How do you create your visual identity for your product, side project or MVP?

Carsten Pleiser
6 replies
Keen to learn how you all go about creating a minimum visual identity for your product, side project or MVP. Do you do it yourself, hire a freelancer, use a marketplace, use Fiverr? Second, what are some of the pain points you have when creating this minimum viable brand identity?

Replies

Antonio Fernández Porrúa
I think any idea may evolve a lot from the early stages till you actually need a brand. Not just the product idea, but the business model, the marketing strategy, everything is very likely to change, so there is no point in getting to serious with the minimum visual identity. I start with something quick and simple I can do myself, and I try not to fall in love with this first temporary visual identity.
Ng Fang Kiang
do it 100%, so I understand the entire parts of the company and technical parts. Once it's profitable and standardize, will start hiring or outsourcing.
Talia Bender
Hi Carsten, Our branding journey has been definitely been interesting 🙂 We first outsourced all design elements to an agency in Ukraine, then to a freelancer, and finally brought a full-time designer on board. This approach created a very disjointed visual identity, which we are in the process of remedying now with the help of our in-house designer and current branding agency 😊 To avoid this, I would suggest first approaching a branding agency and having them help you create a minimal visual identity. Definitely shop around for the perfect fit here. If you're worried about cost, they should be able to scale their services to exactly what you need. Additionally, they'll definitely deliver the base with which you will be able to grow your brand in the future. After you have the minimal visual identity, I would then approach freelancers, etc. to help you create any media you need. This way, they will have a reference point and your imagery will be uniform and on-brand. Hope this helps!
Carsten Pleiser
@taliambender that's super insightful and helpful. Thanks so much for sharing.
Dafni Chontou
For Wonderpath, we built it ourselves most of the time. After some months of working on the product, we hired a freelancer to help us improve the UX/ visual identity of the product. The biggest challenge I think is keeping it consistent. In the early days, you create bits and pieces of your visual identity as the need pops up (the website, an article feature here, a campaign idea there, etc) and since we haven't really sat down to think about the brand as a whole, inconsistencies happen.