Why good designs fall apart at the build stage
Four situations we find in projects taken over from someone else. Each one ends with paying twice for work that was already done once: with a logo, a second attempt means a second project and another 3-6 weeks.
The logo does not work at small sizes
It looks great in a presentation and turns to mush in an app icon or on a shipping label. Fixing it afterwards is a separate project, because the drawing itself has to change, not just the colour.
The design has no edge cases
Empty basket, no results, payment error, a very long product name. None of them are in the files, so a developer ends up inventing them during the build, with no designer in the room.
There are no source files
What is left is artwork cut out of the old site. Every new use then starts by redrawing the logo, which is a designer's job that adds nothing new.
Every department uses a different version
Three shades and four files in circulation, and each department treats its own version as the official one.
Logo, identity, or straight to the website?
The order depends on what you already have and where the brand shows up, not on the size of the budget.
| Your situation | We start with | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| You are starting out, no logo yet | Logo | 3-6 weeks |
| The logo exists, everyone uses a different version | Brand guideline | 2-3 weeks |
| Materials are produced in several places | Visual identity guideline | 4-6 weeks |
| The site looks older than the company | Website or store design | 3-8 weeks |
| The site exists, but people get lost in it | UX audit, then design | 2-4 weeks for the audit |
The two most expensive mistakes in this order
The first is ordering a full visual identity before your first sale. Materials then get made for channels the brand does not yet know it will use, and after a year half of them are out of date. At the start, a logo and its usage rules are usually enough; the rest gets added once you know where the brand actually shows up.
What we design: logo, visual identity and branding
Each service has its own page with scope, price and answers to the most common questions. Materials for campaigns and social media are produced later under the rules set by the identity, so the next piece of creative does not start with a question about colours.
Logo design
A logo, a brand guideline and a full visual identity, scoped to what the brand actually uses.
View ›Website and store design
Wireframes, graphic design and a prototype, also without the build. The quote is set by the number of views, not the size of the company.
View ›Brand strategy
For when you need to settle who the brand is and what it promises before the design starts. From €740 net.
View ›UX audit
For when the site already works and the question is where people get lost, before you decide on a new look.
View ›The project from brief to hand-over
The order is the same for a logo and for a website. In the brief we also ask about later channel strategies and the content the brand will publish, because that changes the formats produced in the project.
- 1
Brief
a few days
Who your customer is, what sets you apart, and where the design will be used most often. In Krakow usually on site, elsewhere online.
- 2
Proposals
2-3 weeks
Two directions for a logo, wireframes for a website. You see each one exactly where it will stand: in the icon, on the label and on a phone screen.
- 3
Revisions
1-2 weeks
Rounds refine the chosen direction: proportion, colour and legibility at small sizes. We do not return to choosing a direction.
- 4
Hand-over
a few days
The logo's source files and whatever the quote covers, from carrier versions to a brand guideline. For a website, a clickable prototype for the developer is added.
Portfolio and performance: taste judges the creative, numbers judge the work together
Everyone will say a design is good, because that is a matter of taste. What can actually be checked is something else: deadlines, and whether the design could be built at all. The ratings were given by companies who worked with JustIdea across different services, not only on creative work.
weighted average of 224 reviews across three platforms. Clients gave them, and each site links to the profile with the full text of every review.
Read the reviews
Why design work should come from an agency that will test it in delivery
These three statuses say nothing about taste. They say that the design is made with knowledge of what can actually be built, at what cost, and how it will behave once it runs as an ad.
PrestaShop Expert ★★★
The highest tier of the agency programme. When designing a store, we know what the platform does by default and what has to be built on top, so the wireframe never contains a screen that costs more to build than the whole design stage.
Google Premier Partner
We run the campaigns that drive traffic to the sites we design, so we know where paid traffic drops off and which screen decides the cost of acquisition. That changes what comes first on the opening screen.
Meta Business Partner
The logo ends up on a profile picture and in social creative, meaning inside a circle and on a photo. We check that before handing over the files, not after the first campaign goes live.
