Every brand project starts with a decision that has nothing to do with design: who’s in the room, and who gets the final say. Get that settled before the first meeting, and the rest of the project moves faster. Skip it, and you’ll re-litigate it later — usually at the worst possible moment.
creating the team
This is the step that determines everything else.
The instinct is to include everyone, because nobody wants to be the person who left someone out. But a group of twelve doesn’t make decisions — it makes compromises, and brand work built out of compromises tends to look like it. You end up with something nobody objects to, and nobody remembers.
Small teams move faster, but they can lack the range of perspective that keeps the work sharp. That range is worth protecting deliberately.
What works is small and representative. Three to five people, with different vantage points — someone who talks to clients, someone who has to produce materials, someone with actual authority to approve. Different points of view make the project better — especially differences in age, gender, history, and role — and that diversity of perspective is one of the strongest predictors of a brand that actually holds up once it leaves the room. Keep the same people from start to finish. Swapping members mid-project means re-litigating settled decisions — that’s how a six-week project turns into a four-month one.
Two questions worth answering out loud before the first meeting: who has final say, and whose approval is required versus whose input is welcome. Those are different roles, and conflating them is the most common reason a brand project stalls. Someone who thought they had a vote and discovers they had a comment is going to be a problem later.
where brand team decision making shows up later
Who’s on the team isn’t only a kickoff-meeting question. The same people — or their successors — end up owning the brand after delivery: deciding who can approve an exception, and keeping the standards from drifting once the project wraps. That side of it is covered in our brand process page, under “decide who enforces the standards.”
When you’re ready to talk about assembling your team and the work itself, our branding services page explains how we run these projects — and you can always drop us a line with a question at any time.
