Approval Criteria

Approval criteria are the explicit written list of conditions a client signs before you show them brand identity work. You pose one question after the brief is locked but before any visual exploration begins. What exactly must this identity deliver for you to approve it without requesting another round of concepts. Their answer in writing becomes the shared scorecard for the entire project. This document directly attacks the three reasons presentations die. It neutralizes personal taste by giving you an objective standard both parties agreed on weeks earlier. It prevents scope creep by keeping every conversation tethered to the original business decision. It kills rationale overload because the client already knows what good looks like instead of forcing you to defend thirty slides of process. In the pre-work phase it sits alongside the aligned brief and the stakeholder map as one of the three elements that decide whether your presentation confirms a decision or restarts a negotiation. Without it you walk into the room hoping the client feels the right thing instead of knowing they will see the right thing. The question must be asked in a shared document not verbally. The client must reply in the same document. Both sides sign it. That signature is your shield when the CEO decides the green feels corporate.

Approval criteria are not a mood board of inspirational images or a vague statement about wanting the brand to feel trustworthy. They are not assembled after the first round of work comes back and the client starts picking it apart. They are not a list of tactical execution details like exact pixel sizes or social media templates. They are not something you discuss for the first time in the presentation itself. Most critically they are not the sentence we will know it when we see it which has destroyed more solid design systems than any bad kerning in history. If your criteria document contains the words vibe or energy or make it pop you have not written approval criteria. You have written a permission slip for the client to waste your time. They are also not a one way street. The designer signs them too which means you cannot pivot to a completely different direction without admitting the work missed the written target.

Take the 2023 project for a logistics SaaS company called Shipwise that raised 40 million dollars that year. We refused to book the presentation until they answered the question in writing. Their head of marketing replied with four clear bullets. The identity must signal speed and reliability to operations managers who distrust flashy tech. It must work in both the mobile driver app used in direct sunlight and the back office dashboard. It must avoid any resemblance to the UPS brown and yellow because that is their largest competitor. The CEO must be able to explain the logo choice to the board using only language from the brief we signed in July. Those four lines became our bible. During the system presentation the CEO questioned the lack of an icon based mark. We opened the criteria document projected it on screen and asked which line item an icon would serve. The conversation lasted 90 seconds before the CEO said next slide. The project closed that day and the identity launched three weeks later to strong internal adoption with the sales team reporting a 22 percent lift in pitch deck close rates.

Contrast that with a lifestyle apparel brand called Threadbare in 2021. Their approval criteria consisted of one line. It needs to feel like us. The presentation became a free for all. The founder did not like the green because it reminded him of his ex wife s favorite color. The CMO wanted it to work on hoodies even though apparel mockups were never in scope. Because the criteria gave us nothing solid to point at we spent six weeks in revision hell. The final mark was a watered down compromise that satisfied no one and performed poorly in market tests six months later. Another concrete case happened with a health tech startup in Boston during 2024. Their criteria included a specific success metric. After seeing the system the marketing director must feel confident sending it to three key investors without additional explanation. That single measurable standard changed how we presented the voice and tone samples. We included mock investor emails using the new brand language. When the CMO started to drift into wanting a completely different illustration style we reminded her of that metric. The illustrations we showed already achieved the investor confidence test in user testing we had run. She approved on the spot. Specific measurable criteria turn abstract feelings into concrete business results you can defend with data instead of opinions.

Use approval criteria on every brand identity project that involves real money and multiple stakeholders. Use them immediately after the brief is signed and before you schedule the presentation. Use them especially when the stakeholder map shows a CEO or founder with strong personal opinions or when the client says anything resembling we will know it when we see it or I trust you to surprise me. Those phrases are traps that spring in the worst possible moment. Deploy them ruthlessly with enterprise clients or any organization that has a board because boards love to rewrite strategy in the middle of a deck. Do not use formal written approval criteria on small logo refreshes for long term clients where the trust level is already high and the scope is under 10 thousand dollars. Even then a verbal version of the criteria during kickoff beats nothing at all. Never skip them when the project involves a rebrand because the emotional attachment to the old identity makes taste based objections ten times more likely and turns good work into committee-designed garbage.

Lock approval criteria early or prepare to watch your best work get picked apart for reasons that have nothing to do with strategy.