Can You Sell It in 30 Seconds?
Almost every founder I’ve worked with opens with the same question.
"What should the logo look like?"
It honestly makes sense. The logo is the main thing you see everywhere, surely your customers must pay attention to it as much as you do. Tweaks are easy to show to your partner, landlord, other designers…
It might feel like progress, but you’re fixing the wrong thing first.
Design matters a lot. It just can’t drive real value without something to point at.
Without clarity, design is decoration.
You pick colors and fonts based on what feels nice that week, or on your Pinterest board. With clarity, every choice has a reason. The colors mean something, regardless of whether it’s subtle or a key part of your storytelling. The type is chosen for a reason. And when someone asks why, you have an answer.
“It just feels… Muddy?”
A founder said the above quote to me once about their brand. They had the right product, team, and ambition. But when they talked about themselves, it came out different every time. Depending on the day, the room, the mood. Even the confidence level could shift from week to week.
To be totally honest, people felt it.
Investors got confused. Customers struggled to get their vibe. Even their own team wasn’t sure what to say when someone asked what they did. Nothing was broken. It was just blurry.
So we didn’t start with design. We went back to three questions.
What do you believe?
What are you here to change?
What future are you actually building toward?
Once they had those answers, everything else snapped into place.
The logo, the visuals, the way they talked about the business. It stopped being a pile of opinions and turned into a set of decisions.
Clarity is a decision
Think about deciding where to eat.
“What do you want for dinner?” followed by “I don’t know. What do you want?”
You can go around like that for twenty minutes. Nobody’s wrong. Nobody’s deciding either. And now, you’re starting to get hangry.
But then someone asks better questions... Hot or cold? Staying in or going out? About ten seconds later, you’re done.
Brand works the same way. Most founders aren’t short on ideas. They have plenty. What’s missing is a few clear decisions that make everything else easy. And it comes from listening and learning together.
That’s what clarity really is. Knowing what this is, who it’s for, and why it should exist... well enough for the design to have something to follow.
The 30-second test
Here’s something you can try today. Explain your brand out loud in 30 seconds. To a friend, to your partner, or into a voice memo. No jargon. No stumbling. No "well, it’s kind of like…" and then starting over.
Then listen back and ask three things.
Would someone who’s never heard of you know what you do?
Would they know who it’s for?
Would they know why it’s different from the place down the street?
If you nailed it, awesome. Your design has something to work with. If you didn’t, you're not behind. You just found the real first step. And it’s a lot cheaper to find it now than after the packaging is printed.
Where does the logo come in?
The logo still matters. So does everything that comes after it. It just works better as the answer than as the question. Get the clarity right, and the design stops being a guessing game. It becomes what shows people what you've already decided.
Max
Founder, EightySeven
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