We often begin with an in-depth brand strategy workshop, as they uncover the purpose, audience, positioning & personality of your brand. That said, we understand that not every brand needs this level of depth at the very start of their journey.
At the very least, every project begins with a thoughtful briefing call. This gives us the space to understand who you’re here to serve, where you sit in the market and how you want your brand to feel as it moves forward.
After you've decided you want to work with Highful Minds and sent an enquiry to us. We will get back to you in 72 hours with an email to book in a call. This is not an in-depth interview with 100 quick fire questions, just a friendly chit chat for us to get to know more about you and your brand. If we decide we're a good fit, we'll send over a project proposal that outlines your goals for the project, what we're going to do for you, timelines, investments and more. If you agree to work with us, amazing! We'll then send over a design contract (just some formalities to keep us both protected, and typically a 50% deposit upfront to lock in the project. Once returned we'll send you over a client questionnaire for you to fill out which goes more in depth about you and your business. We'll use this as a starting point for the strategy workshop.
This is one of the most important parts of the process.
We’ll book in a brand strategy workshop, usually over Google Meet, but in person if you’re nearby. It typically lasts around three hours and gives us the space to really understand your brand. We’ll talk about why your brand exists, the mission you’re on and the kind of world you want to help create.
We’ll look at competitors, where your brand sits in the market, who you’re trying to reach and how your brand should feel, sound and show up. These foundations guide every design decision that follows. Without them, design is just art. With them, it has purpose. After the session, I’ll pull everything together into a clear strategy deck and creative brief. I’ll send this over for you to review and sign off. Once approved, I’ll create two or three moodboards to explore different visual directions and see what feels right before moving into design.
This is where we spend most of our time, getting messy with our creative brains, exploring all possibilities and ideas, to get the best possible creative route for your brand. Exploring Logos, typography, colours, art direction, layouts and compositions. Sometimes we'll present you a logo design first to set the tone for the rest of the brand, sometimes we'll present to you a full creative direction in it's entirety. And sometimes we may present two creative directions. This is something we decide during the creative phase depending on the type of brand we're working with and what deliverables have been agreed upon. We usually spend around 2/3 weeks in this stage (however it can be sooner if the creative gods bless us a with a solution quickly). We typically present a concept that's about 70% complete, we don't want to refine and perfect it too much at this stage without your final sign off. We will then book in a call to present our idea to you. If feedback and ammends are needed at this stage, we will address them here and re-present. Alternatively if signed off first time, we will go to the next stage.
With the creative direction signed off, we will then go and refine and perfect this, creating more tangible brand assets and and compositions, perfecting the logo with grids and structure. Any other deliverables will be created at this stage such as, proposals, business cards, social media headers etc... At this stage we take the remaining 50% payment.
Next, I’ll create your brand guidelines. This is an interactive document built in Figma that brings everything together. It includes the strategy we defined at the start, along with logo usage, typography, colour and design rules.
This document becomes the reference point for anyone who works with your brand going forward.
Once complete, I’ll package up all final assets and files in the correct formats so you have everything you need to confidently use and grow your brand.
Our absolute biggest value throughout this whole process is to remain as a support for you, we’ll do a final handover to walk through everything together, answer any questions and make sure you feel comfortable using your new brand. We will check in with you to see how everything's going a month after sign off, and we’re always here for anything you need.
