Might sound harsh, but neither $3k nor $10k is a branding project, and that’s why many people stay stuck in that ballpark. For that price, you sell a logo, a batch of colors, and a font. That’s just a small piece of what branding actually is. We’re currently starting a brand and website design project with a $1 billion company. They want to fix some issues with their logo, but the change can’t be too massive. They have multiple products and want the identity to be recognizable and scalable across those as well. They already have an established brand, but they know it doesn’t look modern. Their deadlines aren’t very relaxed, because they’re preparing for a conference for which we’ll also be producing a lot of materials. They want AI-native brand guidelines so they can scale site materials and other assets with better quality using AI. We’ll be handling all negotiations with stakeholders, doing presentations, and showing the thought process and decision-making that will lead us to the final result. This is just a piece of the kind of problems we’re going to solve for the business. This simply can’t be done for $10k, because there will be at least 5–6 designers of different kinds working on it for a few months. So if you’re the one stuck in that price range, you might just be getting a fairly fair price for what you bring to the table. Bring more and get more.