Ross Williams is Managing Director - Studio at Courts. He helps ambitious organisations align strategy, brand and creativity to build a lasting competitive advantage.
Strong brands are built beneath the surface
I’ve had countless conversations with organisations looking to refresh their brand.
Sometimes they tell me they need a new logo.
Sometimes it’s a website.
Sometimes they simply feel like they’ve outgrown who they are.
Whilst those things often become part of the solution, I’ve learnt they’re very rarely the real reason someone starts a branding project.
More often than not, they’re looking for something much harder to define.
Clarity.
A clearer understanding of who they are, where they’re heading, and what they want to be known for.
That’s the part of branding most people never get to see.
Because by the time a new identity is unveiled, the most important work has already happened.
What you see isn’t where it starts
One thing that’s always fascinated me is how quickly people judge a brand by what they can see.
The logo.
The colours.
The typography.
The website.
It’s understandable. They’re the tangible parts. They’re what people interact with every day.
But they’re also the outcome.
Not the starting point.
I’ve never believed great branding starts with design. In fact, I’d argue that’s where many projects go wrong.
If the first conversation is about colours and logos, we’ve probably skipped the most important part.
Before anything is designed, there are much bigger questions to answer.
What does this organisation actually stand for?
What makes it different?
Who is it trying to reach?
Where does it want to be in five years’ time?
Those aren’t creative questions.
They’re business questions.
And they’re the foundations every successful brand is built on.
Difference isn’t an accident
Over the years, I’ve also noticed how easy it is for businesses to become preoccupied with their competitors.
“We like what they’ve done.” , “We need to look more like them.”
It’s a natural instinct.
But I’ve always found the more interesting question is this:
What aren’t they doing?
That’s where opportunity lives.
The strongest brands don’t become memorable by following everyone else.
They become memorable because they occupy a space that nobody else does.
Good branding isn’t about fitting in.
It’s about giving people a reason to remember you.
Explore before you decide
One of my favourite parts of any branding project happens long before we start designing anything.
It’s the point where different directions begin to emerge.
Not finished identities.
Possibilities.
Visual territories.
Verbal territories.
Different ways the organisation could present itself to the world.
Different personalities.
Different stories.
This is often where the biggest breakthroughs happen.
Not because we’ve found the answer, but because we’ve started asking better questions.
I think moodboards are often misunderstood.
People assume they’re there to choose colours or photography styles.
They’re not.
They’re there to create alignment.
To challenge assumptions.
To explore different futures before committing to one.
Because once everyone agrees on the direction, the design itself becomes far more meaningful.
Creativity makes strategy visible
People often think strategy comes first and creativity follows.
I’m not convinced it’s that simple.
The best projects I’ve been involved in have always felt more collaborative than that.
Sometimes strategy shapes creativity.
Sometimes creativity uncovers something the strategy hadn’t yet revealed.
An idea sparks a conversation.
A conversation changes the direction.
The two evolve together.
That’s why I’ve never seen creativity as decoration.
Its job isn’t to make strategy look good.
Its job is to make strategy visible.
Nothing should be accidental
By the time a logo is finally presented, very little has been left to chance.
The typeface wasn’t chosen because it looked modern.
The colour palette wasn’t selected because somebody preferred blue over green.
The photography style wasn’t picked because it happened to be on trend.
Every decision should reinforce something bigger.
A position.
A personality.
A promise.
Because customers rarely remember individual design decisions.
They remember how a brand made them feel.
And that’s rarely achieved through aesthetics alone.
This is where brands are built
The irony is that the most valuable part of branding is often the part nobody ever sees.
The workshops.
The conversations.
The research.
The difficult questions.
The moments where assumptions are challenged and ambitions become clearer.
That’s where brands are really built.
Everything else is simply the visible expression of the work that came before.
Which is why, after all these years, I still believe the most important part of any branding project isn’t the logo.
It’s everything beneath the surface.