What design consulting sells, and why one logo costs twenty times another

A founder asks two studios to quote for a new identity. One comes back at ₹2 lakh, the other at ₹40 lakh. Both say "logo" in the first line of the proposal, and the founder assumes one of them is either greedy or careless.

Usually neither is. The two studios are selling different things under the same label. One is selling a file. The other is selling a decision about how the company will be recognised for the next decade, plus the rules that keep that decision intact across every touchpoint.

That gap is the whole story of design consulting as a business. The industry has no standard product, no standard job title and no standard price, and the confusion costs studio owners more than it costs clients.

01Four businesses under one word

Design-led strategy. Firms such as IDEO, Accenture's Fjord and McKinsey's design practice use research methods (interviews, field observation, journey mapping) to answer business questions that are not visual at all. Should a bank launch a product line? How should a hospital rebuild patient intake? The deliverable is a service blueprint or a recommendation, and the buyer sits in the C-suite.

Brand and identity. Pentagram, Landor and, in India, Pune's Elephant Design decide how a company is named, seen and heard, and write the system that governs it. The work is highly visible and hard to reverse, which is exactly why clients pay for seniority.

Product and experience design. Studios such as ustwo design apps, sites and software interfaces that engineering teams then build. In our read this is the biggest part of Indian design consulting by headcount, fed by every company putting its customer journey on a phone.

Production. Freelancers and small studios produce assets to a fixed brief: social posts, collateral, packaging mock-ups, decks. Clients buy volume and speed, priced per piece or per hour. This is the format AI tools are eating first, a shift we map task by task in what AI takes from a design studio. A studio that sells all four formats without separating them gets undercut on production and underpaid on strategy.

A studio that sells all four formats without separating them gets undercut on production and underpaid on strategy.

03Three numbers that reveal your real format

Studios tend to describe themselves by their best project. The numbers describe them by their average one. We use three.

• Revenue per designer. Above roughly ₹25 lakh a year suggests clients are paying for judgement. Below about ₹12 lakh, the studio is a production shop whatever its website says.
• Retainer share of revenue. Above half, cash is predictable and hiring can be planned. Below a third, the founder is selling every month to stand still.
• Utilisation. Billed hours over available hours. Above 75% is disciplined. Below 65% points to a thin pipeline, too much unpaid pitching, or slow client approvals.

Run these on the last twelve months, not the best quarter. A studio that calls itself strategic but earns ₹10 lakh per designer on 25% retainer revenue has a positioning claim and a production business.