Maker Street Studios, a branding agency in Newstead, Brisbane, prices brand work from $8,250 for a Brand Core engagement, and most Australian founders end up paying somewhere between $3,000 and $25,000 depending on who they hire and what the brand has to do. This article sets out the going rates across Australia, what we charge, what is included at each price, and what pushes a quote up or down. No “contact us for pricing”. The numbers are below.
How much does branding cost in Australia?
In Australia, branding typically costs $500 to $3,000 from a freelancer, $3,000 to $8,000 from a boutique studio, and $8,000 to $25,000 or more from an established agency, with large national agencies quoting well above that. The spread is wide because the word “branding” covers everything from a logo file to a full system with strategy, rollout and governance behind it.
The bands are much the same in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Agencies in Sydney and Melbourne tend to sit at the top of each band and quote larger rollouts, but the price of the thinking and the making is set by seniority and scope, not by postcode. At the bottom of the range you are buying a mark and a colour palette, usually with limited rounds and no positioning work. In the middle you get a designed system: logo suite, typography, colour, imagery direction and a short guide. At the top you get the thinking as well as the making: research, positioning, messaging, then the identity built on that, plus templates and a launch.
How much does a brand identity cost in Brisbane?
A brand identity in Brisbane typically costs $3,000 to $12,000 from a boutique studio and $8,000 to $25,000 from an agency, with freelancers below $3,000. Most of our work at Maker Street Studios sits right in the middle of that agency band with packages starting at $8,250 and most falling in the $12,500 to $18,000 range. Partly by design, and mostly because we do not sell the mark without the strategy that makes it worth owning.
Brisbane has fewer large agencies than Sydney or Melbourne, so the local market is mostly studios and boutique agencies, and prices cluster in the $5,000 to $25,000 range for a founder-led business. What you should expect at $10,000 and above is a brand system, not a logo: positioning and messaging first, then a logo suite, typography, colour, imagery direction and a usage guide your team can actually follow. If a Brisbane quote at that level does not include at least a little strategic work, ask what the identity is being designed against.
How much does a full rebrand cost?
A full rebrand for an Australian scaleup typically costs $15,000 to $35,000 at Maker Street Studios, and the most complex engagements we have delivered have reached figures north of $50,000. Rebrands can sometimes cost a bit more than first-time identities because there is more to protect, more to migrate, more stakeholders to keep aligned and just generally, more work!
A rebrand can include brand audits, repositioning and messaging, a new or evolved identity system, and a rollout plan across every touchpoint your business already has: website, sales decks, signage, social, templates, vehicles. The rollout is where budgets are most often underestimated and absorbed. A new identity that never reaches your proposals or your website is a cost, not an investment. For our larger engagements, we build the rollout budget into the number from the start so there’s no surprises in the lead up to launch day.
What does Maker Street Studios charge?
Maker Street Studios has three project tiers, a half-day starting product, and a subscription option. Every project tier is quoted as one fixed price, and “from” means the entry point for that scope which flexes depending on the engagement. Prices are the same wherever you are in Australia.
Brand Sprint, $1,750. Half a day in a room with us. You leave with a positioning statement, a brand strategy brief, a messaging framework and a competitive landscape. The low-commitment way to start, whether or not you continue with us.
Brand Core, from $8,250. Strategy plus identity. For founders who need a brand they can launch, pitch and hire with. Four to six weeks.
Brand Accelerator, from $14,500. Strategy, identity and the assets a growing business runs on every week: templates, guidelines and digital design. Six to ten weeks.
Brand Operating System, from $24,750. The full system for scaleups: brand architecture, governance, launch, and the brand debt cleanup that comes with growth. Scoped individually. Eight to twelve weeks.
Brand on Subscription. Available on our Brand OS package. Your brand launched and managed for a flat monthly fee over 24 or 36 months, with ownership transferred to you at the end of the term. For teams who want consistent, on-going support at the tap of a button. Your brand and marketing team, on speed-dial.
Naming, trademark advice, website build, motion and wayfinding are scoped as separate lines when you need them. Brand naming on its own typically runs about three weeks. Current tiers are listed on our pricing page.
What is included at each price?
Every Maker Street Studios tier includes senior strategists and designers from day one, a fixed scope, and one fixed price. What changes between tiers is how far the brand is built out, not the quality of the people on it.
Brand Core covers the Strategy and Design stages: positioning, audience, messaging, then the identity system with logo, colour, typography and a usage guide. Brand Accelerator adds the Build stage: presentation and document templates, a fuller guideline set, digital design for your website or product, and the assets your team ships every week. Brand Operating System adds the Launch stage and the governance layer: brand architecture for sub-brands and products, rollout planning, and the frameworks that keep the brand consistent once we step back. Engagements run four to twelve weeks depending on tier.
Freelancer, boutique studio or agency: what actually changes with the price?
The price difference between a freelancer, a studio and an agency comes down to three things: whether strategy is included, how many senior people touch the work, and how much risk you carry. It is not a difference in software or in hours.
A good freelancer can produce a strong mark for $1,500 to $3,000, and for a side project or a local trade business that is often the right call. What you do not get is positioning, messaging, or someone to tell you the name has a trademark problem. A boutique studio adds craft and a system, usually with one lead designer. An agency adds the strategic layer and the capacity to deliver rollout, digital and campaigns without handing you off to a third party. If you are raising capital, hiring, or entering a market where you will be compared against funded competitors, you are buying risk reduction, and that is what the agency band prices.
What moves a branding quote up or down?
The five things that move a branding quote in Australia are the number of decision makers, the number of sub-brands or products, whether naming and trademark work is needed, how many touchpoints need rollout, and whether a website is in scope.
Decision makers matter most. A founder-led business with one approver moves through Strategy and Design in weeks. A board with six stakeholders adds rounds, and rounds add cost. Naming adds roughly three weeks and a trademark process that runs around nine months in Australia, with a fast-track examination opinion available in about a week. A website build adds around six weeks and is typically quoted from around $10,000 at Maker Street Studios. Type licensing is a small but real line: commercial typeface licences run from a couple of hundred dollars to two or three thousand, depending on the use cases covered.
What should a startup budget at pre-seed, seed and Series A?
At pre-seed, budget for a minimum viable brand, enough to raise on: a Brand Sprint which sits around $1,750 or a Brand Core engagement from $8,250. At seed, budget $8,250 to $14,500 for Brand Core or Brand Accelerator. At Series A or B, budget $20,000 plus a complete project from our Brand Accelerator or Brand Operating System, because the job is now realignment and brand debt cleanup rather than an initial brand identity to get you on the map.
Founders often assume brand is something to sort after product-market fit. The decisions you make on day one, your name, your positioning, your visual language, shape how the market reads you long before you are ready to correct them. Getting it right early is almost always cheaper than fixing it later. For teams where the capital outlay is the barrier, Brand on Subscription spreads the cost over 24 or 36 months and transfers ownership at the end. See how we work with startups.
Why we quote one fixed price and do not meter revisions
Maker Street Studios quotes one fixed price for a fixed scope, and if the number is too big we remove deliverables rather than add caps and overage rates. A budget-constrained buyer prices the worst case, not the quoted case.
We learned this the expensive way. A scope built from capped rounds with a fee per extra round and an hourly rate for adjustments reads as a trap, even when the entry price is lower, because the client cannot bound it. “$18,000” is a number you can decline cleanly. “$12,000 plus $550 a round plus $250 an hour” is a number you cannot plan around. So the offer you get from us is one price, the deliverables it covers, and the timeline. If it needs to be smaller, we take things out and requote the smaller thing as a fixed number.