The Lean Branding Playbook

A Manifesto for the Team of One Designer + One Marketer

(for the growth-stage startup trying to do everything at once)

1. The brand is not a one-off project you did with an agency that also serves Google, Meta, and Apple — and has 100x your budget.
2. Brand is content, visuals, customer support, product — everything.
3. Quick over lazy.
4. Consistency comes with time, not from day one. A brand obsessed with consistency too early tends to die at ground zero.
5. Use Pexels, Unsplash, and iStock before you book that brand campaign.
6. Think about how to sustainably make 1,000 pieces of content — not just 10.
7. Brands with more touchpoints beat brands with fewer touchpoints.
8. When in doubt, go back to basic geometric forms.
9. Keep a swipe file of people 100x your budget — and people at your budget. The second one matters more.
10. Follow small design teams.
11. Use Upwork for what you can't handle yourselves.
12. Make mistakes — early and often.
13. Launch, and keep launching, until people notice you.
14. Criticism is good attention.
15. Keep a blog.
16. Do only one big thing per day.
17. Train your team to see.
18. Itemize everything.
19. A checklist saves lives.
20. Put everything on the calendar. Build a second brain.
21. Double down on what's winning.