Article
What a brand sprint actually looks like
The first ten working days of every identity project we run, from the workshop table to the route you choose.
Helena Matos
Process
August 7, 2026
Every brand identity we design starts with the same ten working days. We call them the sprint, mostly because the word stuck on a whiteboard in 2018, and they decide more about the finished brand than everything that follows.
Clients often ask what happens in those two weeks, and who needs to be there. Here it is day by day, including the parts we changed after getting them wrong.
Ten days, in the order they happen
Day one: the workshop
A half-day around the big table at Sint-Jacobsnieuwstraat with the founders, the lead designer, our copywriter and whoever answers customer emails. We sort thirty-six screenshots of competitors into piles, then write the sentence the brand has to make true.
What to bring
Your last sales deck, three real customer emails and the page of your current site you like least. The last one tells us more than the other two together.
Days two to five: three routes
The lead designer and one other designer sketch routes in the shared Figma file, while the written scope, schedule and fixed price reach you by Friday. By then every route has a name and a single idea behind it.
Days six to nine: real objects
Each route is drawn onto the things it will actually live on: an app store screenshot, an invoice, a shipping label, a billboard on the Kortrijksesteenweg.
Day ten: the review
Two hours, the same people as day one. You choose one route, and we write down why before anyone leaves the room.
Why the mood board stays out
Mood boards are easy to agree with, which is the trouble with them. Everyone nods at the same twelve photographs and means twelve different things.
“A mood board lets everyone agree without deciding anything. Put the logo on an invoice and a billboard, and the room has an opinion in ten seconds.”
Tomás Reis, Co-founder at Okapi
The routes live in the same Figma file we keep using for the rest of the project, so nothing gets redrawn when the real work starts.
Three routes that disagree
The routes are meant to pull in different directions. For Corte, a video editing app for small teams launching against tools ten times its size, day ten looked like this.
Route | Built from | Shown as |
|---|---|---|
The cut | One red mark, from the timeline | Store screenshots, print kit |
The challenger | Side-by-side price comparisons | Billboard and launch email |
The reel | Film leader and A/B tracks | Launch film title cards |
The cut won, and the A and B track markers came across from the third route as guides. Borrowing one part from a losing route is fine; blending two whole routes gives you the middle of both, which nobody chose.
Before your own sprint
If you’re about to start one, with us or anyone else, three things make the ten days count.
Bring the person who answers customer emails.
Agree who has the final say before day one.
Keep day ten free of other meetings.
Everything after the sprint runs on what was decided in it. If you’d like to plan one, tell us what you’re launching and we’ll find a date for day one.
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