/01/Pillar page
Published 1 Nov 2026
Founders usually arrive at an identity and website project with two questions: what am I actually getting, and how do I know if it is any good? Both are fair. The answers are rarely written down, because agencies assume you already know, and founders do not like to ask.
This guide is the version we would want to read before signing. It covers what a brand identity should include, what a good website project covers, the stages and the sign-offs, the standards you should insist on, what you should own at the end, and how pricing works so that you can compare proposals fairly.
Identity and website: one system, not two jobs
The most common mistake is to buy an identity from one supplier and a website from another, a few months apart. Each is done well. Together they do not quite fit. The type that looked right on a business card is hard to read on a phone. The colour that was chosen for print fails on screen. The tone of the guidelines never reaches the person who writes the homepage.
An identity and a website are the same idea expressed in two places. The website is where most people will meet the brand first, and where the identity has to work hardest: at small sizes, in motion, under the pressure of someone trying to find a price. So we design the two together, and we test the identity on the website before we sign off either.
What a brand identity should include: logo, type, colour, imagery, voice, guidelines
A brand identity is a system, and a system has parts. A complete one usually covers six.
Logo
The primary mark and the versions it needs to survive the real world: a horizontal and a stacked form, a small-size version for favicons and app icons, single-colour and reversed versions. Clear-space and minimum-size rules. If the name is long, a short mark or monogram for the places the full wordmark will not fit.
Type
A typeface for headlines and one for text, chosen so they work on screen as well as in print, with a scale that says which size is used for what. Check the licence covers web use and the number of people who will use it. Fonts are a common place for a surprise bill.
Colour
A small palette with each colour defined for print and screen, and rules for how they combine. The useful part is the rules: which colour carries the brand, which do the work in the background, and which is used once per page for emphasis. A palette without rules becomes a rainbow within a year.
Imagery
What photography, illustration or graphic devices look like, with examples. This is where most identities fall down over time, because imagery is chosen weekly by people who never saw the original presentation. Clear principles and a starter set of examples are worth more than a mood board.
Voice
How the brand writes: a few principles, each with a before-and-after example. The identity is read as much as it is seen, and a confident visual system with timid copy underneath reads as timid.
Guidelines
Everything above, written down for the people who were not in the room. The test of good guidelines is whether a freelancer could produce something on-brand from them without a phone call. Ask for them in a form your team will actually use. A short, well-structured document beats a long, beautiful one nobody opens.
What a good website project covers: structure, copy, design, build, content
A website is not a design file turned into code. A good project has five parts, and the quality of the result depends on all of them.
01 Structure. What pages exist, what each is for, and how a visitor moves between them. This is decided before any design, because it is the part that reflects the business most directly. A sitemap and a one-line purpose for each page is enough.
02 Copy. The words. On most sites the words do more of the persuading than the visuals, and they are the part most often left until last. Agree who writes them, and when. If the agency writes, the strategy should be in their hands before they start. If you write, ask for a content plan with the message each page must carry.
03 Design. How it looks and how it feels to use: layout, type, motion, the pace at which a page unfolds. A design should be shown on a phone as well as a large screen, because the phone is where most of your visitors will be. We wrote about what layout communicates in What your website says before anyone reads it.
04 Build. Turning the design into a working site on a platform your team can manage. Ask which platform, why, and what it costs to run each month. Ask who can change a page after launch, and whether that needs a developer.
05 Content. Photography, video, case studies, articles. Often underestimated, usually the thing that delays launch. Decide early what exists, what must be made, and what the site will do while it is still being made.
Then launch, which is a part in itself: domain, hosting, redirects from old pages, analytics, cookie consent, search console, a check of every form. Ask for a launch checklist in the proposal.
The stages, and what you sign off at each one
Every project we run follows the same four steps. Other agencies use other names, but the sign-offs should look similar wherever you go.
Find
Research into the business, the customer and the market. You sign off a short summary of what was found and what matters most. If the findings change the brief, this is the moment to change it.
Shape
The strategy and the plan: the brand platform, the site structure, the content plan. You sign off the thinking before anything is drawn. This is the most important sign-off in the project. Everything after it is built on it, so do not approve it to keep the timeline.
Tell
The creative work, usually in two rounds. First a direction: the idea and how it looks, shown on the pages that matter most. Then the full system: identity, guidelines, every page design. Each round has a sign-off, with a defined number of revisions. Ask for the number in writing, and ask what counts as a revision.
Move
Build, testing, launch and the first weeks after. You sign off a staging site, the launch checklist and the final handover. The full method is described in Approach. Be clear about who signs off on your side, and give one consolidated response per round; twelve separate emails do not add up to a decision.
Standards to ask for: speed, accessibility and search
A beautiful site that is slow, hard to use or invisible to search is a liability. Three standards are worth writing into the brief.
Speed. Google publishes a set of page-experience measures called Core Web Vitals, covering how quickly a page loads, how soon it responds and how stable it is while loading. Ask the agency to commit to passing them on the pages that matter, on a phone. Ask how images and video will be handled, because they are the usual cause of a slow site.
Accessibility. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the recognised standard, and version 2.2 is current. Ask for conformance at level AA: readable contrast, keyboard navigation, labelled forms, text alternatives for images, no information carried by colour alone. Accessible sites are better sites for everyone, and they are increasingly expected by larger customers and public bodies.
Search. The site should be crawlable and indexable, with clear titles and descriptions, sensible headings, a sitemap, and redirects from any old pages. Google’s own guidance is that content should be helpful, reliable and written for people. That is a design and copy question as much as a technical one. For how this is changing as people ask assistants instead of typing searches, see SEO for AI search.
What you should own at the end: files, logins and trade marks
You are paying for the work. You should own it. At Playbook, clients own the work once the final invoice is paid, and we think that should be the norm. Check the terms before you sign, and make sure the handover covers three things.
Files. The logo in editable vector form, not just as images. The source design files for the identity and the website. The guidelines in a format you can edit. The fonts, or the licences to buy them. Photography and illustration with the rights clearly stated, because stock licences and photographer agreements vary.
Logins. The domain should be registered in your name, not the agency’s. The same goes for hosting, the website platform, analytics, search console and any third-party services. Ask for a list of every account the site depends on, with you as the owner and the agency as a collaborator where needed. Agencies close and relationships change; your website should not depend on either.
Trade marks. A logo and a name can be registered as trade marks in the UK through the Intellectual Property Office. Registration is your responsibility, not the agency’s, but a good agency will check that the name and mark are not obviously taken before you fall in love with them, and will tell you when to apply. Do it before the launch, not after a competitor notices.
Our FAQs cover ownership, timing and process in more detail.
How pricing works: what drives cost, and how to compare proposals like for like
There are two common ways to pay for this kind of work. A project has a defined scope, a start, an end and a fixed fee. A partnership is a monthly arrangement for ongoing work after the project, or instead of it, where the team keeps improving the brand and the site over time. Most founders start with a project and some move to a partnership once the site is live and the work shifts to growth. We compare the two in Project or partnership.
Within a project, a few things drive the cost more than anything else.
01 How much thinking is included. Research and strategy take senior time. A proposal that skips them will be cheaper and will produce a weaker result.
02 The number of pages and templates. Not every page needs its own design. A site built from a small set of well-designed templates costs less to make and far less to maintain.
03 Who writes the words and makes the content. Copywriting, photography and video are often quoted separately. Check whether they are in or out.
04 Rounds of revision. More rounds mean more time. Two well-run rounds usually beat five loose ones.
05 Build complexity. Integrations, e-commerce, membership, multiple languages, custom functionality. Each adds build and testing time.
To compare proposals fairly, put them side by side against the same list: strategy included or not, pages and templates, copy, content, revisions, platform, standards, ownership, what happens after launch. The cheapest proposal is often the one that left the most out. The most expensive is not always the most complete. The right one is the one that answers the brief you actually have.
We keep our own pricing simple and we publish it. If you want figures for your project, Work with us sets out how we work and how to start, and a short call will tell you which option fits. Before you approach anyone, it is worth reading How to brief a branding agency; a good brief gets you better proposals, and makes them easier to compare.
An identity and a website are one system. Know what you are getting, sign off the thinking before the drawing, and own everything at the end.
