Should you hire one agency
for branding and web design?
Branding · Web design
I used to redo clients’ brands for free. Very generous of me. Secretly, I needed to. I wanted to make a great website, and the brand was holding it back.
We started as a web design company. I’d be working on a website and end up redesigning the identity too. This was a slightly questionable business model. It was also how we fell into branding.
Some of the worst websites I see feel completely disconnected from the brand. Pick a template, make a few random choices about type and color, then plop the logo on top. Somehow, it’s supposed to feel like the same business.
That’s why I think the person designing your brand should be capable of designing your website too. The decisions are that intertwined. But that doesn’t mean you need one agency to do absolutely everything.
Do we really need ten vendors?
Branding, web design, social media, marketing, copywriting, photography. Before long, hiring creative help starts to look like you’re assembling a wedding party.
I get the appeal of having one agency handle it all. But “Yes, we do that” is a very easy thing to say. At some point, the menu starts offering both nachos and a seven-course omakase. I have questions.
No one is great at everything. A larger agency may have specialists across more disciplines, with a price to match. A smaller shop might bring in trusted collaborators. Ask to see the work for each service you’re buying, and find out who actually does it.
The useful question is how closely the work connects. Branding and web design share a lot of decisions. Running a pay-per-click ad campaign calls for a very different skill set. If you ask me to design a logo, lovely. If you ask me to manage your ad spend, I’d rather introduce you to someone who’s excellent at it.
Hot take: “We do logos and SEO” makes me want to ask a few more questions. There may be a great team behind both. I just want to understand the connection beyond the fact that I happen to need them.
Some things work closely together.
Explore a connectionBranding + web design
Type, color, graphics, movement. The same creative decisions get made, tested and improved in both places.
That’s a close relationship. It’s still worth checking that the team is good at both.
Explore where the work overlaps. Related services can share decisions while still needing different specialists.
The website is where we find out.
Branding and web design are two things we’ve always developed together. These days, we don’t present a brand identity without showing how it could work on a website. Even if the client isn’t hiring us to build one, we’ll design at least a page.
Because I’ve had the other experience. The identity looks great in the presentation. We get to the website and suddenly the colors don’t work quite how we thought they would. Or the type is lovely in three words and a bit of a nightmare in three paragraphs.
A website gives the identity a proper stress test. People need to read it, move through it, understand the business and do something. On a phone, too. The business card has had a comparatively easy afternoon.
And then the website gives something back.
It goes both ways. We might discover an interaction, a layout or a new way of using the graphics on the website, and realize it belongs in the identity too.
So we go back. Adjust the brand. Try it on the website again. The two keep making each other better.
That’s the bit you can lose when the brand is considered finished before the web designer even sees it. Separate teams can absolutely do this well. Give them some overlap, a shared direction and permission to talk to each other before everything is signed off.
This is the part we’re excited about.
Honestly, web design is a very exciting place to be right now. We started out decent at it. We were stronger at branding and design. The way we develop websites now lets us spend much more time designing and much less time wrestling with code. A wonderful time to be a designer, frankly.
A little movement. A sound you weren’t expecting. An interaction that could only belong to that business. We hope the Anchovies website gives you a little of that feeling.
For Molly, the idea came from her stamp collection. On the homepage, you place a stamp on a letter to move into her world. You can skip it, of course. We’re trying to make an introduction, not delay your mail.
Cipher Media takes you somewhere very different. The coded visual language becomes something that moves and responds on the website. Both are examples of thinking about the identity and the experience together.
A website that responds to you.
We’re also experimenting with websites that adapt as someone moves through them. The content and experience can respond to what that person seems interested in, within rules we’ve set for the brand.
That work is still in the background. But it’s an exciting thought: how much more useful, personal and memorable could a website become?
It also makes the connection between branding and web design even more interesting. You need to know what makes the brand itself before you start exploring how much it can change.
So, should you hire one agency?
For branding and web design, I think there’s a lot to gain from doing them together, provided you genuinely like the agency’s work in both.
If you love a branding studio and want a different specialist to build the website, that can work too. Bring them into the conversation early. Make sure someone owns the connection between the two.
If you’re looking for branding and web design in Denver, that’s how we approach it at Anchovies. And if you need a photographer or a marketing specialist as well, we can have an honest conversation about who should do what.
You deserve a good answer to that question. Even if it occasionally involves another person on the email.