The short answer
In the UK in 2026, branding costs somewhere between £500 and £25,000 for most small and mid-sized businesses. Large corporate rebrands run considerably higher.
That range is uselessly wide until you break it into the four things people mean when they say the word.
| What you're buying | Typical UK cost | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| A logo | £500 to £1,500 | A mark, a few file formats. No system, no rules, no strategy. |
| Logo plus basics | £1,500 to £5,000 | Mark, colour, type, short guidelines. Enough for a business that knows who it is. |
| Brand identity system | £5,000 to £15,000 | Full identity, applications, proper guidelines, usually some research. |
| Strategy plus identity | £10,000 to £25,000+ | Audience and competitor research, positioning, then the identity built on it. |
Hourly rates, where studios quote them, generally sit between £100 and £200, rising to £150 to £250 for senior or specialist work. Most studios price by project rather than by hour, because you are buying an outcome rather than a number of days.
Why the range is so wide
Because the price gap is mostly a scope gap, not a quality gap.
A £500 logo and a £15,000 identity system are not the same product at different quality levels, in the way a cheap chair and an expensive chair are both chairs. One is a single asset. The other is a decision-making system: a set of rules that tells everyone who touches the brand, forever, what to do.
The second thing costs more because most of the work is invisible. Research, competitive analysis, positioning, then building a system robust enough that a junior marketer at your company in three years produces something that still looks like you.
What you actually get at each level
£500 to £1,500: a logo
You get a mark and some files. You do not get a reason for the mark, rules for using it, or any thinking about who your customer is. For a sole trader who needs something on an invoice, this is a perfectly rational purchase.
The trap is buying at this level when your real problem is that nobody understands what you do. A logo cannot fix positioning. It never could.
£1,500 to £5,000: a starter identity
Mark, colour palette, typography, and a short guidelines document. This is the right level for a business that already knows exactly who it serves and simply needs to look consistent and credible.
£5,000 to £15,000: a system
Now you get master artwork in every format, a defined colour and type hierarchy, applications across the touchpoints you actually use, and guidelines that specify misuse as well as correct use.
This is the level where a brand stops needing its designer. That is the real thing you are paying for.
£10,000 to £25,000 and up: strategy first
Research comes before design. Audience definition, competitor audit, category analysis, a positioning decision, and only then an identity built to serve that position.
It costs more because it is a different job. You are not buying a look. You are buying an argument about where your business should sit in its market, with a visual system that executes it.
A worked example
For USMA, a children's martial arts academy in Manchester, the research changed the design brief entirely. Every competitor in the category was selling toughness. The audience work showed that parents choosing a class for a four year old were buying reassurance instead. The identity that followed inverted the category conventions rather than following them. No amount of logo iteration would have produced that. It came out of the research.
What makes the price go up
- Research depth. A competitor audit and audience definition is real work with real hours behind it.
- Number of applications. Ten touchpoints cost more than two.
- Multiple languages. A bilingual identity is not a translation. It is a second lockup, drawn to carry the same weight as the first. We built one for Tarheeb in the UAE.
- Naming. Usually priced separately. It is a distinct discipline with legal checks attached.
- Stakeholders. Every additional decision-maker adds rounds, and rounds add cost.
How to tell which level you need
Ask one question: can you say, in one sentence, who you are for and why they should pick you over the obvious alternative?
If the answer is yes and you can defend it, you probably need identity work. Buy at the £1,500 to £15,000 level depending on how many places your brand has to show up.
If the answer is no, or if three people in your business would answer differently, no logo will save you. That is a strategy problem, and design applied on top of an unresolved strategy problem is expensive decoration.
The most expensive branding is the branding you buy twice.
Questions worth asking any studio
- What research do you do before designing, and do I see it?
- How many concept directions, and how many revision rounds are included?
- Do I get master artwork in every format, or just the files you happened to export?
- Are guidelines included, and do they cover misuse as well as correct use?
- Who owns the final artwork and the intellectual property?
- What happens if I need a new asset in a year?
The answers to the first and last questions tell you most of what you need to know. A studio that cannot explain its research, or that leaves you unable to produce anything without them, has sold you a file rather than a brand.
What we charge
We work with a small number of clients at a time and price by project rather than by hour. Every engagement starts with research, so the lowest band above is not something we offer. Tell us what you are trying to do and we will give you a number in the first conversation rather than after three meetings.