The Hidden Cost of DIY Branding

Nov 10

DIY branding seems like a good idea at first. Tools promise easy logos. Templates look polished. And in the early days, saving money feels like the right move. But what most businesses learn the hard way is that doing it yourself costs far more later.

The problem with DIY branding isn’t that it looks bad. It’s that it’s built without strategy. There’s no positioning behind it, no audience insight, no alignment with growth goals. What you save in the short term you pay back in confusion, lost opportunities, and constant rework.

When branding is treated as decoration instead of infrastructure, you end up with a nice façade that doesn’t hold weight.

Think about how many times you’ve redesigned a logo, re-written your elevator pitch, or struggled to explain your business in one sentence. That’s the cost. Every minute spent fixing what wasn’t done strategically adds up to hours—and dollars—that could have gone toward growth.

At Treebird Branding, we’ve rebuilt more “DIY” brands than we can count. The pattern is always the same: the visuals may be fine, but the story isn’t clear. Without a defined positioning and purpose, the audience doesn’t know what to connect to.

A professionally built brand system saves money because it scales. It adapts to new products, new markets, and new audiences. It also saves energy because your team knows exactly how to use it.

DIY branding feels cheap until it starts costing you.

If you’ve outgrown your homemade brand, Treebird can help rebuild it the right way—strategically, beautifully, and built to last.

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Jaci Lund

Jaci Lund partner, creative director, designer Jaci’s quick wit and native intelligence comes across as soon as you meet her—and carries over to her design, where she fuses fun and sophistication in just the right doses. With a dual focus on creating original branding for new concepts and revitalizing the look and feel of even the most-established brands, Jaci approaches each project with a fresh and thoughtful perspective. While she recognizes the relevance of current trends, she’s hyper-conscious of the fine line that separates “trend” from “fad,” and tends toward more timeless and classic looks for her clients. Before founding Treebird, Jaci was instrumental in growing the design department at Atlanta’s The Reynolds Group, Inc. Through a five-year tenure that saw her quickly ascend to senior designer and then become the company’s first creative director, Jaci worked on design and branding projects with visionaries, entrepreneurs, and business leaders whom she admires greatly and whose own passion elevates her sense of what’s possible through new design, branding, and communication. Jaci has won nine ADDY Awards (and counting) for her design and branding work and has twice been featured in the national design blog “Art of the Menu.” She holds a B.A. in communications from Michigan State University and completed the graphic design program at The Creative Circus, where she also teaches a quarterly course called “Introduction to Creative Thinking.” To see Jaci's previous work please visit jacilund.com.

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