Today, large, medium, and small businesses must present a unique image that sets them apart from competitors. While a logo may perhaps be the first thing that comes to mind, it's important to recognize that it's not the only factor at play. A poorly developed logo can convey the wrong idea about your business to your customers. This is why your business needs more than a logo…it needs a brand kit.
To ensure that your brand accurately reflects the ideas and values you want it to associate with, it is essential to invest in a branding kit. This collection of elements, designed to guide the development of your brand's identity, will most likely ensure that it results in a memorable and recognizable outcome.
To achieve this goal, it's important to have a clear understanding of what a brand kit is, which brand assets or elements it typically includes, and how it can be created. By leveraging the right tools and resources, businesses and individuals can establish a strong and impactful brand identity that resonates with their target audience.
Definition of Brand Kit
A brand kit is the set of all the visual elements of your business brand: colors, fonts, and logos that build your visual identity.
Maintaining consistent branding across all marketing materials and channels, including traditional and digital media, is a major obstacle faced by businesses of any scale. As a result, it's vital to prioritize the identification of all branding assets and create a comprehensive document that serves as a reference for all stakeholders.
A branding kit will ensure that everyone involved with your business is aware of which assets should be employed and how they should be incorporated, thus promoting consistency and coherence in your branding efforts.
In addition to the visual elements, a good brand kit must establish the correct corporate brand identity, to align all the components to the characteristics, values, and philosophy that you want to communicate.
How to develop a Corporate Identity Brand Kit?
Corporate identity encompasses the set of values, philosophy, characteristics, and personality with which a brand or business wants to be identified. It is mainly based on two aspects:
- Characteristics that define the company
- Visual elements that identify it
Before working on the design of the visual identity of a business, one should reflect on the characteristics that define the company:
- What are your values, mission, and vision?
- What is the message you want to transmit and to whom (audience)?
- What tone will be utilized in communication? Serious, kind, empathetic, honest, funny, direct
- What purpose do you seek to fulfill? Educate, sell, inform, entertain
- What channels will you use to communicate? Blog, social networks, videos, live presentations, texts in print media
- What place do you seek to occupy in the minds of consumers?
- How do you want your audience to perceive your brand or business?
- What is your competitive advantage?
Once all the necessary elements have been identified and clearly defined, the next step is to translate this information into a visual language. By creating a symbolic representation of these components, businesses and brands can establish a distinct visual identity that helps them stand out and differentiate themselves from competitors. Utilizing a variety of visual elements can enhance the recognition and memorability of your brand, ultimately contributing to its success.
Branding fonts: your brand’s signature
A brand kit includes the fonts that will feed all the texts and that will make your logo and brand recognizable.
To create a simple and clean image, it is advisable to limit the use of fonts to no more than two, both for the logo and any text used on the web or other communications. Using too many fonts can create a sense of disorder or confusion, sending the wrong message to your audience. Alternatively, a single font family can be employed, with different weights combined for use in the text. This approach can help maintain consistency and clarity in your branding assets and thus your efforts.
Paying close attention to fonts is important in keeping a strong brand identity. Fonts should not be deformed, as this can make them difficult to reproduce across materials and communication channels. Proper line spacing should also be managed to ensure readability and consistency. By managing these elements carefully, businesses and brands can establish a clear and impactful visual identity that resonates with their target audience.
There are three main groups of branding fonts:
- With serif: these fonts are usually employed for elegant and classic designs
- Without serif: these fonts have a modern aesthetic and are often utilized in designs that prioritize simplicity and minimalism
- Script: these fonts emulate handwritten typography and add a personalized touch to your design
Color palette: the clothing of your brand
Colore are another important and determining visual element to transmit a correct message and attract the correct audience. Colors symbolize feelings and emotions. There are cold, warm, heavy, sad, and happy colors. Color perception is subjective and depends on cultural factors.
Normally, we associate green with nature and ecology. Red is related to danger, but also to energy and passion. Blue, on the other hand, transmits serenity, seriousness, confidence, and cleanliness.
It is advisable not to use more than three corporate colors in your brand kit. One or two-color prints are always going to be cheaper. Combining three colors when designing is not an easy task.
- Pantone colors are ideal for your branding kit. They are standardized colors with a code with which you will ensure that they are faithfully reproduced on any of the supports (offline or online).
- CMYK colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key - Black) are used for printing and are more muted. They are the pigment colors or subtractive systems because the mixture of the three CMY colors gives the color black (they subtract light).
- RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colors, on the other hand, are brighter and are used for screens. It is called light color or additive system because the mixture of these three colors produces white.
Logo: the face of your brand
After finalizing the colors, typography, and overall brand identity, the next step is designing a logo. The logo serves as the graphic representation and unique identifier of your brand. Although it can be a complex task, creating an effective logo is essential to establishing a strong and recognizable brand identity that resonates with the target audience.
A logo can be made up of a name or a combination of a name and an image. Sometimes, we mistake the concepts. So, it is convenient to clarify the differences between logotype, isotype, imagotype, and isologotype.
- Logo: Only includes typography
- Isotype: Only includes the symbol
- Imagotype: Includes the typography and the symbol
- Isologo: It is the fusion in a single piece of the typography and the symbol
It is advisable to have several versions of the logo in your brand kit, depending on whether it is only for the web or also for printing, as well as the monochrome version of it.
Also, it is important to specify the correct and incorrect uses of the logo in our brand guidelines or brand book. Clearly define how the logo should appear on both light and dark backgrounds, and provide guidance on any usage restrictions or modifications that should be avoided to maintain the integrity of your brand identity.
Other resources for your brand kit
In addition to the main elements such as typography, colors, and logo, your brand kit can include an extra set of assets that can make a difference in your visual communication.
Patterns for your brand
Repeating patterns are all the rage. In fact, they have been used for a lifetime, in fabrics and in the wallpapers that were used before gouttelette.
Without a doubt, patterns can give a decorative touch to your brand and can be used creatively in corporate stationery or in your posts on social networks. It is a very visual element to include in your brand kit and it will help you to be more recognizable. In addition, you have many types: geometric, with nature motifs, tribal, handmade, and cartoon type.
Also, you can look for backgrounds that share your corporate color and that you think can work well for the covers of your e-books, to put inspirational phrases in your Instagram posts, or for your creatives in carousels and stories.
Iconography
Icons are everywhere. They are small pieces of content that are highly visual and easily recognizable. They can be seen daily in infographics, web pages, blogs, biographies, or Instagram posts.
These brand assets are also commonly used in the offline world, in airports, streets, shopping malls, and hotels, as universal signage. At a simple glance, we identify what that symbol means to us and visually support the content.
Icon sets can be created according to your business, the type of products or services you provide, and use the colors you have established in your branding kit. In this way, your visual materials will have a reinforcement that can make them look more striking, with a minimalist and simple approach.
Give your brand the identity it deserves
A brand kit will not only make your brand look more beautiful and attractive, but it will also help you better define what you hope your customers see in it, make them feel identified, and prefer it over the competition.
A brand kit will compete in an important document and every member of the administration of your business must know and know how to apply it without errors since it will represent the way in which they will be able to establish correct communication with the public.
If you don't have a brand kit, it's time to start developing one. If you don't know how to do it, a digital marketing agency is the best way to achieve it, because by having specialists such as marketers, designers, and programmers, you won't have to worry about it, because they will be in charge of capturing the image you are looking for for your business.
Get in touch with the Best Branding Agency in Miami
Designing your brand identity is not an easy task. But, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. At Creatum Studios, we are a branding agency in Miami that works with a team of in-house branding designers. Plus our SEM, social ads, and SEO specialists are dedicated to providing top-notch services to our clients. Additionally, we assign a personal project manager to each client to ensure effective communication and collaboration, and to achieve tangible business goals in the most efficient manner.
Get timely results, sales, and growth for your business starting now! Contact us and start working with the best digital marketing agency in Miami Fl (or anywhere in the world, we are allies of remote work!). Request here a complimentary personalized proposal for your business.
