How consistent is your brand?
Score your brand against 12 criteria in 4 groups. It takes about 3 minutes, and honest answers are the only ones worth giving.
This checklist scores your brand against 12 criteria across 4 groups: assets, consistency, clarity and governance. It takes about 3 minutes and the result is a plain percentage of criteria met, with no weighting and no benchmark behind it. Its value is not the number. It is finding out which of the 4 groups your failures cluster in, because that determines whether you need documentation, artwork or a clearer answer to what your business does.
My logo looks professional and legible at every size, from a favicon to a vehicle.
I have a defined colour palette with specific hex codes I can refer to.
I consistently use the same 2 or 3 fonts across all my marketing materials.
I can clearly describe what makes my business different from its competitors.
My website, social media and printed materials all feel visually consistent.
I have a written description of my target customer and what they care about.
My business cards, email signatures and invoices look like they come from the same business.
A stranger can tell what my business does, and why to choose it, within a few seconds.
I have a consistent voice and tone across my marketing copy.
My logo is available in high-resolution vector format (SVG, AI or EPS).
I have documented rules for how my brand should be used by staff or contractors.
My social media profiles use consistent profile photos and cover images.
What the 4 groups are testing
The 12 criteria are not a flat list. They fall into 4 groups, and where your failures cluster tells you far more than the total does.
| Group | Criteria | What it is testing |
|---|---|---|
| Assets | 1, 2, 10 | Whether the raw material exists in a usable state: a logo that survives being scaled, a colour palette with actual values, and vector source files. |
| Consistency | 3, 5, 7 | Whether the same business shows up the same way across every surface a customer touches, including the unglamorous ones like invoices and email signatures. |
| Clarity | 4, 6, 8, 9 | Whether the business can state what it does, who for, and why that matters, in language a stranger understands immediately. |
| Governance | 11, 12 | Whether the brand survives contact with other people: staff, contractors, printers and anyone posting on your behalf. |
Assets
This is the cheapest group to fix and the one everything else depends on. Without vector artwork and defined colour values, consistency is guesswork.
Consistency
Usually a documentation problem rather than a design problem. The assets exist, but nothing records which one to use where.
Clarity
The only group on this list that design alone cannot fix. It is strategy and words first, artwork second.
Governance
Written rules. This is the group that decays silently, because nobody notices drift until they see 12 months of it side by side.
What each score band means
The bands below are labels on percentage ranges, published here so the result page is not the first time you see them. They are not grades, and no outcome follows from moving between them.
| Score | Band | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| 85 to 100 | Consistent | Most of the foundations are in place. The useful work here is maintenance: keeping the documented rules current and checking new material against them. |
| 65 to 84 | Solid, with gaps | The brand holds together, but specific criteria are unanswered. Fix the individual items you said no to rather than starting anything wholesale. |
| 40 to 64 | Working, undocumented | There is a brand, but it lives in a single person's head and in whichever file was opened most recently. Documentation and a tidy-up will do more than a redesign. |
| 0 to 39 | Foundations missing | Several basics are absent rather than inconsistent. Start with the assets group, because the other 3 depend on it. |
How to act on the result
Work in this order, because each step makes the next one cheaper:
- Recover the assets. If criterion 10 failed, find or rebuild the vector artwork before anything else. Every consistency problem downstream of a missing source file is unfixable until it exists. This is normally a small piece of logo design work rather than a new logo.
- Set the values. Colour and type decisions written down as actual values, not remembered. This costs nothing if the decisions already exist.
- Write the rules. Most governance and consistency failures on this list are solved by a document rather than a designer. The structure guide sets out what belongs in one, and brand guidelines covers what a written set from a designer adds.
- Fix the clarity failures. Criteria 4, 6, 8 and 9 are not design problems. They are answered by brand strategy: who the customer is, what the business claims, and the language that carries it.
- Only then consider redesigning. If the identity itself is the problem rather than its documentation, that is a brand refresh or a new brand design project, and it is worth scoping properly rather than piecemeal.
If you want the gaps priced, send them through the quote form and describe what you found. A brief that says which of these 12 criteria failed is far easier to quote accurately than one that says the brand needs updating.
Frequently Asked Questions
Keep exploring
Brand refresh
What is involved when the audit says the identity itself needs work, not just documentation.
Brand guidelines structure
The 8 sections that fix most governance and consistency failures on this list.
Branding cost calculator
Turn the gaps you found into a scope, and see an illustrative range for it.
Ready for a real quote?
A tool gives you a starting range. A quote comes from a designer reading your actual brief. Send us the brief and we will pass it to an experienced Australian brand design studio. We aim to respond within 1 business day.