Take Root ✱ Branding & Web Design
The work is there. What's missing is the structure to hold it.
Brand identity, messaging, and website design for small businesses, practitioners, and movements. The foundation everything else grows from.
Most people who come to Take Root aren't starting from zero. They've worked hard to get here, with work that matters and a community forming around it. What they need now is a brand and website built for where the work is today and where you want it to head.
You’re in the right place if…
BRAND FOUNDATIONS
MESSAGING ARCHITECTURE
BRAND ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
WEB DESIGN
You're starting something new, and you want to build it right from the beginning.
You've been at this a while, and the work has grown past the brand you started with.
You built something that worked once. It doesn't anymore.
You've worked with someone before, and it didn't feel right.
You want to do this once and do it well.
Which service fits?
Four ways to build the foundation. Most people start with one; some pair two, like Messaging Architecture before working on a new website.
Service
Messaging Architecture
Best For
Brand Foundations
The work is clear, but the words aren't
A first real brand, or a reset after DIY
Brand Ecosystem Development
Essential Website
Strategic Website
Typical Timing
4–6 weeks
8-12 weeks
2-3 months
3-4 months
3–6 months
Many offers, audiences, or platforms
A focused site, up to 5 pages
Up to 8 pages, with content strategy and SEO
From
$1,500
$2,000
$3,000
$2,000 to $3,500
$5,000
Project-based · Custom budget-based pricing + payment plans available for every project
Brand Foundations
Your brand is the whole language of your work: how it looks, how it speaks, what it stands for, and how it carries your values into every room it enters.
We don't start with aesthetics. We start with questions. Who is this for? What do you actually stand for? What makes your work distinct from everyone else doing something similar? From those answers, we build an identity that is unmistakably yours, visually, verbally, and in its values.
Brand identity design for small businesses, practitioners, and movements
-
Through questionnaires, a brand discovery session, and strategic mapping, we get clear on who you are, who you serve, what you stand for, and what makes your work distinct. Every other decision builds from this. Without it, design is just decoration.
-
Your logo suite anchors a complete visual system: how it's used, when, and the variations you need for social media, print, your website, and anywhere else your work appears.
-
Colors chosen for how they feel and what they say about your work, and fonts that give your writing its visual personality. Both are tested in real use and documented so you can apply them everywhere.
-
A clear framework for writing in a way that sounds like you: tone, vocabulary to use and avoid, and example copy that shows it in action. Built through discovery conversations, language workshops, and collaborative writing exercises.
-
Practical do's and don'ts for your website, social media, email, and print, with real examples, so you can make brand decisions on your own.
-
Everything we make together, compiled into one usable reference: your brand bible. Brief a collaborator, design a flyer, or update your website without guessing what's on-brand.
What's included:
Someone starting fresh, resetting after a period of growth, or moving on from a DIY brand, something built quickly in the early days, or a designer who made something appealing without going deep into the values and vision behind the work.
Who this is for:
Collaborative mood boarding, creative direction sessions, and rounds of refinement, so the result feels like yours, not something we imposed on you.
How we work together
From $2,000 · Custom, budget-based pricing and payment plans available. We work with a range of budgets, so don’t hesitate to tell us what you're working with!
Does this feel like the right starting point? Reach out, and we'll take it from there.
Want to go deeper? Brand Ecosystem Development includes everything here, plus deeper research, an extended visual system, and brand architecture for work with many moving parts.
See Brand Ecosystem Development Below ↓
Brand Ecosystem Development
Some work is too layered and too meaningful to be held by a single brand identity. It spans several offers, audiences, or contexts, and needs a brand system that can hold all of it without losing coherence or flattening what makes it rich.
This is our most expansive brand engagement. It includes everything in Brand Foundations and builds well beyond it, into a complete brand ecosystem with room for what you're building now and what you're growing toward.
Full brand systems for multi-offer and multi-platform work
Brand Ecosystem Development typically runs 3–6 months, in four phases.
The process:
Phase 1: Discovery and research. In-depth brand discovery, community research, and a close look at your current brand, website, and channels. We're listening for what makes your work distinct and who it's meant for.
Phase 2: Strategy and architecture. Your positioning, messaging, and brand framework, alongside the decisions about how your offers, platforms, and sub-brands relate. We review and refine this together in a strategy session before anything is designed.
Phase 3: Visual and verbal identity. The longest phase: mood boards, creative direction sessions, design rounds, and refinement, with your input at every stage.
Phase 4: Documentation and handoff. Your brand standards document, ecosystem map, and asset library, organized and ready to use. Includes a walkthrough session if you'd like one and two weeks of support as you start applying the brand.
What's included:
Everything in Brand Foundations, plus:
-
We spend more time with the communities your work is for, through audience research, industry research, and social listening, so the brand is built around the people you serve, the language they use, and what they need.
-
A full visual language that flexes across every context: secondary marks, an icon or illustration system where it fits, custom-designed patterns and/or brand elements, photography direction, and a library of ready-to-use branded assets, all documented for you and future collaborators.
-
Does your mentoring feel like part of the same world as your group program? Does your newsletter feel connected to your website? Brand architecture answers those questions, mapping how each part of your work relates to the others and designing a system that makes those relationships clear.
-
A visual, strategic document showing how your brand, platforms, offers, content, and community connect. Developed together in a facilitated mapping session, and something you'll return to whenever you're weighing a new offer or direction.
-
For distinct initiatives or recurring campaigns, a framework that gives each one its own identity while keeping it clearly part of the whole, with visual and verbal guidance for each.
Practitioners, organizations, and movement builders whose work has many parts: a one-on-one practice and a group program, a shop and a newsletter, or a parent organization with campaigns and initiatives of its own.
Who this is for:
From $3,000 · Custom, budget-based pricing and payment plans available.
Building something with a lot of moving parts? Let's talk about what it needs.
Messaging Architecture
Brand messaging and positioning for values-led businesses
Sometimes the work is clear, but the words aren't. You know what you do, maybe you've done it for years, but when someone asks you to describe it, or you sit down to write your website, the language falls short of what you actually offer.
Messaging Architecture is for that. We build the core language of your work: your positioning, key messages, and the story frames that make what you do clear and resonant to clients, collaborators, and the wider world. Not a tagline exercise. A strategic language system you can use everywhere your work lives.
-
One clear articulation of who you are, who you serve, what you do, and what makes your work distinct. Not a tagline: the north star every other piece of writing anchors to. Refined together until it feels precisely true.
-
The key ideas, themes, and values that run through everything you write. What do you most want people to understand? What do you stand for, and against? With this documented, copy stops being something you figure out from scratch every time.
-
The words your clients actually use for their situation, frustrations, and hopes, found through audience research and listening exercises. When your copy speaks in their language, it stops reading like a pitch and starts reading like recognition.
-
A range of options for your website, social bio, email signature, and proposals, all grounded in the same positioning so they sound like one voice.
-
A practical guide to how your brand sounds: tone, register, the words that are distinctly yours, and the ones to avoid, with examples so it's concrete.
-
Opening lines, section hooks, and proposal language that show the framework applied to real writing. Not finished copy, but enough to get you unstuck and writing in your own voice from day one.
What's included:
From $1,500 · Custom, budget-based pricing and payment plans available.
If the language isn't doing justice to the work yet, that's exactly where we start.
This is for you if you recognize yourself here:
You've relied on word of mouth because you've never quite figured out how to describe what you do in writing, and it's starting to hold you back.
You're preparing for a launch, a rebrand, or a big expansion, and the language needs to be right before anything gets built around it.
You've worked with a designer before, and the copy was the hardest part. You cobbled something together, and it's never quite felt like you.
Your work has evolved, and the language you use for it is still telling an older version of the story.
Phase 1: Discovery. A pre-session questionnaire, then a deep-dive conversation about your work, values, clients, peers, and where you most need language. Between sessions, we research how your audience talks about what they need.
Phase 2: Development and drafting. We draft your positioning statement, messaging framework, and audience language, then refine together in a feedback session: a real conversation about what's landing, not a passive approval. This phase often surfaces insights about the work itself.
Phase 3: Refinement and delivery. Taglines, voice notes, and copy starters, all compiled into one organized document you can hand to a designer or copywriter, or use yourself.
Messaging Architecture typically takes 4–6 weeks, in three phases.
The process:
A complete language system for your work. Writing gets faster and clearer because you're drawing from something real and strategic instead of starting from scratch every time.
What you leave with:
Available on its own or as an add-on to a brand or website project. When it's an add-on, the messaging work happens first, so everything built around it starts with the right language.
Your website isn't a brochure you publish and never touch again. It's a living part of your creative ecosystem: the place where the right people land, find their way, and decide whether to trust you enough to reach out.
We design and build primarily on Squarespace, which gives you a professional, flexible site you can update yourself, without a dependency on a developer. Every site is mobile-friendly, built on solid SEO foundations, and designed to grow as your work does.
Two scopes, the same care. The difference is how much the site needs to hold.
Squarespace website design for small businesses, practitioners, and movements
Web Design
Essential Website: up to 5 pages
For practitioners and leaders who need a clear, considered, beautifully built web presence, without the overwhelm of a sprawling site that becomes hard to maintain. The Essential website is a focused, intentional presence: every page has a job to do, and everything is built to do it well.
This web design package is perfect for those launching for the first time, rebuilding after a long period of DIY, or whose current site no longer reflects the quality and values of what they're doing, and who has a relatively focused set of offerings that fit cleanly into 5 pages or fewer.
-
Where a visitor decides in seconds whether to stay. Designed to orient the right person right away, make your work and values clear, and point to the one action that matters most: reaching out, booking, reading, or buying.
-
Often the second page people visit. We help you write one that feels like meeting a real person, not reading a corporate bio.
-
A clear, honest presentation of what you offer now and who it's for, so the right person can recognize themselves and take the next step.
-
Where interest becomes action. Warm, reassuring copy and a form that makes reaching out feel easy.
-
A portfolio, resources page, shop, blog landing page, or whatever your work needs.
Also included: mobile-friendly design · SEO foundations (page titles, meta descriptions, image alt text, site structure) · integrations for booking, email signup, shop, or payments · 2 weeks of post-launch support
From $2,000 to $3,500 · Custom, budget-based pricing and payment plans available.
Strategic Website: up to 8 pages
For established practitioners, consultants, organizations, and movement builders with several offers, a body of writing, or a more involved path from first visit to inquiry. More pages, deeper content strategy, stronger SEO structure, and a site built to keep growing after launch.
-
Before anything is designed, we map the whole site: what pages exist, what each one needs to do, how a visitor moves through them, and where they might get stuck, with room for multiple audiences and offers.
-
An SEO plan based on the words your clients actually search, built into page titles, headings, and copy from the start, so the right people can find you and the site keeps gaining ground as it grows.
-
A blog or portfolio designed for reading and for search, with categories, post templates, and guidance on publishing in a way that builds traffic over time.
-
Room for an expanded services section, case studies, resources, team, FAQ, or whatever your work needs.
Also included: 4 weeks of post-launch support · a walkthrough session so you can manage and update the site yourself · Optional add-on: Advanced SEO
Not sure which scope fits? Let's figure it out together.
From $5,000· Custom, budget-based pricing and payment plans available.
Common questions about Take Root
-
Yes. Many people pair Brand Foundations or Messaging Architecture with a website. The brand and messaging work comes first, so the site is built on the right foundation.
-
Tell us. Every price is a starting point, and we offer budget-based and custom pricing. We'll be honest about what's possible based on whatever budget you’re working with.
-
We design and build primarily on Squarespace. [If you're on another platform, tell us what you're working with and we'll talk it through.
-
Our Messaging Architecture would be our recommended starting point if you do not currently have any copy to work with, as it gives you the core language. For folks who already have copy to work with, page-by-page copywriting can be added to any website project as needed.
-
Every project ends with a handoff, so you know how to use what we made together. Websites include post-launch support (2 weeks for Essential, 4 weeks for Strategic), and Brand Ecosystem Development includes 2 weeks of support after handoff. When you want help with ongoing marketing, PR, or content, that's Tend & Grow.
Tell us what you're dreaming up and where you want to take things. We'll help you find the right starting point
Let's build the foundation
What comes after the foundation? Tend & Grow is the ongoing marketing, PR, and community work that helps a new brand become known and trusted.