Guide

What is actually in a brand kit

The term covers everything from three files to a sixty page manual. Here is what the pieces are and which of them you will open again.

Short answer. A useful brand kit contains four things: logo lockups in several arrangements, a defined colour palette with exact values, a type system naming two typefaces and how to use them, and applied artwork such as stationery and social templates. Anything else is optional. A brand guide document ties them together and matters most when someone else will be producing work for you.

Lockups

A lockup is one fixed arrangement of your logo elements. Most businesses need three or four.

Primary. The full version with the mark and the name together, usually horizontal. This is the default.
Stacked. The same elements arranged vertically, for narrow spaces such as a shopfront window or a phone screen.
Mark only. The symbol without the name, for a profile picture, a favicon or a stamp. Only works if the name is already known in that context.
One colour. Solid black and solid white versions. Embroiderers, sign writers, stamp makers and anyone printing on a dark background will ask for these.

The one colour versions are the ones people forget and then need urgently. A uniform supplier cannot embroider a gradient.

Colour palette

A palette is a short list of colours with exact values, not a mood board. Each colour should be given in hex for screens and CMYK for print, and in Pantone if you have a reason to need spot colour.

Three to five colours is the workable range. One dominant colour, one or two supporting, one accent used sparingly, plus a near black for text and an off white for backgrounds. Palettes fail when every colour is equally strong, because then nothing leads and every layout becomes an argument.

Type system

Two typefaces is the practical limit for a business without a design department. One for headings, one for body text. The type sheet should name them, state where each is used, and give the weights.

Licensing is the part that catches people. A typeface you found on your laptop is licensed to your computer, not to your business, and commercial use of an unlicensed font is a real exposure. Google Fonts are free for commercial use, which is why they appear in most template work including ours.

Stationery

Business card, letterhead, and often an email signature. These exist because they are the pieces that carry your details out into the world where you cannot correct them. A letterhead earns its place if you send quotes or invoices as documents rather than through accounting software that has its own layout.

Social artwork

Profile images, cover images, and post templates at current platform sizes. The point is consistency across the places people check you before they call. A feed that looks like one business reads as a business that is still trading.

The brand guide

A document that records your decisions: colour values, type, spacing rules around the logo, and what not to do with it. For a business doing its own artwork, a single page is enough. It matters far more the moment somebody else produces work for you, because a sign writer, a printer and a web developer will otherwise each make their own guesses and you will end up with three versions of your brand.

What a brand kit is not

It is not a brand. A kit is the visual toolkit. Brand is what people say about you when you are not there, and no file set changes that on its own.

It is also not brand strategy. Positioning, naming, tone of voice and audience work sit upstream of any of this, cost considerably more, and are worth doing when there is a real decision riding on them.

What you will actually use

In our experience of what people ask for after buying, the order runs roughly like this. The primary lockup and the one colour versions get used constantly. The colour values get pasted into a website, a booking system and an invoice template within the first week. The business card gets printed once and reordered a year later. The social templates get used heavily for a month and then intermittently. The letterhead gets used if the business sends documents, and never if it does not.

Buy for the first three. Treat the rest as included rather than as the reason to buy.

Kit or individual pieces

Buying separately makes sense when you need one thing and know it. A card, or a logo on its own.

A kit makes sense when the pieces have to match. The common failure for a new business is buying a logo in one place, a card somewhere else and a website template from a third, then discovering that the three blues are different blues and the type does not sit together. Matching them afterwards costs more time than buying them together would have.

What our kits contain

Our brand kits run to $199 and include the logo lockups, the colour and type system, printed stationery with correct bleed, social artwork at platform sizes, and a brand guide page listing your own colours, typefaces and contact details as you entered them. Each kit lists its exact artboards on its own page, so you can see precisely what a given kit produces before buying.

Common questions

What should be included in a brand kit?

At minimum: logo lockups including one colour versions, a colour palette with hex and CMYK values, a type system naming two typefaces and their uses, and applied artwork such as a business card and social templates. A brand guide recording those decisions is what lets someone else produce work that matches.

What is the difference between a logo and a brand kit?

A logo is one piece of artwork. A brand kit is the logo plus the system around it: the lockup variants, the defined colours, the typefaces, and the applied pieces such as stationery and social artwork so everything you produce matches.

Do I need a brand guide if I am the only person using it?

One page is worth having even then, because you will hand it to a printer, a sign writer or a web developer at some point. A long guidelines document is not worth commissioning until several people are producing work under your name.

How many colours should a brand palette have?

Three to five. One dominant, one or two supporting, one accent used sparingly, plus a near black for text and an off white for backgrounds. Palettes fail when every colour is equally strong and nothing leads.

Why do I need a one colour version of my logo?

Because embroidery, stamps, etched glass, single colour signage and printing on dark backgrounds all need solid artwork. Suppliers ask for it constantly, and a gradient or multi colour mark cannot be reproduced by those processes.

Templates mentioned here

Written by BrandLaunch. Last reviewed August 2026.