Purposeful Branding for Early-Stage Brands: Key Findings
Somewhere along the way, minimalism became the startup dress code.
Just look around at many major brands.
You’ll see lots of sans-serif logos, soft neutrals, and tidy layouts. Google did it. So did Airbnb, Spotify, Uber.
And that’s the problem.
When everyone’s playing the same visual game, even great ideas start to look generic.
Fitting in might seem cool, but leaning too hard on sameness makes it harder to stand out, let alone gain recognition.
Given nearly 50% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands they recognize, visibility and recall aren’t just nice to have. They’re actually business-critical.
Editor's Note: This is a sponsored article created in partnership with Erretres.
Pablo Rubio Ordás is the founder and CEO of Erretres, a strategic design company helping startups turn identity into growth.
He’s spent over 20 years watching this trend unfold, and helping ambitious brands break away from it.
In this interview with DesignRush, Ordás shares six strategic design principles that help startups build stronger brands, grow faster, and stand out in a crowded market.
Who is Pablo Rubio Ordás?
Pablo Rubio Ordás is the founder and CEO of Erretres – The Strategic Design Company, a Madrid-based consultancy working globally across branding, digital products, and strategy. For over 20 years, he’s helped startups and established brands alike transform design into a tool for growth. His work has supported five unicorns and multiple successful exits, shaping more than $7 billion in combined market value. Beyond client work, Pablo is building Design4Growth, a global community dedicated to elevating the role of strategic design in business.
1. Treat Brand as a Growth Engine
Many startups still approach branding as an aesthetic exercise: a logo, a color palette, something to “look more polished” before launch.
But treating brand as decoration often means missing its real potential: helping a company define direction and scale with coherence.
Rubio and his team look for early signs that a startup is ready to take the brand seriously. The strongest indicator is mindset.
Companies that understand their purpose, plan beyond the next round, and invite collaboration tend to build brands that can evolve with them.
“We look for three clear signals,” Rubio says.
“First, strategic clarity, when founders know the ‘why’ behind their product, not just the ‘what.’ Second, ambition beyond the next round, a vision that sees brand as a business multiplier, not a cosmetic layer. And third, a culture of collaboration, because brand and product building is a shared effort.”
When startups approach branding this way, it becomes part of their decision-making fabric.
As Rubio puts it, “Every company wants to be the next Apple or Airbnb, but few know where to start. That’s where we come in.”
2. Design for Scale, Not Just Launch
The startups that grow fastest often face a new challenge: how to keep their brand coherent as they expand.
Without a system that evolves, design decisions pile up and consistency erodes.
Rubio points to Playtomic as an example. When Erretres began working with them, the company was expanding across markets but needed a stronger foundation for its brand and product experience.
“Our team worked on three layers,” he explains.
“Clarifying the strategic positioning: moving from a sports booking app to a platform that connects a global community of players. Designing a brand and product ecosystem with consistency and scalability at its core. And creating a unified experience across brand, UX/UI, and communications.”
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This clarity helped Playtomic grow into one of the leading global players in its category.
“The design system and strategy should act as a growth infrastructure, not just a visual identity,” Rubio says.
3. Build the Brand from the Inside Out
Even with a strong identity and design system, many startups miss one crucial step: getting their own teams to live the brand.
“The most underrated move is building internal adoption early,” Rubio says. “Many startups launch their new identity externally and forget to align their teams internally.”
Erretres encourages founders to see the brand as an internal operating system, something that guides culture, behavior, and decisions.
It’s a mindset that turns design into a management tool.
For example, with the fintech Embat, Erretres worked closely as the company built its in-house design capabilities.
“From the very beginning we collaborated closely,” Rubio explains. “In just two years, they’ve become a serious contender for unicorn status.”
When employees understand and use the brand as a shared compass, the brand becomes something people build together.
4. Use Minimalism as Strategy
Minimalism is often seen as the ultimate mark of sophistication, but when every brand looks the same, it loses its power.
Rubio has watched the trend closely and warns against treating simplicity as an aesthetic shortcut.
“I love simplicity, but not uniformity,” he says. “Today, launching a new brand to the market requires it to function flawlessly… while having a strong, distinctive personality from day one.”
Erretres helps clients achieve that balance through three principles: purposeful reduction, cultural depth, and systemic tension.
“Minimalism should amplify meaning, not remove it,” Rubio explains. “We integrate subtle references from the brand’s context, sector, or geography to make simplicity memorable. And we design frameworks that allow consistency and creative freedom.”
The difference between a minimal brand that lasts and one that fades is how intentionally it’s built.
5. Don’t Wait to Design Your Brand
For early-stage founders, the idea of “doing branding later” can seem logical: focus on the product now, polish later.
However, postponing brand work is still a form of design.
“We usually say: ‘You already have a brand, the question is whether you’re designing it or letting it happen by accident,’” Rubio says.
He compares it to personal habits: skipping design doesn’t mean you’re neutral; it communicates something, intentionally or not.
“Just like skipping a shower or dressing poorly communicates something about your habits, choosing not to design sends a message, whether you intend it or not,” Rubio says.
“As Tibor Kalman famously said, ‘You can’t not communicate.’ Everything communicates.”
This awareness has paid off for many of the startups Erretres has supported early.
“Doing branding later often means redesigning everything twice. Doing it early means designing for growth,” Rubio adds.
Over the past decade, those early investments have translated into measurable success.
“Looking back, we’ve helped build five unicorns and supported two founders in achieving successful exits, with a combined market value exceeding $7 billion. Crazy numbers.”
6. Redefine Design as Strategy
After more than 20 years leading Erretres, Rubio’ view of design has evolved. For him, strategic design is about guiding businesses through transformation.
“For me, the term ‘strategic design’ encompasses both the traditional view of design (as a final outcome and a process) and the contemporary view (as a driver of business direction),” Rubio says.
“It is no coincidence that the company that took design more seriously, Apple, became the most valuable.”
This perspective demands a deeper kind of partnership.
Rubio advice for agencies and founders alike? Become partners in decision-making, not decoration.
“That means understanding business models, technology, and human behavior as deeply as you understand typography or color,” Rubio says. “Design is no longer just a discipline. It’s a way of leading organizations through change.”
The Future Belongs to Brands With Meaning
What’s the main takeaway?
In a sea of sleek sameness, the brands that break through are the ones that build with intention from day one.
Minimalism isn't the problem. But meaninglessness minimalism? Skip it.
As Ordás puts it, design isn’t decoration. It’s direction.
The earlier founders treat branding as a system for decision-making, not just a logo, the faster they scale with clarity, confidence, and character.
