Frequently Asked Questions About Brand and Design Projects

It means the thinking comes before the making. Working out what a business actually is, who it's for and what makes it different, then designing from that rather than starting with how it should look. Plenty of design work skips the first part, which is usually why brands end up looking fine and meaning nothing.

A logo is one mark. A brand identity is everything that carries the business, the typography, colour, photography, tone, the way it behaves across a website, a building, a document or a sign. The logo is the bit people point at, but it's rarely the bit doing the work.

Depends on what's actually needed. Sometimes it really is just a mark, sometimes the mark's the easy part and the thinking underneath it is what's missing. That's usually the first thing we work out in conversation, not something I decide before I've heard the brief.

The brand side, yes, the direction and how it should look and work online. Some projects go further into the build itself, depending on what's needed. Worth talking through as part of the brief rather than assuming either way.

Yes, and I'd treat it as part of the job rather than an extra. Design that never makes it into the world properly isn't finished, so specifying stock, briefing printers, checking proofs and managing production has always come with the territory. Same goes for the wider project management on bigger rollouts, where the making is the part most likely to go wrong.

Yes. Some businesses need senior creative judgement regularly but can't justify a full time brand or design lead, so I work with them on a retained basis instead, effectively an outsourced creative director. It's more embedded than project work, usually running over a month or more at a time, and the cost depends on how much of my time you actually need rather than a fixed rate. It tends to suit businesses that have outgrown doing it themselves but aren't ready to hire.

Yes, and it's a different arrangement to retained work. Retained means being embedded in a business as their creative lead. Agency work means coming in as an extra pair of senior hands on someone else's project, which I've done a fair amount of over the years. Whether that happens quietly behind the scenes or with me introduced to the end client is entirely up to how you prefer to work.

Yes, with a native speaker checking it. I don't read or speak Arabic, but after years working in the region I understand how the script behaves visually, how it sits alongside Latin type, and where things usually go wrong. I'll design it, and then someone who actually reads it verifies it before it goes anywhere near a client. Getting it approximately right isn't good enough in someone else's language.

Mostly hospitality and venues, heritage and historic sites, motorsport and automotive, and property and mixed use development. That said, the sector matters less than the situation. The work is usually the same shape whether it's a destination, a development or a product business.

Yes, plenty of it is. Most recently across the Middle East and Europe, and increasingly back here in the UK too. Distance has never really been the issue, the right conversation matters more than the time zone.

Towcester in Northamptonshire, working with clients across the UK and internationally. Leigh Evans Creative Strategy is a one person practice, so wherever the work is, it's the same person doing it.

Both, and usually a mix of the two. Some projects run entirely remotely and work perfectly well that way. Others need me on site, walking a building, seeing a venue, or sitting in a room with the people making the decisions. I'll travel where it's useful, and a lot of the work ends up somewhere in between.

That's a normal place to start and often a more useful one than arriving with a fixed brief. Plenty of projects begin with a business knowing something isn't working without being able to name it. Working out what the actual problem is tends to be the first piece of the job.

Not a full written brief if you haven't got one. What helps most is knowing what the business does, what's prompted this, and what you're hoping will be different afterwards. The brief itself usually gets sharper once we've talked it through.

A straightforward identity refresh moves quicker than a full strategy and rollout for something like a development or a destination brand. We'll work out realistic timings once I've seen the full picture.

Yes, within the scope we agree at the start. If we're still going round in circles well past that, I'll tell you honestly what I think is actually going on, which tends to be more useful than another round of tweaks.

Logos usually come as AI, PNG and PDF files, and documents as PDFs. It depends on what's being delivered though, so if you need something in a particular format for a printer or a platform, that's worth flagging early rather than at the end.

Yes. The finished, delivered artwork is yours once the project's complete. What doesn't transfer is the development work behind it, the research, the creative exploration, any code or applications built along the way. If you need any of that to come with you, it just needs writing into the contract at the start.

Get in touch and tell me what's going on. I'll come back to you personally, usually within a few days, and we'll set up a proper conversation from there. That first conversation is where the actual thinking starts.

There's no single number that would be honest, the work varies too much, and projects and retained work are priced differently again. Either way you'll get a proper figure once I understand what's involved, not a price list.