ to start with, we do recommed at least some basic brand guidelines to start with.
Which approach is best for you?
Logo design.
We often design logos that form part of other projects, such as a new sub-brand, event, or spin-off for an existing brand where all the branding exists, but a new logo is required.
It is rare that a new business or venture needs only a logo and no other supporting materials, so we provide the design and artwork for additional elements such as letterheads, business cards, and so on.
If you just need the logo, we can design and artwork the perfect logo for your requirements and provide all the file formats you need.
It is possible to build the brand around the logo at a later date, but this should be approached with caution.
Branding.
Branding takes in the logo design but also involves creating supporting materials around the logo, often creating a visual identity for your business.
The extent of this project can be as simple as business stationery or more involved, taking in:
- Fonts, Colours, Logo usage
- Imagery and iconography
- Tone of Voice
- Signage (Interior and External signs)
- Social Media collateral
- Brochures, decks and presentatiions
- Video idents and b-roll
- Websites and Email newsletters
Branding is a larger project and commands a bigger budget, but the work can be done in phases if required.
Just need a quote?
If you have a logo or branding project lined up and need a creative delivery you can depend on, complete our Logo Briefing Form and we’ll get a proposal over to you.
Over 25 years, we’ve delivered 100s of successful logo and branding projects, all professionally designed and delivered on time.
Logo design and branding: what to expect.
An effective logo design project aims to create a mark for your brand that is appropriate, professional and unique.
This process requires understanding about you, your team, your audience, the competition, your product or service and where you want your brand to go.
We start by asking questions about all the above and formulating a top-level plan for your logo’s creative direction.
Before we even get to the design stage, we ensure we have answers to all the important questions that should influence the design of your logo.
Considered creative.
Personal preferences often come into play in logo design, especially for smaller businesses, so it’s crucial to keep your customers in mind at all times.
You may like bright pink as an option, but if you’re selling financial services and your market is mainly males aged 30+, pink is unlikely to be the best direction for the creative.
We see it as our job to guide you towards the most appropriate design for your market, not simple to facilitate what you want; this might sound like you won’t get what you ask for, but it’s more focussed than that – you will get what your market wants.
Branding.
If we are rolling the logo out across other marketing and promotional materials, this is the branding aspect of the project and will cover as many items as you require.
Book a free, no-obligation consultation call.
If you’d like to discuss our logo and branding services, book a call with our Creative Director, Adam Buttress. He’ll walk you through the process and explain how we can help.
Appropriate and professional: that’s what you need, that’s what we deliver.
A logo itself means nothing; it’s simple an empty vessel that you fill up with the quality of your product or service, your customer service, your authenticity and uniqueness.
Logo design is often seen as the solution to making or breaking of a business.
- Get the logo right and we’ll see more customers than we can imagine: Wrong.
- Get the logo right and we have a professional and appropriate piece of equity that we can then build upon with every single other aspect of our business: Correct.
Sure, a professional Legal Firm with a logotype set in Comic Sans is rapidly due for a rebrand, but your logo is just the start of your branding; it’s not a silver bullet that makes everything else work.
The Nike [swoosh] that cost $30 and was designed by a Portland State University art student was probably worth that when she first showed it to them. At that point it had no equity at all. None of the guys commissioning it particularly liked it, they all wanted the Adidas three stripes and they thought that was a good logo.
Michael Bierut
How much is the Nike swoosh worth now? An estimated $26 billon (source).
The point here is that it’s what your logo represents that’s important, not merely what it looks like.
Is your logo appropriate for your audience?
A simple question, but one that often gets lost in the design stages of a logo; are we designing this for ourselves or our audience – the latter is better.
Does the logo look professional?
In the example above, we question the professionality of Comic Sans, but only in regard to the target market.
That font may look perfectly professional if used for a Pre-School, but not-so for a Legal Firm: your logo needs to look professional to the people who need to see it thus. No one else matters.
Ready to get started?
Work with a creative team you can trust to deliver your new logo. Complete our Logo Briefing Form, and we’ll send you a proposal for your project. If you’d prefer, you can get in touch to book an initial consultation to talk through our process.
Our logo design process
The brief.
The brief is so important that we don’t even start thinking about what things may look like until this stage is complete.
The brief should be as detailed as the project (or project budget) demands and should cover off everything from your audience to your website rankings.
The brief is the document that sets out the direction for the project and the desired outcomes.
We will refer back to this brief at all stages of the project.
The research.
Before anyone starts designing anything, we need to understand what is going on in your sector.
What are the competition doing, what does the audience have to say. Are there any clear trends that we should follow or disrupt?
We need to understand the environment your new logo is planning to land in; otherwise, how can we make sure it’s appropriate?
The creative.
During this stage of the project, we will explore more polished concept designs for the logo design.
The initial sketch stages may have led to a clear direction or a range of options, so during the creative stages, it’s onto the Macs to work ideas up in Illustrator and explore colours, layouts, geometry and fonts.
Typically, we spend the most project time in this stage; we’ll share options with rationale and advise on what we consider the strongest direction(s) for the design work.
The fine-tuning.
No font is left un-kerned and no shape left untouched.
We don’t rely on Illustrator’s default alignment and spacing – every logo we work on is fine-tuned and balanced by eye, not by a click of a button.
A professionally designed logo is not simply thrown together, so we’ll deliberate the letter spacing, negative space, geometry and balance – in fact, we get several pairs of eyes on the final logo creative to refine it to an exceptionally polished level before we artwork everything and provide you with all the files you need.
Artwork
Once everything is 100% correct, we move to artwork your new logo in all the formats you’ll need.
This process includes all the various lock-ups, colourways and elements of your logo.
Brand guidelines.
Since your logo isn’t your branding, now may be a good time to put at least some basic brand guidelines in place.
Depending on where you are, a simple set may suffice, but if you are planning rapid growth and will be creating other marketing and branding assets, brand guidelines are essential.
A professional and appropriate logo design can easily start to look like anything, but if it’s haphazardly applied to documents and decks, we do suggest that this stage gets some consideration if the budget allows.
Toast have been the very best partner. They have been patient and supremely helpful. Their team have responded to our brief and given us over and above what we asked so we can continue campaigning for Victorian and Edwardian buildings and structures as we have done since 1958.
Marie Clements
Communications and Media Manager
https://www.victoriansociety.org.uk/
We also design brand guidelines.
Keep your brand usage in check with a set of brand guidelines
Taking logo design into branding.
If you need help taking your logo further, we can plan and design brand guidelines as part of the project.
Get the best logo for your business.
We can help ensure your logo is correct from the get-go.
To speak directly to the design team about your logo project, get in touch and we’ll arrange an initial meeting to discuss your project in more detail.
Need a website with that?
Brilliant brands need hardworking websites.
We design on-brand websites for many of our logo design clients to get their businesses online and surfacing in the search results.
Get exactly what you need.
As we exclusively design and build bespoke sites, we can give your new brand the perfect foundation to grow you new business and generate leads from the search engines.
Logo design and Branding FAQs
Does we only do logos?
No, we’re a full service agency, so we can help you with your logo to start with, but can then roll that out across other branding and marketing materials; from adverts to websites.
Logos and Branding: what’s the difference?
These two terms are used interchangeably, but your logo is just your logo. Your branding includes other elements such as colour schemes, fonts, and typography and also softer elements such as tone of voice and audience perception.
Do we update existing logo designs?
Yes, we help companies improve existing logo designs; we can work to professionalise an existing design if it just needs some help or create a new logo that retains any equity invested in the original.
Can we artwork an existing logo?
If you have an old logo with no original artwork files, we can help redraw the logo in the appropriate file formats for you.
This can help breathe life into existing logos where there is significant equity.
Do we work with small budgets?
Define small. Yes, we work with all kinds of budgets, but we provide a full and professional service, so will always be more expensive than online logo competitions that create lots of poorly thought-out logos for peanuts.
Why do we need a brief?
If you want your business to be a success, you have a plan; same goes for the design of your business’s logo – if anyone dives straight into the creative without asking the right questions, you’ll end up with something that needs replacing in no time.
How long does the process take?
The best logos are not the ones needed yesterday. A typical project can take anywhere from one to four weeks depending on the requirements.
Bear in mind that the decision-making process and alterations often take up a significant amount of this time; so with a great brief and some decisive calls, it can take less time.
How long does branding take?
This largely depends on the range of elements that we need to consider; a basic style guide can come together in a week, while a larger project involving Social Media, collateral, and website design can take several weeks to a few months.
It is crucial to not rush the logo design and branding process; in fact, we refuse to rush projects through as extremely tight deadlines for branding often suggest bad planning on someone’s part, so the projects can easily derail.
Can we help you with everything?
Yes, we are a full-service agency, so we can start with your logo, then create branding, brochures, marketing collateral and your website – all in-house.
We also work on SEO and website support, so we can design your branding and then help you grow your business.
Do we check trademarks?
We can, but this does take additional time and costs money. You can perform simple trademark searches yourself, and we do assume that you have the right to use any names put forward for the business.
We strongly advise investing in checking trademarks prior to choosing a business name.
How do we supply files?
You will get them in every format you’ll ever need; original Illustrator files, EPS, PNG, PDF, JPG and so on.
If your logo has different versions (colour, white, monochrome etc), we’ll supply all the logos in all the formats.
Is the final logo mine?
Yes, once our bills are paid, the logo is yours to do with as you see fit – we do not retain any ownership of the artwork.
No funny business, no contracts or anything: it’s 100% yours.
Get everything you need for your logo.
We don’t leave it at just the logo.
Our clients often need more than a set of logo files, so we help with everything.
- Logo design – We design bespoke logos that are unique to your business, effectively representing your business
- Brand design – Across all channels, we can help you define and develop positioning, style, tone of voice, values and opportunities
We approach logos and branding as part of our full-service offering to clients like you that need everything designed in one studio – from your initial logo design through to its application to printed and digital materials.
Take social in-house with Canva or Adobe Express.
Many businesses are taking advantage of easy-to-use apps like Canva to manage some creative work themselves.
We are now helping brands to develop on-brand Canva or Adobe Express Brand Kits and Templates for everything from simple artwork to slide decks and presentations.
We can take your logo into these apps and create a range of reusable templates for social media posts, decks and other templates so they are accessible and easy to use.
Your logo design team.
Adam Buttress
Mark Williams
Chris Tymon
Justin Brown
Anzonie Carpenter
Alex Roe
Our studio.
We design logos in our three-story Victorian Town House in Oxfordshire.
Toast is a full service agency, so we can help you take your logo into marketing collateral, social media campaigns and effective WordPress websites.
All our staff are full-time employees and we do all the work in-house.
