You’re about to invest thousands of dollars in your company’s brand. You’ve got three agencies on your shortlist, and they all seem like solid options, with impressive portfolios, nice websites, and similar pricing.
So how do you choose? By asking the right questions.
We’ve put together tactical questions to help you distinguish between agencies that deliver real results and those that just design pretty logos. Use them in your agency interviews. Seriously. Even if you’re talking to our competitors.
The Deliverables
Do your branding services include visual and verbal brand guidelines?
Sounds basic, but you’d be surprised how many agencies treat verbal branding like an afterthought. Your visual identity is only half the equation.
The Reality Check: In our experience, 1 in 2 businesses (50%) invest heavily in their look but completely overlook their “voice.” This leaves their team guessing how to actually speak to their audience, which leads to a brand that looks great but feels hollow.
Ask the agency to specify what’s included in both buckets. Without clear verbal guidelines—your brand voice, messaging framework, and the words you use to talk about your business—your team won’t know how to sound on-brand.
A complete toolkit should include:
Visual Guidelines
- Logo system
- Color palette
- Typography
- Usage rules
Verbal Guidelines
- Voice and tone
- Key messaging
- Practical examples of how to apply it
Will you include more than a logo?
A logo is important, but it’s not a brand. Your brand identity should include a full visual system:
- Primary and secondary logos
- An accessible color palette
- Typography selections
- Graphic elements or patterns
- Photography or illustration direction
Find out what’s included in their deliverables. If they say, “A logo and some color options,” that’s a red flag. Your team needs a full toolkit to create branded materials without starting from scratch every time.
The Delivery
What format will my final brand deliverables be in, and will I easily be able to use them?
What if an agency hands over files in formats you can’t open, or everything’s built in Adobe Illustrator, but your internal team uses Canva? Ask specifically what file formats you’ll receive.
At a minimum, you should get:
- PDF files (or another comparable vector format, like AI or EPS, for print vendors)
- High-resolution PNGs with transparent backgrounds (for presentations and digital use)
- SVG files (for web applications)
Good agencies also explain how and when to use them. Some provide a quick reference guide for your team to use when they have questions.
Do you provide implementation support, or just hand over files?
An agency might call the job done after they deliver your brand guidelines. Or they’ll stick around to help you use what they’ve built. You want the latter.
Insider Insight: We’ve found that at least 60% of rebrands lose their impact within the first six months simply because the internal team wasn’t trained on how to apply the new system. A brand is only as strong as its most recent social post or sales deck.
Implementation support isn’t just handing off the owner’s manual; it’s insurance for your investment. It might look like training your team on the brand system, reviewing older marketing pieces to ensure alignment, or being on-call as you roll out the identity across new touchpoints.
Ask what’s included in their base package versus what costs extra. If they don’t offer help activating the brand further, you’re likely to end up with a beautiful brand manual that sits in a digital drawer collecting dust.
Will my visual identity include a responsive logo system?
Your logo has to work everywhere: on your website header, your email signature, your Instagram profile, your building sign, and that tiny favicon in the browser tab. A responsive logo system includes multiple versions of your logo designed for different sizes and contexts: a primary horizontal version, a stacked version for square spaces, and a simplified icon for small applications.
If an agency designs one logo and expects you to squeeze or stretch it to fit every use case, you’ll run into problems.
The Process and Partnership
Who will be my main point of contact?
You need to know if you’re working with the person who sold you the project or getting passed to a junior designer. There’s nothing wrong with working with a team, but you should know upfront who’s leading your project and who you’ll communicate with day-to-day.
Listen for vague references to ‘our team’ or promises that the agency principal will be involved in every meeting. This usually isn’t realistic for even the small agencies.
File these under your list of agency green flags:
- Specific responses about roles and name drops (our lead designer, Sam)
- Guidelines around response times (we respond to emails within 24 hours)
- Explanation of how communication will flow throughout the project (we’ll communicate through our project management tool)
How do you handle revisions and feedback?
Every agency has a revision process. But some are built for collaboration, while others are designed to limit your input. Ask how many rounds of revision are included, what happens if you need changes outside of these rounds, and how the agency handles feedback from multiple stakeholders.
A good review process breaks the work into phases with clear checkpoints. But you also need room to pivot if something’s not working.
If an agency gets defensive when you ask about revisions or makes you feel like feedback is a burden, imagine how they’ll react when you’re three weeks into the project and the creative direction isn’t landing.
Get the Full Interview Guide
This list is a great starting point. In our interview guide, we go even deeper with questions about:
- Physical production
- Accessibility considerations
- Timeline expectations
- Handling conflicting feedback
- Measuring the ROI of a branding project
Download the interview guide below—and don’t worry, we won’t make you fill out a form so we can spam your email.
