The number people expect
Most people guess a rebrand takes three or four months. Some guess a year.
For a small studio doing focused work, the identity itself is six to eight weeks. Brand plus a new website is ten to fourteen.
That surprises people. Then they ask why the projects they have been part of before took so much longer.
Where the weeks actually go
Here is the shape of a real ten-week job.
- Weeks 1 to 2: discovery. Interviews, an audit, a written point of view.
- Weeks 3 to 4: direction. Two routes, one chosen.
- Weeks 5 to 8: building the system out across real applications.
- Weeks 9 to 10: templates, guidelines, handover.
Notice how little of that is drawing. Most of it is deciding, then carrying the decision everywhere it needs to go.
What makes it take longer
In our experience it is almost never the design. It is these four.
- Approvals. Two decision makers is fine. Six adds weeks to every round.
- Content. Waiting on copy, photos or product data is the most common delay we see.
- Late arrivals. Someone senior joins in week seven and reopens week three.
- Holidays. Two weeks in August is two weeks.
None of those are design problems. All of them can be planned for, if you look at them before you start.
The rule we use
One decision maker, or a small group that meets before we present rather than after.
The slowest projects we have run were not the biggest ones. They were the ones where feedback arrived from five people separately, three days apart, disagreeing with each other.
Can you go faster?
Yes, but it costs more, not less.
Squeezing ten weeks into six means running things side by side that would normally run in order. That needs more people at once, and it removes the gaps where thinking usually happens.
We will do it when a date is real. We just say plainly which parts get thinner.
What to do before you start
- Name one person who can approve work.
- Gather your content now, not in week six.
- Check the calendar for holidays and big launches.
- Decide what is fixed before anyone designs anything.
An hour on that list can save three weeks later. It is the cheapest hour in the whole project.
Worth remembering
In four lines
- Identity: six to eight weeks. Brand plus site: ten to fourteen.
- Design is rarely the slow part. Approvals and content are.
- One decision maker beats five people replying separately.
- Going faster costs more, because it takes more people at once.
Questions we get asked
Why do agency rebrands take a year?
Bigger companies have more approvals, more markets and more existing material to change. The design work is not ten times longer. The deciding is.
Can we launch in stages?
Usually yes, and often you should. Change the most visible things first and let expensive items like signage and packaging change on their normal replacement cycle.
What if our content is not ready?
Tell us at the start. We can design against real placeholder content we write together, which is far better than designing against nothing and reworking later.
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