What goes into a brand: strategy, logo and guidelines before the launch

Say you are launching a fintech app, a consultancy or a chain of coffee shops in Nairobi. You need a name, a logo, colours and a tone of voice before you open the door or go live. That early work—deciding what the brand stands for, how it sounds and what it looks like—is branding, and the output is a system rather than a single asset. The logo is one piece; the strategy, typography, imagery style and the written guidelines that explain how to use all of it are the rest.

Brand strategy comes first: the positioning statement that describes who you serve, what problem you solve and why someone should care. Mycrea Technologies, a Nairobi company that designs websites, applications and AI tools, lists branding and creative design among its nine services and says the work covers brand strategy, visual identity, brand guidelines and creative direction. According to its pricing page, branding that includes logo, identity and brand guidelines starts from twenty-five thousand shillings, with the final quote depending on scope. The site lists a separate add-on for a brand guidelines document starting from fifteen thousand, so a fuller package with strategy, multiple logo variants and a comprehensive rulebook will sit higher.

Visual identity means the logo itself, often in several weights or lockups for different contexts, plus a colour palette, typeface choices and rules about spacing and minimum sizes. A guidelines document records those decisions so that a future designer, printer or social media manager applies them consistently. Imagine your business six months later: someone is designing a flyer in Mombasa while another person updates the website in Kisumu. Without written rules both will improvate, and the brand fractures. The guidelines prevent that drift.

Mycrea's site explains that every project starts with a conversation and that a detailed quote with no hidden costs is given before work begins. Payment is typically fifty per cent upfront and the balance on delivery, with milestone-based arrangements available for larger engagements. The company accepts M-Pesa Paybill, bank transfer, cheque and international wire transfer, and quotes in US dollars for clients outside Kenya. Its stated process begins with discovery time spent with the people who will use and maintain what is built, followed by design, build and a launch phase that includes monitoring and iteration.

The company lists four principles: craft over speed; African context first, meaning mobile connectivity, multilingual interfaces and local payment systems; technology as means, choosing whichever stack solves the problem rather than favouring one tool; and honest work, which it describes as saying what a project needs rather than what a client wants to hear. Published case studies from twenty twenty-four include branding work for VRINCO Insurance Agency alongside web design and development. Because Mycrea also runs this site, readers commissioning brand work should compare quotes and portfolios from more than one studio.

Contact details are listed as support at mycrea dot dev, plus two five four seven nine two nine five two two two one and WhatsApp, with a start-a-project form on the website. The site notes that communication is mostly asynchronous with regular milestone syncs, and that the company works with clients across East Africa and beyond. Starting prices for related services include websites from thirty-five thousand shillings, digital marketing and SEO from fifteen thousand a month, and social media management from twenty thousand a month, each quoted individually after the initial conversation.

Start a project, or see the published prices and past work, at mycrea.dev. Read the pricing, browse the case studies, or start a project. Compare quotes from more than one studio before you decide.

Promoted content. Mycrea Technologies Ltd also designs and maintains Kijiji News.