A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Cohesive Brand Design

Step 1: Do your homework before you draw anything

Before the fun, there’s the groundwork. Research the market you’re about to play in. Who’s already out there? What colours and codes dominate? What gaps exist?

Take the cheese aisle (we’ll die on this hill). Beige blocks, tartan motifs, and labels screaming “Mature Cheddar” like that’s supposed to get pulses racing. The whole category looks the same. That’s an open goal for a bold brand to waltz in and clean up.

If you don’t know what’s already clogging up your category, you risk blending in from day one. This is especially true when it comes to brand design for startups – you only get one shot at a first impression. And if that impression feels generic, well people are going to just move on.

Another thing we’ve noticed is that brands are trying too hard to be different. One client once told us, “we want to be the flamingo in the room.” Lovely image … until you realise half the room’s already stuffed with flamingos. Our advice? Don’t just add another long neck to the flock. Be a penguin instead. Unexpected, ownable, and memorable in its own right.

Step 2: Defining your brand personality before you design anything

Before you start sketching logos or picking colours, you need to figure out who your brand actually is. If your brand was a person, how would they behave? If your brand walked into a pub – would they order a pint and crack jokes with strangers, or sit in the corner with a martini, aloof but polished? Too many businesses treat this as an afterthought, when in reality it should be the very first step. Because how on earth are you meant to design a brand if you don’t know its personality?

Getting this right is key, because your personality will drive the brand design. A luxury skincare brand with a “serious expert” vibe is going to look completely different to a snack brand that wants to feel fun and rebellious. Without having this kind of clarity on personality, your design choices end up messy and inconsistent – and customers can smell confusion a mile off.

At Noramble, we usually start with a brand workshop. It’s where we find out who you are and often we end up digging out the stuff you might not have even noticed about your own brand – the quirks, the values, the non-negotiables. That becomes the foundation for everything visual that follows. As brand designers, all we can say is please don’t miss this step – it could cost you in the long run. Once you’re clear on who you are, your brand design will have something solid to stand on.

Step 3: Build your visual toolkit: logos, colours, fonts, and beyond

Once the personality is nailed, you need the kit to match. Think of it as the ingredients that will flavour everything you put out. Logo, colours, fonts, illustration style, photography approach – these are the assets that make you recognisable wherever you show up.

A good visual toolkit should feel flexible. You want a logo that looks just as good squashed into a social icon as it does printed on packaging. You need colour palettes that don’t look radioactive on screen or washed out in print. And typography that carries the right personality – a serious serif won’t say the same thing as a bouncy handwritten font.

The trick is building assets that are distinctive but adaptable. You don’t want to feel trapped by your own brand design choices six months down the line. That’s why a toolkit, not just a single logo file, is exactly what you need.

Step 4: Bring consistency to every touchpoint

Here’s where a lot of brands slip up. They look great in one place but fall apart everywhere else. Packaging says one thing, Instagram says another, and the website looks like it belongs to a completely different company. Customers notice those cracks – and when they do, trust takes a hit. Which is the last thing you want since 81% of customers have to trust a brand before they consider buying.

Consistency is what makes your brand stick. It’s not about every piece of brand design looking identical, but about every touchpoint feeling like it came from the same brain. That means

1. Aligning packaging design with social graphics

2. Making sure your tone of voice doesn’t shift randomly

3. Keeping photography styles cohesive.

The goal is for someone to recognise you instantly, no matter where they meet you. Think about Oatly – when you see them on a carton, a billboard, or a cheeky Instagram ad, you know it’s them right off the bat. That’s cohesion done properly.

Step 5: Test it in the wild

Brand design doesn’t live in your moodboard. It lives on shelves, on phones, on ads. That logo you thought was perfect might vanish into nothing when it’s surrounded by competitors. That quirky tone of voice? Might not land when read quickly by tired shoppers.

Testing is underrated. Put mock-ups in front of real people. See if they can find your product on a busy shelf. Check if your palette glows neon on mobile. Catch the problems early, before they cost you sales.

Step 6: Let your brand evolve (without losing itself)

Here’s the truth: no brand stays the same forever. The world changes, platforms change, audiences change. What worked in 2015 might feel stale now. Cohesion is about knowing your foundations so you can evolve without losing recognition.

Take Burberry, for example. For years they leaned hard into a very traditional look – the knight logo, heritage patterns, the works. Then they dropped a stark sans-serif wordmark in 2018 and people complained it looked like every other luxury brand. Fast forward a few years, and they’ve evolved again, reintroducing their equestrian knight in a modernised way. The lesson? Cohesion is about knowing which parts of your identity can shift with the times while still keeping you unmistakably “you.”

Cohesive brand design isn’t about everything matching in a boring, copy-paste way. It’s about creating a world people recognise instantly, wherever they are. It might be when they’re holding your product in Tesco or scrolling past you half-asleep on their phone. When things look and feel connected, customers trust you more, remember you quicker, and yes – they’re far more likely to chuck you in the basket again.

This stuff sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly easy to mess up. That’s why we do what we do. At Noramble, we’re not here to churn out a logo and wish you luck – we build the personality and the glue that holds it all together. You’ll have a brand that lives, breathes and actually sells.

So if your brand’s feeling a bit all over the place, come and chat with us. We’ll stitch it back together and make sure it turns heads for the right reasons.