Most organisations commission a logo when what they need is a system. This guide sets out the difference, and the specifically Canadian considerations that shape identity work here.
A logo is one component of about eight
A working identity system contains the mark and its variants, a typographic hierarchy, a colour palette with defined roles rather than a swatch row, spacing and clear-space rules, photographic or illustrative direction, a tone-of-voice note, application examples, and the documentation binding it together.
The test of a system is whether someone who has never spoken to the designer can produce a correct new piece from the guide alone. If they cannot, you own artwork rather than a brand.
Design for two languages from the start
Even if you only operate in English today, the cost of designing for bilingual expansion now is close to zero, and the cost of retrofitting is not. Practically this means:
- Do not build wordmarks that depend on an English phrase's letter shapes
- Leave 20% expansion room in navigation, buttons and headline slots
- Avoid layouts where a headline must be exactly one line
- Choose typefaces with complete French accented characters, including capital accents
Check the trademark before you fall in love with it
A name or mark that is already registered in your class in Canada is a problem you want to find in week one. The Canadian Intellectual Property Office maintains a searchable trademarks database, and a preliminary search costs nothing but time. It is not a substitute for advice from a trademark agent before you file, but it will rule out the obvious collisions early.
Worth knowing: registering a business name provincially is not the same as holding a trademark, and neither is owning the domain.
Build the palette around contrast, not taste
Pick colours knowing where they must be legible. WCAG requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text against its background. Brands built on mid-tone colour pairs discover at implementation that their own palette cannot legally be used for body text on their own website.
The workable approach is to define roles — a text colour, a background, an accent used only for non-essential emphasis, and a functional set for states and alerts — and to test each pairing before signing off the palette rather than after.
Licence the typefaces properly
Type licences are specific and separately priced: desktop, web, application, and broadcast are usually distinct grants, and web licences are commonly capped by monthly page views. A brand guide specifying a face nobody has licensed for the use in question is a liability you have paid to create.
Open-source families licensed under the SIL Open Font License avoid this entirely and are, for many organisations, genuinely sufficient.
How to brief the work
A brief that produces good work answers five questions: who is the audience, what do you need them to do, what do you offer that the alternatives do not, where will this appear, and what cannot change. That last one — existing licences, parent-brand rules, a printer already selected, a legacy colour someone in the organisation will defend to the death — is the most valuable and most often omitted.
Avoid briefing by reference to a competitor you admire. It produces work that looks like them, which is the opposite of the point.
Agree the approval path
Before work starts, write down who reviews, who decides, and how long each round gets. The single largest cause of design projects overrunning is not the design. It is that nobody agreed in advance who was allowed to say yes.