Early Stage Brand Design
When you are building a startup some things are cyclical. One of the things that constantly cycles through is the idea that a visual rebrand will be the thing that helps you find the next S-curve and grow. I found myself there multiple times with groupme and fundera. It’s part of the laws of physics of startup building.
Almost all of the time this does not move the needle. What most every company needs is some brand design - a logo and marketing website - that’s good enough and a style guide for your application that will get the job done. Brand design does not determine whether you get to product market fit and whether there is demand for what you are building. What matters is building things with speed, ferocity, and focus and having an incredible product people love using. A pretty logo doesn’t help you do that.
Oftentimes, I see founders caught in the trap of looking at a competitor or company that they think has terrific visual design, and they say, “I need that.” So they go and try to find the best design agency out there, or the one the flashy company that just raised $100m used and get on a waiting list and pay $80k-$100k for a full 3 months long brand design work endeavor. Then they relaunch their brand and expect the world to shake and literally nothing happens. Time and money down the drain. But most importantly time and energy.
If you insist that terrific brand design is a must have then what you really need at the early stage is to work with someone competent who will charge you anywhere between $0 to $20k maximum for some brand design work that is good enough. This includes your marketing website along with a style guide you can use to build your product. Get it, implement it, put it behind you, and move on. Good enough is the name of the game for this stuff at the early stages.
People may read this hot take and think it’s blasphemous. Many believe that brand design and visual and stylistic taste are distinguishing factors for startups. But they are not for 99% of companies (and in my experience, the 1% know deep in their soul they are the 1% exception to the rule). Unless you are a creative genius and brand work and visual design is your superpower as a founder or deeply ingrained in your founding team, it’s not going to be a differentiator for you so get over it and just build something that solves a problem and that people want.
*Please note that brand design is fundamentally different than building a trusted brand. You must build a trusted brand to succeed, especially in the age of AI.
Totally agree, and I’d like to share my story. Ten years ago, I started a small, four-person game development studio. Branding - or more accurately, positioning - was what ultimately blocked our progress and led to shutting down the operation. Our first game turned out to be a huge success, especially for something built in just 10 days. It started as a one-day prototype, evolved into a mobile game, and within its first week got to the top 3 iOS games in Poland. That’s when the problems began. The regional success gave us the confidence to pursue a global version of the game. However, some of my teammates began comparing our small-scale efforts to the AAA mobile games dominating the market at the time, like Angry Birds or Monument Valley They wanted us to compete on every front - branding, social media presence, visuals, and overall polish. I think fear played a big role too. Fear of a reality check, because if you release and fail, your "idea" will be called bullshit and worth nothing, while when you don't you can still live your dream, or so you think so. This was the start of a slow decline. Despite amazing feedback, our follow-up game never made it past closed playtesting. The mindset of “not being ready to compete with AAA games” paralyzed progress and kept us in a loop of trying to perfect everything. Eventually, we lost momentum, trust in each other, and the studio had to close. Looking back, I’ve learned that trying to mimic what top players are doing when you’re just starting out is one of the biggest pitfalls for founders. And this isn’t something only inexperienced people struggle with. As the saying goes, you either learn the hard way or the very hard way. I think I can call myself lucky to have only learned it the hard way.
Rebuilding a UI is a similar, even bigger version of this mistake that often comes from the same line of thinking.
Early Stage Brand Design — Interesting reflection by @jaredhecht.eth in this article on the timing, investment and timing of building a brand in the early stages of the project. Many founders struggle to find the value of having a consistent brand that is perceived as a guarantee for their first targets. This is something we at @floc have been thinking about and evolving for a long time. Also in terms of Brand3 processes. So we simply try to keep learning and come up with new solutions that adapt to these new circumstances. https://jared.xyz/early-stage-brand-design
With all the experience we have gained in every budget, in every process, in every redesign, we continue to learn. We want to continue to be at the side of web3 founders. And this is the main reason why we have launched FLOC*Packs. The best (Fast and Accessible) way to offer our services and work together with the builders of the next internet… wearefloc.com/packs wearefloc.com/packs
We recently launched a large rebrand & redesign at /paragraph. I believe I've historically underrated good branding. When I asked users what they prefer about Mirror over Paragraph, they often said "the vibes". Hard to quantify and break down "vibes". The culture, the logo, the colors, the UX, the story? I think all of this feeds into an overarching brand. "Good brand" is impossible to measure directly but can manifest in better retention, higher user satisfaction, and ultimately "better vibes". Of course, good brand without a good product is useless, and focusing on solving a real problem is by far the most important thing to do, but I now believe a good brand can help elevate good products. I'm not yet convinced on if it was worth it, especially for early stage companies, but I do believe I've historically underrated it.
A related great article on this is by @jaredhecht.eth: https://jared.xyz/early-stage-brand-design I completely agree that "good enough is the name of the game at the early stages".
first time author as of yesterday but im impressed with how the layout looks, the simplicity, and how its looks when posting on farcaster to me the ease of use is what makes the "brand"..and you guys are doing a great job with it especially for beginners like myself
why not just migrate to Mirror which already has the sauce? v.s. trying to do it again
foundationally, Paragraph is better easier to merge Mirror -> Paragraph and build vibes vs Paragraph -> Mirror and build foundation
it sounds like from speaking to people Mirror is already empirically better on this dimension though? or i guess what do you mean by foundation?
i don't write often, so i might be an outlier first time i opened paragraph, it clicked instantly, intuitive, but not so much when i opened mirror, felt so boxed in, like i'm not given much room to play around
It makes perfect sense, and I think it happens to most founders. We had an early conversation about this with @zachharris.eth a few years ago. We saw potential in Paragraph and it was a brand we wanted to transform from strategy to identity. The truth is that the rebranding is very good. And about what you say about how to measure brand equity at @floc we've been thinking about this for a while and that's why we decided to build /brnd . Here you will find the explanation. Hopefully founders like you will join us to participate. https://paragraph.com/@brand3/brnd
Interesting that you've gotten so much positive feedback about the mirror brand. It makes sense, when I think about it, however. Mirror's brand was born during a boom of hype around digital ownership. So much so that I feel like the brand surpassed the product. I would go so far as to say the brand was all they really innovated. The product itself was underwhelming in almost every way. Other than just being "the web3 medium", it had no real adoption that I saw. Only hardcore web3 ppl posted on it, and almost nobody ever minted much of anything. Yet everyone loves it to the point it's become nostalgic. A brand locked forever in the Zeitgeist of web3 history! I've wondered, would it have gone anywhere if not acquired? 🤔 The more relevant question, I think, is: - what latent desire is out there that Paragraph can position itself in front of to capture its own place in the current cultural zeitgeist? The new UX is sweet! Ripe opportunity to nail the branding.
Are you also the creators of "Mirror"? One thing that would be great to have back is the option to raise funds as a DAO.
Oftentimes, I see founders caught in the trap of looking at a competitor or company that they think has terrific visual design, and they say, “I need that.” So they go and try to find the best design agency out there, or the one the flashy company that just raised $100m used and get on a waiting list and pay $80k-$100k for a full 3 months long brand design work endeavor. Then they relaunch their brand and expect the world to shake and literally nothing happens. Time and money down the drain. But most importantly time and energy. https://jared.xyz/early-stage-brand-design
What if your main value prop as a brand is culture and community? Feels like visual design/aesthetic becomes more important in that scenario
"I need that" well captured. Brand is important in the early stages but it's the rarely the factor that moves the needle early in. Coopting users in helping build your brand is often dismissed. One of the things I suggest to clients (who have a captive user base or can afford a test audience) is to do a/b testing to see what resonates well holistically aligns with all stakeholders. There's more of a chance that you have found brand ambassadors in your test audience