BRANDING & LOGO DESIGN
IN BENGALURU.

Most people meet your brand for the first time at the size of a thumbnail. A small circle on Instagram, a favicon on a browser tab, a label on a shelf seen from two metres away, a signboard from a moving auto. A logo that only works on a pitch-deck slide fails at all of them.

Branding is the work of deciding what a brand is, and then making it recognisable at every size and in every place people meet it. The logo is the visible part. Underneath it sit the positioning, the name, the colours and type, the voice, and the rules that let thirty different people use all of it without the brand drifting.

What a branding project includes

Some brands need a logo, some need a full identity, and a few need everything, including the name. This is the full list; the brief decides how much of it a project takes on.

How we design a brand

The Listen, Plot, Create and Blow up stages on our services page apply here too, and the first two matter more in branding than in any other service. A logo drawn before the strategy is settled usually has to be redrawn.

1. Listen. Conversations with the founders, and where possible with customers and the people who serve them. We look hard at the competitors, because the first job of an identity is to not be confused with theirs.
2. Plot. The positioning, the personality and the one thing the brand should own. Then directions: what the identity could look like, argued in words and references before anything is polished.
3. Create. The chosen direction becomes a logo system, colours, type and voice, tested at the sizes people will really see: the profile picture, the favicon, the shop sign, the side of a box, in colour and in plain black.
4. Blow up. Guidelines, files, templates and the launch, so the new identity arrives everywhere at once.

Designed for the phone first

A brand today lives mostly on a phone screen. Instagram and WhatsApp crop profile pictures to a circle, browser tabs show a favicon a few pixels across, and app icons and Google Business Profile photos are small and surrounded by other brands competing for the same glance.

So every logo we design gets a compact version that still reads when it is tiny, and every identity is tested in those places before it is approved. Fine lines, gradients that turn to mud, and taglines locked inside the logo are the usual casualties. A logo that survives being sixteen pixels wide will survive a billboard.

Files matter for the same reason. Vector formats (SVG, AI, EPS, or a vector PDF) scale to any size without losing quality; PNG and JPG files do not, so you need both, used in the right places. Screens use RGB and HEX colour values and printers use CMYK, and a colour picked on screen can print duller than anyone expected unless the print values are chosen deliberately. You should never have to ask your designer for "the logo in high resolution" twice.

Who owns your logo

Under the Copyright Act, a logo designed by an agency's staff belongs first to the agency that employs them, and one designed by a freelancer belongs first to the freelancer. It becomes yours through an assignment, and section 19 sets the rules for one: it has to be in writing and signed, if it does not say how long it lasts it lasts five years, and if it does not say where it applies it covers only India. An assignment whose rights go unused for a year can also lapse unless it says otherwise.

So whoever designs your logo, us included, ask for a written assignment of all the rights, worldwide and for the full term of copyright, along with the source files.

Trademarks: check before you fall in love

Trademarks in India are filed in classes under the Nice Classification, which has 45 classes, 34 for goods and 11 for services; its 2026 edition has applied to new filings since 1 January 2026. A bakery, a skincare label and a software company may each need different classes, and several at once.

The official fee to file one mark in one class is ₹4,500 online for individuals, startups and small enterprises, and ₹9,000 for other businesses. After examination the mark is advertised in the Trade Marks Journal, and anyone can oppose it within four months. A registration lasts ten years and can be renewed.

Two practical rules follow. Search the register before designing anything around a name, because the most beautiful logo in the world is wasted on a name that belongs to someone else. And use the ® symbol only once the mark is registered: until then it is ™. Since 1 August 2024, falsely representing a mark as registered carries a penalty of 0.5% of turnover or ₹5 lakh, whichever is less. We check names against the register as part of naming; the filing itself is a job for a trademark attorney.

Brand voice

Many identity projects stop at the logo, which is one reason so many brands look distinct and sound identical. Our co-founder Gaurav wrote about it in Why most Indian brands sound the same on Instagram: cover the logos on ten brand posts in one category and try to tell them apart.

A voice comes from three decisions, and we make them with you as part of every identity: who the brand refuses to sound like, a format only it could run, and a point of view it would defend in public. Then we write examples, because a voice described in adjectives ("friendly, witty, bold") is a voice nobody can use. Captions, a reply to an angry customer, a product description, an apology: we test the voice on all four.

Packaging, signage and the real world

An identity has to survive printing, sunlight and a shelf full of competitors. Packaging brings its own rules: dielines, finishes, paper stocks, the information a label is legally required to carry, and the way a box looks in a delivery photo or an unboxing reel. For Eloura our branding work included a full packaging system.

Signage and print follow the same discipline. We specify colours for print, check them on proofs and adjust before anything goes to press, because the screen and the paper rarely agree on their own.

Refresh, or start again?

Not every brand needs a new logo. If people already recognise you, a refresh that keeps the recognisable parts and fixes what is broken (legibility at small sizes, a dated typeface, a colour that prints badly) usually beats a fresh start. A full rebrand earns its cost when the business has changed underneath the brand: a new audience, a new category, a merger, or a name that has become a problem.

We will tell you which one you need.

What it costs and how long it takes

We quote against the brief, because "a logo" ranges from a mark for a home bakery to a full identity with naming, trademark searches and packaging. Expect several weeks for a full identity from the first conversation to the final files, longer when a name has to be found and cleared. Rushing the strategy stage to save a week tends to cost a redraw later. GST at 18% applies to agency fees.

Once the identity exists, it has to be used well. Many of our branding clients go on to social media marketing, photography and video or a new website with us, so the people who designed the brand are the ones who carry it into the world. The bundle builder shows how those fit together, and the brief takes two minutes.