What a branding package actually costs in 2026 (and why cheap rebrands cost more later)
"How much does branding cost" is one of the most searched questions in the industry, and one of the worst answered. Most studios hide behind "it depends" or "get in touch for a quote," which tells you nothing and signals one of two things: they're not confident in their pricing, or they want you on a call before you can compare them to anyone else.
I'd rather just tell you.
What's actually included in a brand identity package
A branding package is not a logo. If a studio, freelancer, or platform is quoting you for a logo and calling it a rebrand, that's the first sign you're buying the wrong thing.
A proper brand identity package in 2026 covers:
Brand strategy → who you are, who you're for, and why anyone should care. This includes market positioning, competitor mapping, and defining the actual story you're telling, not just the visuals wrapped around it.
Tone of voice → how the brand sounds in an email, on a landing page, in a founder's LinkedIn post. Consistency here is what makes a brand recognisable before someone's even seen the logo.
Visual identity → logo, colour palette, typography, and a graphic language that extends across every touchpoint, not just a homepage hero image.
Go-to-market application → how the brand actually performs once it's live. Pricing perception, launch positioning, and how the story translates into the moments that make someone buy.
That last one is where most branding packages fall short, and it's the piece I bring to every project that a pure design studio doesn't. My background isn't just creative direction. I spent seven years running the brand team at the Financial Times before founding Ferrgood Studio, which means the team I bring together for a project includes brand strategists, designers, and genuine go-to-market experience, not just people who make things look good. That's the difference between a brand that looks finished and a brand that's positioned to command a higher price point in its market.
Ferrgood Studio pricing
Here's what that actually costs, so you have a real number to work from rather than a guess.
Brand Strategy Foundation starts from £4,000. This covers brand strategy, tone of voice, market positioning, and MVP foundational work. No design.
Brand Strategy + Identity starts from £8,000. This includes everything above, plus full brand identity: logo, visual system, typography, and graphic language.
Full Brand World is scoped per project. This spans strategy, identity, and the extended brand world: campaign assets, brand guidelines, and launch materials. Scope and investment vary depending on ambition and reach.
The Brand Strategy + Identity package is where most founders and brand directors start, and it's worth explaining why it isn't cheaper. A £4,000 starting point for strategy alone reflects the depth of work that goes into figuring out who a business actually is before a single visual decision gets made. The identity work on top of that isn't decoration. It's the translation of that strategy into something a customer recognises and trusts.
Full brand world work, the kind that spans a complete visual and verbal system across every touchpoint a brand has, scopes individually because the range is genuinely wide. A challenger brand entering a new category needs a different depth of work than an established business repositioning for growth. I'll always give you a real number once I understand the brief. What I won't do is make you guess at the starting point.
Why cheap rebrands cost more later
Here's the pattern I see again and again, and it's the actual reason this article exists.
A cheap brand design is, almost without exception, a brand design that follows a trend. It's built fast, it looks fine at launch, and it skips the foundational work entirely: the part where a business actually figures out who it is and what story it's telling. Without that groundwork, the identity is a costume, not a character. It photographs fine in isolation and falls apart the moment the business tries to scale, hire, fundraise, or reposition, because there was never a strategic backbone underneath the visuals to begin with.
That's the redo I get called in for most often. Not "please make this prettier," but "please help us figure out who we actually are, because the last version never answered that question." The second rebrand always costs more than the first one would have, because now you're paying to undo a trend-led decision and build the foundation that should have come first.
This is what the Timeless Brand™ methodology is built to prevent. It's a structured process that starts with strategy and story before a single design decision gets made, specifically so the identity that comes out the other end still holds up in three years, not just at launch.
What this actually buys you
The real value of hiring a studio like Ferrgood over a cheaper alternative isn't just the finished identity. It's a team that thinks about strategy, storytelling, and go-to-market positioning as one connected discipline, led by someone who's built brands from inside a newsroom, a boutique studio, and now an AI-integrated creative practice. Founders are often surprised at how much depth we get to in a short amount of time. That's not an accident. It's what happens when the strategy work is genuinely done first.
If you're weighing up a branding package right now, the question worth asking isn't "what's the cheapest option." It's: does this get me a brand that still makes sense in three years, or one I'll be paying to fix?
