The Brand Brief Question Most Founders Skip

Almost every first call starts with the same question from the founder's side: "what colors do you think would work?" It's a fair question, but it's the wrong one to start with, and answering it too early is how a lot of identities end up looking nice for six months and then start to feel wrong the moment the business grows past its first version.

The question that actually matters first

Before color, before typeface, before the first sketch, the question I need answered is: who is this going to make feel like an outsider?

That sounds backwards — most founders want a brand that appeals to everyone. But a brand that tries to appeal to everyone ends up communicating clearly to no one. A premium consulting brand and a budget-friendly community brand can both be well-designed, but they can't look like the same thing, because they're deliberately excluding different audiences. Knowing who a brand is not for is what gives the visual direction somewhere firm to stand.

Why this question gets skipped

It's uncomfortable. Founders — especially early-stage ones — are often trying to keep every possible customer segment open, because the business itself is still finding its footing. So the brief defaults to safe, broad language: "modern, clean, professional, trustworthy." Every brand wants to be all four of those things, which means none of them are actually doing any positioning work.

The result is a visual identity that's technically well-executed but strategically empty — it doesn't repel the wrong customer or immediately signal to the right one that they've found their people.

What a better brief actually contains

Instead of starting with aesthetic preferences, I ask founders to answer these first:

• Who should feel like this brand obviously "gets" them within three seconds?
• Who should feel like this brand isn't quite for them — and is that okay?
• If a competitor's customer switched to you, what would have made that decision easy?
• What's one brand (in any industry) whose customers you'd want yours to resemble?

Colors, type, and imagery all become much easier decisions once these are answered — because at that point they're not aesthetic choices anymore, they're translations of a positioning decision that's already been made.

The takeaway

A brand brief that starts with "what colors do you like" is starting from decoration. A brand brief that starts with "who is this not for" is starting from strategy — and it's the version that still makes sense two years and one growth spurt later.