Five stages carry a project from a single brief to production-ready files.

Every engagement at this brand identity studio in Austin runs the same five stages in the same order, whether the job is a logo system or a full packaging launch. Skip one and the schedule slips — usually at the press, which is the one date nobody controls but the printer.

Weeks 1–2Stage 01 · Brief

Brief

The first call is a filter, not a pitch. We ask which shelf, which cooler, or which platform the piece has to sit on, and if nobody on the call can answer that, the project gets sent back with questions instead of a proposal. A logo request with no packaging application, or a packaging request with no category to sit against, is the single most common way a brief wastes six weeks. Say what the object is for and we can scope it in a week. Say "something modern" and we can't.

This is also where the refusal happens, if it's going to. We turn down web design, ad media buying, and social content work outright — those get a referral, not a proposal — and we turn down packaging or identity briefs with no named retailer, cooler, or channel until the client can name one.

Weeks 2–4Stage 02 · Strategy

Strategy

Before anything gets drawn, we read the category the client is actually competing in — not the category they wish they were in. That means laying out five to eight comparable packages or brand systems side by side, noting where color, structure, and voice are already claimed, and where there's room. For a food or beverage packaging design job this stage usually turns up a naming or trademark conflict that's cheaper to catch now than after a print run.

Voice work happens here too: three or four lines of how the brand actually talks, tested against how a category leader talks, so the identity stage isn't guessing at tone later.

Weeks 4–9Stage 03 · Identity system

Identity system

Logo, type, color, and voice get built as one connected system, not four separate decisions. Pantone numbers get assigned and locked here, not guessed at during production. This is the stage that ends in the guideline document — a bound, printed book, not a PDF deck emailed once and forgotten — covering logo construction, clear space, color builds in both Pantone and CMYK, type hierarchy, and voice examples long enough to actually write from.

A rebranding consultant working on an existing brand spends more of this stage on what to keep than what to replace; a brand identity studio starting from nothing spends it on what to invent. Either way the deliverable at the end is the same bound book.

Weeks 6–14, overlapping identityStage 04 · Packaging system

Packaging system

This is where a packaging design consultant earns the fee. Structure gets engineered first — folding carton, rigid set-up box, label, pouch, or bottle — as a working dieline before a single graphic goes on it. We test fold lines, glue flaps, and closures on plain board before anyone sees color. Material swatches get pulled and matched against the category comparisons from stage two: kraft against a soft-touch matte laminate against a foil stamp, priced and weighed against what the client's cooler or shelf can actually hold.

Then graphics go on the approved structure, proofed in at least two rounds, and a press date gets fixed on the calendar. A person from this studio stands at the press for the first sheet of every run it designs — that's a scheduling line item, not a marketing claim, and it's why the press-check date goes on the calendar before the delivery date does.

Within a week of final approvalStage 05 · Handoff

Handoff

Delivery is a folder, not a meeting: vector logo files, dieline files, print-ready PDFs at the correct bleed and color build, and the bound guideline book. Nothing ships as a slide deck of "concepts." Once the press check is signed off, revisions on that run are done — a new season, flavor, or size gets scoped as its own small engagement, not folded into this one for free.

We don't promise a sales lift or a shelf placement. The files are production-ready and the guidelines are specific enough to hand to a second designer in two years and get the same result. What the client's team and their retailer do with the piece after that is their call, not ours.

Studio wall with a hand-drawn process diagram and sticky notes — The working wallStays up from first brief to final proof

A row of packaging prototypes from blank cardboard to finished printed carton — Five prototypes, one tableBlank board through finished carton

A rush timeline is possible on stages one through three. It is never possible on the press check — the printer's schedule sets that date, not ours, and we won't fake a delivery date around it. See how the three services line up against this process on the services overview, look at finished work on selected work, or use the project finder if you're not sure which stage you're actually starting from.

Start with a brief