Brand sprint — 5 days, not 9 months.
Brand brief + visual identity style guide, produced as a tight 5-day engagement. Voice, positioning, audience hierarchy, palette, typography, imagery direction. Ready to hand to anyone — us, your existing designer, or a future agency — for build.
Two documents. Five days. One brand.
A Brand Sprint produces two deliverables — a Brand Brief (the strategic foundation) and a Visual Identity Style Guide (the design system). Together they’re enough to hand to any competent designer or developer.
The strategic foundation, in writing.
Voice + tone (with banned phrases and signature patterns). Audience hierarchy (who you serve, who you don’t). Positioning (one-sentence + competitive landscape). Brand values + mission. The ”why” document that informs every design decision downstream.
The design system, in spec form.
Color palette (with hex codes and use ratios). Typography (specific fonts with weights and use cases). Image style direction (prompts and reference examples). Iconography approach. Layout principles. Enough spec for any designer to build cohesively.
Show, don’t just describe.
Voice trait analysis is easy. Voice worked examples are hard. We write sample copy in your voice (hero, service description, error message) — and a banned-phrases list of what you specifically don’t sound like.
What your brand explicitly isn’t.
Generic AI design tendencies: gradient hero backgrounds, smiling stock teams, Lucide default icons, “Most Popular” pricing badges. We define what your brand explicitly refuses to look like, so future designers don’t drift into AI-default territory.
What ships day 5.
Two written documents, polished and ready to hand off. Both are yours forever — use them with us, with your existing designer, or with a future agency.
Brand Brief (12–18 pages)
- Identity · Business name, founder voice, service area
- Audience hierarchy · 3–5 tiers ranked by priority
- Positioning · One-sentence + competitive analysis
- Voice + tone · Traits, banned phrases, sample copy
- Core problems · What you solve, for whom
- Brand values · What you believe (operationally)
- What you refuse to do · The boundaries of the brand
Visual Identity Style Guide (10–14 pages)
- Color palette · Hex codes, use ratios, contrast pairings
- Typography · Specific fonts, type scale, opentype features
- Image style · Prompts + reference examples
- Iconography · Library choice + custom moments
- Layout system · Grid, spacing scale, component shape
- Anti-generic-AI checklist · What this brand isn’t
- Accessibility tokens · WCAG-compliant pairings
Five days, three sign-offs, two documents.
Brand work has a tendency to expand to fill all available time. We cap it at 5 days because the marginal week of refinement rarely changes the final answer.
Tools we use
- Discovery questionnaire · 30-min async, you fill at your pace
- Competitor inventory · We pull, you react
- Voice spectrum analysis · 8 axes scored, you anchor
- Image style boards · Reference images, not generated
- Type spec generator · Pairings against your industry
Senior judgment
- Strategic synthesis · We read your inputs, write the brief
- Tradeoff decisions · We don’t list 12 options — we pick 2
- Voice writing samples · Real copy, not adjective lists
- Anti-generic discipline · We tell you what your brand isn’t
- One-shot synthesis · No ”we’ll workshop it” theater
Three sign-offs. Five business days.
Time commitment from you: ~2 hours total across the week. You answer discovery, react to drafts, sign off on final.
Discovery
30-min discovery questionnaire (async). Competitor inventory pulled. Voice spectrum scored.
Brand Brief draft
First draft of Brand Brief shared. You react via async comments; one revision pass.
Visual Identity draft
Visual Identity Style Guide drafted (palette, type, image style). First sign-off.
Revision + final draft
One round of revision based on your feedback. Final drafts of both documents prepared.
Final delivery
Polished PDFs delivered. 30-min walkthrough call scheduled. Files are yours.
Three ways to use a Brand Sprint.
The two deliverables are the point. What you build with them is up to you.
Use the brief to direct work in progress.
Your existing designer or agency uses the Brand Brief and Style Guide as their source of truth. No more ”what’s our voice?“ debates — it’s written down.
Use the sprint as Phase 0 of a build.
Brand Sprint runs first ($1,500, 5 days), Authority Site follows ($3,000, 14 days). Total: $4,500, 19 days. The Authority Site build inherits the brand decisions, no re-deciding.
Use it as the source of truth for everyone you hire.
Brand Sprint deliverables function as onboarding for every new vendor — designers, copywriters, content marketers. Hand them the PDFs; expect aligned output.
$1,500 fixed. 5 days.
Standalone Brand Sprint is $1,500. Paired with Authority Site, the combined kickoff is more efficient — but pricing is unchanged because the work is the same.
Fixed price · 5-day delivery · Two documents
- Brand Brief (12–18 pages)
- Visual Identity Style Guide (10–14 pages)
- Voice samples + banned-phrases list
- Anti-generic-AI checklist
- Discovery questionnaire
- Competitor inventory
- Color palette with contrast pairings
- Type specification
- Image style direction
- 30-min final walkthrough
Six questions about brand sprints.
What we hear most when prospects are deciding between brand sprint, full brand agency, or DIY.
5 days for a brand? Really?
Really. Brand strategy is mostly the surface-area of what to decide, not how long the deciding takes. We’ve done discovery and synthesis often enough that we know which questions matter.
What 9-month brand workshops do: explore 47 visual directions, build sentiment matrices, run unmoderated user interviews. What you actually need: clear positioning, clear voice, clear visual direction. Five days is enough.
Trade-off: we don’t do user research. If your brand needs primary research (large new market entry, B2B enterprise pivot), this isn’t the engagement.
Do you design my logo?
Not as a standalone deliverable. Logo design isn’t included in the Brand Sprint.
If you have an existing logo, we work with it. If you don’t, we recommend either: (a) hiring a logo specialist after the sprint (the Style Guide tells them exactly what direction to go), or (b) pairing with an Authority Site engagement where logo work can be included in the wider scope.
We have logo specialists we refer to — ask in the form.
How is this different from a $30K brand agency engagement?
Two ways. One: we don’t do user research, multi-direction visual explorations, or stakeholder workshops. We synthesize from your inputs + our experience, then make decisions.
Two: we’re not building you a 60-page brand bible with applications across 12 verticals. We’re building a brief + style guide that is enough to direct downstream work. Less ceremony, same usefulness.
If you need a $30K engagement, you’ll know — board-level rebrand, multi-vertical company, M&A integration. For Tampa SMBs and B2B companies $1M–$20M, $1,500 is the right scope.
Does it work for rebrands or only new brands?
Both. Brand Sprint is the same methodology either way — discovery, synthesis, decisions, documentation.
Rebrand-specific consideration: we factor in what to keep from the existing brand (recognizable elements, customer associations, equity) vs. what to evolve. This is part of the discovery.
Does it work for my industry?
Yes for: home services, healthcare, legal, professional services, restaurants, B2B SaaS, specialty retail. Industries we have pattern recognition in.
Yes-but-shorter-deliverables for: highly regulated industries (financial, pharma) where every brand decision has compliance implications. We’ll flag in discovery if this applies.
Probably-not for: enterprise B2B (wrong scope), nonprofits with internal brand committees (decision timeline incompatible with 5 days), industries we have zero exposure to.
What do I bring to the sprint?
Time commitment: ~2 hours over 5 days. 30-min discovery questionnaire (async), 30-min reaction to Brand Brief draft, 30-min reaction to Visual Identity draft, 30-min final walkthrough.
Inputs we ask for: any existing brand assets (logo, current site, marketing materials), 3 competitor URLs, 3 inspiration brands you admire (any industry), 3 brands you specifically don’t want to be like.
We do the work; you make decisions.
Brand Sprint is for businesses that need clarity, not ceremony — and want to spend the rest of their budget on execution.
Three fields. Scope in your inbox within one business day.
We’ll reply with whether the standalone sprint or a paired engagement is right, and a kickoff date.