Pricing guide · Brand identity

How much should you charge for a brand identity project?

Brand identity work has no reliable market rate — and it's the strongest value-pricing case in design, because the deliverable is a system the client will run everything through for years. Set the price from what the identity has to do (launch, reposition, unify, raise), scope the system honestly, and floor-check against your time. Presenting tiers (core identity → full system → system + rollout) lets the client choose depth instead of debating worth.

What makes this work worth more

The price lives in the client’s outcome, not your artboard. Before quoting, get clear on:

  • Repositioning power — an identity that moves the client upmarket pays for itself in their next three deals
  • Longevity: identity systems are operated for years and touched by every hire and vendor
  • Coherence across surfaces the client currently can't keep consistent
  • Internal confidence — teams sell differently when they're proud of the brand

What legitimately moves the scope

  • Discovery depth: interviews, positioning, audience work — or building on strategy the client already has
  • System breadth: logo suite, color, type, voice, templates, guidelines
  • Rollout assets: decks, social kits, site direction
  • Who applies it afterward — handoff to their team vs. you

Every one of these belongs in the proposal’s scope section — vague scope is where margins go to die. (See the proposal template and the change order.)

A worked example

A B2B services firm re-brands to stop losing deals to slicker competitors; they close ~$40,000 per new client and believe the brand costs them a few deals a year.

  1. Value anchor: even two recovered deals ≈ $80,000/year; 10% → an $8,000 anchor for the Complete tier.
  2. Honest scope: 70 hours of strategy + system work. At a $90/hour floor, cost-of-time is $6,300.
  3. Tiers: Essential $6,480 (core identity refresh), Complete $8,680 (full system + guidelines), Premium $12,880 (system + sales-surface rollout).
  4. Every tier clears the floor; the anchor does the arguing.

Illustrative arithmetic, not a benchmark — swap in your own floor rate and the client’s real numbers. The project pricing calculator runs this math live.

The floor check

As a rough seniority ladder for general freelance design work, aggregated 2026 sources put junior designers around $20–35/hour, mid-level at $35–60, and senior at $60–150+ (Ruul, April 2026, corroborated by PayScale and ZipRecruiter). Treat it as a floor check on your time — not as the pricing method.

Don’t know your own floor yet? Derive it in two minutes — income goal, real costs, honest billable hours.

Common questions

What does a brand identity project cost in 2026?
No published fixed-fee range survives verification — real projects run from low four figures for a tight core identity to five figures and beyond for full systems with strategy. The spread is honest: the price tracks the job the identity does and the depth of the system, not a market sticker.
How is brand identity priced differently from a logo?
A logo is one decision; an identity is an operating system — logo suite, color, type, voice, and the guidelines that keep them coherent without you. More of the client's future runs through it, so both the value anchor and the scope are larger.
Should discovery and strategy be billed separately?
Often, yes — a paid discovery phase (positioning, interviews, creative brief) de-risks the bigger engagement for both sides and is the single easiest way to stop doing free strategy in proposals.

Go deeper: read the full guide on the blog.