Five steps. Always in this order.
STORY is the process behind every brand Nathan Hurst Creative builds. No shortcuts, no templates, no guessing what your business is about before doing the work to find out.
S Stop 1 of 5 Study
Before anything gets designed, it gets understood. This starts with a Brand Story Workshop, a session where I dig into what your business actually stands for, who it is really for, and what makes it different from every other option a customer could choose. Most business owners know this somewhere inside, they just have not had to say it out loud before. This step gets it out of your head and onto the table.
T Stop 2 of 5 Tailor
Once I know the story, I agree the direction with you in words, not pictures, before a single visual gets made. Personality, tone, how the brand should feel to a customer walking in cold. Most studios skip this and go straight to picking colours and fonts, hoping a mood board will do the thinking for them. Skipping it is how businesses end up with a logo that looks nice and means nothing.
O Stop 3 of 5 Original
Now the mark itself. You will see two to three logo concepts, in black and white only. No colour to hide behind. If an idea only works because of a nice colour palette, it was not a strong idea to begin with. Black and white is the honest test, and it is why the marks that come out of this step hold up.
R Stop 4 of 5 Reveal
Everything comes together. Colour, typography, every touchpoint your customers will see, built around the approved mark and locked into a Brand Bible so it looks and feels the same whether it is on a van, an invoice, or a shopfront. This is the moment your business gets to see, properly, for the first time, what it looks like when its brand finally matches the quality of its work.
Y Stop 5 of 5 Yours
Full handover. A Brand Toolkit with everything you need to use the brand yourself, and thirty days of support while you get used to it. This is not a business that gets built and then abandoned, it is yours to run with.