14 min read

Product Strategy , Branding , Business

The strongest visual concepts don’t start in Figma. They start with the right questions. Explore the pre-concept phase of brand identity design, where teams research brand context, uncover hidden assumptions with stakeholders, and turn shared direction into a visual foundation before a single concept is created.

When a branding project fails, it usually happens long before the logo stage: in the strategy phase, when words like “modern,” “trustworthy,” “premium,” “friendly,” and “disruptive” are left undefined. The result is a gap between what the brand is supposed to communicate and what the designer is expected to create. This is the space I like to call the “pre-concept” phase .

At the beginning of a project, designers usually receive many inputs: a brief, a few stakeholder conversations, competitor references, maybe a moodboard or a list of adjectives. From there, they are expected to create visual concepts that feel right.…