A brand kit is a document that outlines the written and visual brand identity of your business. This document helps business owners create branded assets for different channels that have the same look and feel. This consistency makes your brand more recognizable, professional, and appealing to potential customers. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to make (and make use of) a brand kit for your business.
Why do I need a brand kit for my business?
A brand kit not only helps you stay consistent as you build your business, but it also allows you to more easily scale. If you’re growing fast and hire someone to manage, for example, social media or PR, that person needs to know quickly how to create visually cohesive branded materials. It ensures that no matter who is creating your content, it is recognizable to your customers and helps you stand out.
What does a brand kit include?
A brand kit contains the foundational elements of your brand: its logos, fonts, colors, mission statement, brand values, ideal customer, and templates or design mockups. Each of these elements contributes to the overall look and feel of your brand, and can be mixed and matched to create brand assets and templates you can use consistently.
You’ll use your brand kit to ensure that your website, business cards, social media content, packaging, and other business assets all consistently and effectively convey your brand identity. Having written information about your brand values, mission, and ideal customer also helps ensure that you are speaking to the right audience in a way that’s aligned with your brand strategy.
Your brand kit is thus a foundational document that will be referenced (and possibly adjusted) continuously over time. Take your time and consideration to build it. I always tell my customers that your branding is the first impression your business makes to potential customers. It should be carefully crafted to align with your business goals.
Why do I need logo variations?
Your logo is the one asset that your business will use most often and across all your different platforms. A logo that looks great for print might not work as a social media icon. At a minimum, you should have both light and dark versions of your logo for use on different background colors. I typically also recommend my clients have a more formal or complex version of their logo and a simplified version that can easily scale down to create browser icons, social icons, and other small formats. To plan how many and what kind of logo variations you need, sit down and write a list of all the places you will need your logo to be.
How do I choose brand fonts?
Choosing brand fonts might sound easy, but it’s not as simple as picking fonts you like. You have to consider how readable the fonts you use are, as well as how well they fit the look and feel of your brand. Most brands also have more than one font, for example for logos, headers, and body text, so you also need to think about font pairings. Your body text should be easy to read at both large and small sizes. Your brand fonts should feel right for your brand and convey something about it visually. You should also consider whether or not the fonts you’re using have been overused or are already associated with another brand. After all, your brand fonts should help you stand out, not have you confused with another business.
How many fonts should I include in my brand kit?
You should also be thinking about font pairings for your brand. If everything is written in the same font, it looks visually boring and monotonous. If you have more than three different fonts, the visual effect can be scattered and disorganized. I typically recommend having 2 brand fonts with a maximum of 3.
When pairing fonts, it’s nice to have a bit of contrast. The bigger size the font will be, for example in your logo, the more you can get away with unique and complex elements. You should always use simpler, easy to read fonts for your main body text. If your logo font isn’t too complex, it could also be your header font. Don’t overthink it, but get a few people’s opinions on your proposed fonts and font pairings. It never hurts to hear unbiased perspective from other people – it can actually give you insight that helps you ultimately strengthen your brand design.
How do I make my brand kit color palette?
Like fonts, brand colors help establish your brand’s visual look and feel. In color psychology, different colors evoke different feelings when we view them. Brands use color to evoke feelings of calm, trust, playfulness, sincerity, optimism, and even fear. Emotions are strong motivators, and color helps us evoke them with intention to attract our ideal customer.
Having a color palette instead of just one or two brand colors also helps create contrast and interest in your visual identity. It gives your brand more versatility as well, especially when accounting for your brand assets being used in both light and dark backgrounds. It’s common to have a primary brand color, one or two accent colors, and then a very light and very dark color for text.
In addition to color theory and visual vibes, color also needs to be accessible. There are now international standards for digital accessbility, which websites must meet by law in many countries. These standards include color contrast accessibility, including alt text in images for screen readers, and closed captions for video content. When I’m checking color accessibility for my clients, I use this free tool.
Why do I need brand values in my brand kit?
Brand values establish what is important for your brand, what impact you want your brand to have, and how you will show up for your customers. Having strong brand values helps you find your target audience more easily, and it helps them understand quickly what your business is all about.
Are you an empowering brand that wants to solve a problem for your customers? Are you a trustworthy brand that protects its customers’ data when performing online services? Are you an inspiring brand that wants to help its customers unleash their creativity and self-expression? Each of these different brands would want to convey their values and identity differently, because they have different customers. Your brand values help ensure that you’re showing up where you’re most likely to find your ideal customer.
What customer information should be in my brand kit?
It’s a great idea to do thorough research into your ideal customer to learn what they care about, what pain points they have, and how they already look for new products and services. This information helps you better position your brand, show up in the spaces your potential customer is already spending time online, and more effectively communicate your brand value (and values.)
I recommend that your audience analysis and insights are as detailed as possible. You should have a good idea of what online channels you can expect to find your target customer, how they search online for solutions to their pain points, and what kind of messaging they are most likely to react positively to. My Brand Blueprint contains a detailed audience report with SEO research, recommendations for which channels to be present in and ideas for what kind of content will be most effective.
How do I make design templates for my brand?
Design templates for your brand allow you to plan and create consistent brand assets. Most design software has the ability to save designs as templates so that you can quickly make adjustments from a saved version. Depending on your budget and skill with design, you can use tools like Canva, Adobe Suite, or Affinity Suite to create and save design templates.
When it comes to what templates to create, think about which channels you will most frequently be creating content for. In most cases, it’s social media. I recommend looking at all of your different brand asset designs together to make sure they feel cohesive. Your business cards, website, social media posts, letterhead, packaging, and uniforms should all feel part of the same brand story.
Ok, I made my brand kit, now what?
Congratulations! Your brand kit is a vitally important document that you can continuously reference to ensure consistency in the assets you create for your brand. Tools like Canva allow you to save brand fonts, colors, and logos from your brand kit so that you can easily input them into new designs. The audience and brand values information is there to make sure that you’re communicating with your values and strategy in mind. Reference this document often!