"We just need a logo" is client-speak for "we have not yet thought about what the logo is attached to." It is said in good faith by people who will, in about three weeks, ask for a stacked version, a one-colour version, something that works on the van, and a set of social templates, and who will be surprised that any of that costs money, because they only asked for a logo.
Identity work has three places where the money leaks, and none of them is the design.
The logo that turns into a system
The mark itself is the smallest part of the job and the only part the client has a word for. Everything around it (lockups, a colour system, type choices, the usage sheet, the templates that stop the marketing assistant from stretching it) is where the hours go, and it arrives one email at a time, each too small to quote.
The fix is to name the system before the client knows they want it. A quote with a mark-only option next to a mark-and-system option does two things at once: it lets the client buy the smaller thing deliberately, and it establishes, in writing, that the larger thing has a price. When the request for templates lands in week four, you are pointing at a line rather than starting a negotiation.
The approval chain
A founder decides in a day. A founder plus a marketing lead plus the co-founder who "has a good eye" is a different project, and it is the same project on the quote. Rounds of revision are where identity work quietly becomes hourly at a rate you would refuse: the first round comes back as one email, the second as four, spaced across nine days, from four people.
A round has to be defined as one consolidated set of feedback from the whole client side, delivered in one response, or the number of rounds means nothing. Ask on the call who signs it off. An unnamed approver is a round you have not priced.
Usage, and the van
Ownership answers who holds the rights. Usage answers what the client may do with them, and unless you say otherwise, transferring the mark hands over everything, everywhere, forever. Sometimes that is the right deal. It should never be the accidental one.
Write the permitted uses as a positive list: the website, printed collateral, the storefront. Broader use (packaging across a range, paid media, a licensing deal) is a separate line with a separate number, and a client headed for retail shelves should see that line in the first quote rather than discover in year two that they were given it. One practical footnote that catches nearly everyone: typefaces from a subscription library cannot be packaged with the working files. Outlined artwork and embedded PDFs can. A client who wants to edit live text needs their own licence, and that is a sentence for the proposal, not the handover.
What gets drafted from the logo call
You paste the notes from the call. North drafts the proposal as three options that are genuinely different amounts of work, named by what they contain rather than Basic, Standard and Premium. Inside each, the scope is countable: one primary wordmark, two lockups, a colour and type system, a six-page usage sheet, two rounds of revisions with a round defined. Every line carries one sentence saying why it matters to this client, traceable to something they said on the call. The usage line sits inside each option so that broader use is something the client buys on purpose.
The agreement is drafted alongside the proposal, from the same scope and the same terms, and you review both in the same sitting. When the client accepts an option in the deal room, the contract is shown to them straight away and signed after a one-time email check, so there is one named person on the signature rather than a committee. The room is a private link; the client can forward it to the other two decision-makers, and they all read the same document.
After signing, the accepted option can become delivery stages (discovery, the mark, the system, the rollout) that the client watches from the room. Finished stages become invoice lines that remember what has been billed. Invoices are drafted from the project, sent by you, and you see when they are opened. Stages and card payment on your own Stripe account are part of the paid plan; the invoice itself, the reminders you choose to send, and the deal room are not.
The document carries your logo, your colour and your own imagery. It would be an odd identity proposal that arrived in someone else's identity.
Where it stops
North does not manage font licences, host brand guidelines, or deliver final files; the working archive still goes over by whatever you use now. It does not run the presentation in the room, and it does not tell you which of the three directions to show. That part was always yours.
Common questions
- How do I price a brand identity when the client only asked for a logo?
- Quote the logo as the smallest option and put the system next to it as the second, with the difference stated in nouns: a colour palette, a type pairing, a six-page usage sheet, three social templates. The client can then buy the mark alone with their eyes open, and when the request for templates arrives in week four it is a purchase rather than a favour. North drafts the options in that shape from your notes.
- Should the client own the logo files or license them?
- Ownership of the mark usually transfers on final payment; what the client may do with it is a separate question, and the answer should be written as a list of permitted uses rather than left to imply everything, everywhere, forever. The two get muddled constantly. Note that typefaces from a subscription library cannot be handed over at all, so live editable text needs the client's own licence, which is worth saying at the quote stage rather than at handover.
- How many revision rounds should an identity project include?
- Two is the common baseline, and the count matters less than defining a round as one consolidated set of feedback from everyone on the client's side. An identity project routinely has a founder, a marketing lead and a co-founder's partner in the loop, and without that definition two rounds becomes seven. A third round at a stated price is easier to agree than an argument about whether the seventh email counted.