Case study
Brass Taxes
About/ A brand built to attract artists, freelancers, and other nice people. And make everyone else click away.
Role/ Brand strategy & design
Category/ Brand identity
Mandate/ Build a complete brand identity for a niche tax service — from zero to launch.
This brand is designed to be self-selecting. Brass Taxes focuses on a specific niche, and wants to keep it that way. We built a three-armed referee as the brand mascot to represent the brand’s sense of humor, while reminding customers that there are rules to follow.
The brand needed to do something most brands avoid: make the right people feel immediately at home, and let everyone else know this probably isn't for them.
01
Lead with the niche
Most brands try to appeal to everyone. We did the opposite. Every design decision was made to speak directly to creative freelancers — and to signal clearly that this service wasn't built for corporate clients or casual filers. The narrower the audience, the stronger the voice.
02
Build around a mascot
The three-armed referee became the visual anchor. It captured the tension at the heart of the business: taxes have real rules and real consequences, but dealing with them doesn't have to feel intimidating.
03
Extend the system to every touchpoint
Creative freelancers weren't going to discover Brass Taxes through one channel. The identity had to survive everywhere from the website to a flyer in a coffee shop. So we built color, type, illustration and voice as a system rather than a collection of assets.
Impact/ A niche business with a brand entirely its own. Brass Taxes launched with a complete identity and a digital experience that let clients book appointments and file online. More importantly, the business finally looked and sounded like the people it was built to serve.
“Daniel transformed not only the way we did business, but our branding, imaging, and continues to support many aspects of our bigger vision.”