designIntermediate3-5 hours

Design a Complete Brand Identity

Maps to: Designer · Art Director · Creative Director · Marketer

You're going to turn a one-page plan into a whole look for a business: a logo, a set of colors, fonts, and three pictures showing it used in real life. The skill is making it hold together: picking ONE look out of all the options and making everything match it, then saying why that one fits the plan. That's what brand designers actually do, decide what belongs and what doesn't. You'll have the whole look plus a document that shows it off.

You're done when: A look that holds together (logo, colors, fonts, 3 pictures of it in use, and one document with it all in) where you picked ONE version and can say why it fits the plan, having dropped the others on purpose. Holding together is the work: not 'I made some logos,' but 'it all matches and I can say why this one, not the others.'

How this shows up on a resume or college app

I designed a complete brand identity from a one-page brief, generating options, then picking and defending ONE direction against the brief and killing the rest. I learned that brand design is decisions, not options: the work is the choice and the point of view, not the number of ideas.

When you finish, BuildMe drafts your Common App activity description from what you actually built.

Not sure yet? Play 5 minutes as a designer first and see how the work feels.

The plan

1
Step 1
Decide what the business is, and write the plan
Decide what the business is: who it's for, how it should feel, and 5 words it has to feel like. Write it on one page. Everything you make gets judged against those 5 words, so vague words mean a could-be-anyone look.
2
Step 2
Make a lot of logo options
Make logo options and keep going. First-try logos look boring for everyone, and most people stop before the third try, which is exactly where a real opinion starts to show. Push past the boring stage.
3
Step 3
Pick ONE direction + defend it (kill the rest)
Out of your options, pick ONE and say why it fits the plan better than the second-best, then drop the rest. Brand design is decisions, not options, and what you reject counts as much as what you keep.
4
Steps 4-5
Show it in 3 real places, then write it up
Show the look out in the world: 3 pictures of it on real things, like a shop sign, a poster, and a phone screen. Seeing it that way is how you, and everyone else, tell whether it all looks like one thing.