El Coco A brand identity agency should hand back a logo in every version you will use. You should also get color and type rules, templates for your site and social, and a brand book that explains them. Published prices run from about $1,000 at a freelancer to $25,000 and up at a large agency. For a hotel, a rental or a small agency, pay for the parts that will load on your website and show up in your video.
What you should get back
Ask for the file list before you ask for the price. Two quotes for "brand identity design" can describe very different jobs, and the list is where the difference shows.
A finished project should leave you with these parts. Studios name them differently.
- Logo suite — the main logo, a wide version, a stacked version, a small icon, and one color and white versions.
- Color palette — each color with its codes for screens and for print, plus which color goes where.
- Type rules — which fonts, which weights, and the sizes for headings and body text.
- Templates — files your team can open and fill in for the website and social posts.
- Brand book — one document that explains all of the above, with examples of right and wrong use.
The brand book is the part that pays you back for years. The designer may not be around when your sign maker asks for the green, or when a new hire makes the high season flyer, or a change to your website. The book answers for them. Without it, every one of those people guesses, and the guesses drift apart.
The logo suite deserves a closer look. We see PNG only logos all the time. This is a type of flat image that allow for transparency. A PNG works on a web page, but it blurs on a sign and it cannot be recut for a shirt or a video overlay. You should not need to know what PNG, SVG or JPEG mean. You need the full set of files from the designer, and someone who sends the right one to each job, so you can get back to running the business.
If a logo is all you need right now, our guide to logo design services and what each price buys covers that smaller job.
What a brand kit holds
The brand book is the rulebook. Everything else is built from it.
Rules for using every piece
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What brand identity design costs
The price guides that rank for this search in October 2026 agree on the bands. Freelancers charge a few hundred dollars up to about $1,500 for a basic package. Small studios and experienced freelancers charge $2,000 to $10,000. Boutique agencies quote $5,000 to $30,000, and large agencies start around $25,000.
The cheap end usually means a logo, a basic palette, a font suggestion and a folder of files. No rules. No templates. That holds up for a side business. It wears thin once a front desk and a sign maker both need to use the brand.
Above that, the price climbs with research time, rounds of changes, and the number of finished pieces. Compare the file lists before you compare the totals.
Research is the part a small business can usually cut. A big agency spends weeks on interviews because its clients sell in many markets at once. A surf hotel in Guanacaste sells to one kind of guest, and the owner already knows who that guest is.
Rounds of changes are the part to pin down. Two rounds is the usual standard, and extra rounds are billed on top. If the quote does not say how many you get, you find out when the invoice arrives. Get the number in writing and send each round's notes as one list from everyone who has a say.
Where the brand meets the website
A brand book is a PDF. The fonts and images in it end up loaded by every phone that opens your website. That is where a brand choice can turn into a wait for your guests.
Many sites load their fonts from a third party service such as Google Fonts. The browser then waits on a second company before it can draw the page, and on a phone over hotel wifi that wait is easy to feel. Self hosting the fonts puts the files on the same server as the site. That is how we build ours. El Coco Properties makes zero third party font requests. It also sets zero cookies, so it needs no cookie banner at all.
The font questions belong at the start of a brand project. Is the font licensed for web use? How many weights does the design need? Each weight is one more file a guest's phone has to download on hotel wifi before your booking page appears.
If one company designs the brand and another builds the site, ask which of them owns this. It slips between them. Our guide on choosing a website design company has the other questions for that stage.
Where the brand meets video
The other place a small brand lives is video. When we cut real estate footage it goes out twice. One version is branded and runs on a feature post on El Coco Properties. The other is unbranded, so the owner or agent can use it anywhere. When a property closes, the feature post gets a SOLD overlay that credits the closing agent. Every one of those marks sits on top of a moving aerial shot, so it has to read in plain white over sky and water.
The short videos we cut for have karaoke style captions burned into the frame, plus transparent overlay insets that show which muscles a move works. One shoot becomes Shorts, Reels and stills. Each caption and inset needs a font and a color. When a brand book names those, nobody has to decide them again on every cut.
So test the brand where your guests will meet it, before you sign off. Ask to see the logo on a dark photo and the icon inside the Instagram circle. Ask for one caption in the brand font over real footage. A problem found at this stage costs a round of changes. The same problem found after the signs are printed costs a reprint, plus a re-edit of any footage. More on how the cuts get used in real estate video and social.
Agents have one more limit. Your brokerage may already set rules for your logo, colors and signs. Read those before you pay anyone for a personal brand.
How to spend a small budget
Start with the logo suite, and make sure it includes a working icon and a one color version. Those two files carry the brand in every small place above. The color and type rules come next, with the web fonts sorted out before anyone builds a page.
Templates are worth paying for when you post often. For a hotel or rental that usually means the website and Instagram. Printed stationery is worth it only if you mail things. Anything that only lives in a slide deck can go. If the front desk will never open it, it does not earn its fee.
What to get in writing
Ownership comes first. Ask for full rights to the final logo and the source files, not only the exported images. You will need the source files to trademark the logo, to hand a vector to a sign maker, and to let a different designer adjust it in five years. If the original designer has moved on by then, a contract that gave you only a license can leave you stuck. Full rights are a normal part of a mid range logo fee. It is a fair thing to ask for at any price.
Then get the round count, the file list and a delivery date. If the brand has to be ready for a website launch or the start of a season, give the designer that date at the start and work back from it.
Questions
Will a new brand help my business show up in search?
Not on its own. A brand gives people a name to search for. The first clicks on a young site tend to come from pages about specific places. Plan the brand and the first few pages of content together.
What does a brand identity package include?
At minimum, a logo in several versions, a color palette with codes, type rules and a brand book. Better packages add templates for your website and social posts. Ask for the file list in writing before you pay.
What is the difference between a logo and a brand identity?
A logo is one mark. A brand identity is the set of colors, fonts, templates and rules that the logo sits inside. It is what keeps your sign and your website looking like the same business.
How long does a brand identity project take?
Most of the calendar time goes to feedback, so it depends on how fast you reply to each round. Sending one combined list of notes per round is the easiest way to shorten it. Ask for a delivery date with the quote.
Do I own my logo and brand files?
Only if the contract says so. Ask for full ownership of the final logo and the source files in writing before work starts. Without it, you may need the designer's permission to change or trademark your own logo later.
You are busy running the hotel, the rentals or the listings. Our job is to pull together everything that happens online behind the scenes, so the most eyes land on what you sell.