How To Choose A Branding Kit Template For Your Business

Choosing a branding kit template is not easy. It can feel overwhelming and like you will never get the end result you are looking for.

As you go through this journey (yes it’s a journey) I want you to give yourself grace and be willing to tweak and change it as you go.

Here is something really important that I want you to know.

Then if you are making consistent money you can take some time to really go through your brand visuals and make them more tailored to your dream brand.

What is a branding kit?

A branding kit is a collection of visual assets and guidelines that help you keep a cohesive brand. Basically, it helps keep your business looking pretty and less scattered. 

It serves as a visual guide for all aspects of your brand, ensuring consistency across all of your platforms and marketing materials.

A branding kit typically includes a color palette for your brand colors, logos, fonts, and graphic elements and anything you think is important that gets across to your customers. 

Anyone can benefit from utilizing branding kits to keep a consistent visual brand identity. Whether you’re a small business owner, a freelancer, or a social media influencer, having a well-defined branding is crucial in creating a recognizable and memorable brand.

Let me be clear that a brand kit is not the same as a media kit. The media kit is something with your stats like email list size, social following, and a pricing guide for people who want to work with you and sponsor your content.

Brand Kits Are Time-saving

Don’t go jumping over to canva or Etsy before finishing this post. I want to make sure you know all the pieces you might need before buying a brand kit just because it looks pretty. 

Brand kits are not just valuable for maintaining consistent branding, but they also help you save time. By having all the essential elements of a brand’s visuals in one centralized place, brand kits streamline the design process of any new content you might create.

One of the primary ways brand kits save time is by offering pre-made templates. These templates are designed with the brand’s visual identity in mind, ensuring consistency and efficiency. Instead of spending hours creating new designs, businesses can simply customize these pre-made templates to suit their specific needs.

Graphics can be easily customized with the brand’s logo, color palette, and fonts, allowing you to quickly create eye-catching posts for their social media, sales images, and products that are cohesive. 

Design Your Brand without a Designer

Designing a brand without a designer may seem daunting, but with the help of a brand kit template, it can be easy and affordable. 

Whether you’re just starting out or growing your business, brand kits allow you to make your business look professional without the high price tag. And if I am being honest they are great for people (like me) who love to experiment and try on brand styles to find what really feels like the brand you want to create for yourself. 

Create A Pinterest Brand Board For Ideas

This was a great tool that helped me create a brand that worked well together and I was able to find pieces of my brand and save them all in one place then removed the ones that later didn’t fit.

Search things like neutral brand kit, neutral color pallets, or bright warm color pallets. To help get you started.

Tap one image that is really close to something you would like to see as your brand and see what is underneath that image to find even more inspo that is similar to that image.

Free Canva Templates

When you are just getting started developing your own brand kit you should definitely start with a free canva template. This will help you get your feet wet in the world of branding before you spend money on pre-made template kits from Etsy or Creative Market. 

Even the free version of canva does have a wide range of customizable templates specifically designed for brand kits. Start with creating a brand board in canva and then once you find a brand design you want to start with you can add the colors and fonts into your branding kit that helps keep all of your brand information in the menu to the left no matter what project you are creating. 

Once you create your overarching brand guide then you can start creating brand assets and graphics to use for your socials and so much more.

Affordability is another major advantage of using brand kits. Hiring a professional designer can be expensive, especially for small businesses or startups.

 Brand kits offer a cost-effective solution by providing all the necessary design resources in one package. You can save both time and money by using the pre-made templates and design elements included in the brand kit. And honestly, I don’t think anyone is going to be able to tell if you hired a brand designer or not.

What is included in a brand kit?

A brand kit typically includes a variety of essential design elements that help establish and maintain a cohesive visual identity for a business or brand. 

These elements include a color palette, which consists of primary and secondary colors, along with their corresponding hex codes. 

Your chosen (or custom) fonts or typography choices that reflect the brand’s personality and style. 

It may also include a logo and variations of it for different uses and background colors. such as social media profiles or business cards. 

Brand guidelines or style guides are also commonly part of a brand kit, providing instructions and rules on how to consistently use the brand assets across various platforms and marketing materials. By having all these elements in one convenient package, a brand kit makes it easier for businesses to create professional, consistent, and visually appealing content.

Brand Message

The brand message is a vital element of a brand identity kit. It shows the rules for language or copy used across various platforms, from social media to customer communication and marketing material. A well-crafted brand message not only communicates the essence of the brand but also provides the guidelines for maintaining a consistent and cohesive voice.

Visuals

A brand kit is a collection of essential visual elements that represent a brand’s identity. These visuals include a variety of types such as illustrations, branded graphics, cartoons, doodles, icons, and stock images.

Setting clear guidelines for these visuals is crucial for maintaining a consistent and cohesive brand image. These guidelines encompass the style of illustration, choosing the right stock photography, specifying background textures, defining a color palette, and more. By establishing guidelines for visuals, a brand ensures that its visual elements are on-brand and align with its overall message and identity. 

Fonts

Fonts play a crucial role in a brand kit as they contribute to the overall brand identity and feel. The right choice of fonts can convey the brand’s personality, values, and establish a consistent visual language.

When it comes to font pairings, the combination of different fonts can evoke different emotions and establish a hierarchy within a brand’s visual communication. Canva has a lot of great free fonts you can choose from and even pairings to help you put the right ones together.

Here are some canva font pairing examples you can find under the text tab in canva.

 For example, pairing a bold and sans-serif font with a delicate and serif font can create a sense of balance and elegance. On the other hand, using a playful and hand-drawn scrapped font alongside a clean and modern san serif font can convey creativity and uniqueness.

Choosing font pairings can be really hard but sticking to just a few brand fonts can really help with decisions in creating content and keeping your brand cohesive. 

Choosing Colors

Colors play a crucial role in a brand kit as they help establish the visual identity and evoke emotions in consumers. When choosing colors for a brand, it is important to consider the brand’s personality, target audience, and the emotions you want to convey.

A brand kit typically includes both a primary and a secondary color palette. The primary color palette consists of the key colors that represent the brand and should be used consistently across all brand elements. These colors help create instant recognition and association with the brand.

On the other hand, the secondary color palette provides additional options for variation and flexibility in design. These colors can be used to support and complement the primary colors, adding depth and visual interest to the brand. Both the primary and secondary color palettes should work together and give a similar feel for brand consistency.

Designers commonly use different types of color codes to ensure accurate color reproduction across various mediums. Hex codes, RGB values, and CMYK color codes are commonly used to specify colors for digital and print projects. At a minimum having the hex codes with each chosen color will help make sure your brand stays consistent across platforms regardless of screen quality.

How to Create a Brand Kit

It might feel scary trying to create your brand kit for your homestead business. So take it slow and create one aspect at a time. Take this list below and work through it as you create your brand kit. 

1. Think about how you want to come across to your customers. Make a list of 3-5 words that represent your brand. — For my brand here on the blog, I want to be classy, approachable, educational, and warm. As you create each aspect of your brand keep those words in mind.
2. Look at other brands in your industry and find ways to be different. – Most homestead brands have an earthy green and some form of yellow or orange. On top of that they have fonts that are not high end in my opinion. The best way to get people to remember you is to stand out. Don’t be ugly for the sake of standing out but definitely do what you can that feels authentic to you and still stand out.

Start creating:

• Color palettes. – 5 or so colors at first.
• Typography/fonts
• Logos – Black (dark version) White (light version) and also a smaller version that is the same size on all four sides so you can fit it in different places.
• Graphic elements. 

Create A Brand Kit In Canva

Canva is a popular online design tool that allows you to easily create stunning visual content for your brand. With Canva, you can also create a comprehensive brand kit that includes all the essential elements needed to maintain a consistent and professional brand identity.

They have some great kits you can start with and use those if you don’t feel the need to change them you don’t have to. But you can look through those to get you started. 

I also went through Etsy and looked at all of the brand kit options in there to help me pull the pieces I liked together and develop my own brand kit. 

Create a unique color palette for your business.

Start by choosing the main color of your brand or the primary color that represents your brand well. This primary color will serve as the foundation for choosing the rest of your colors and your brand’s visuals.

Next, it’s important to find complementary colors that work well together and enhance your primary color. It can feel difficult to choose the right colors but this is why it helps to choose a color scheme based on other palettes you see if you aren’t good at choosing colors that go together.

As you look for colors you like you can add a Chrome extension to your browser called color picker. After initiating the color picker you simply hold the mouse over a color you like then click. And it will give you the standard color code and you can put that hex code into canva.

As you choose colors make sure to remember how you want your brand to feel. I don’t wear pink pretty much ever but I did want my brand to feel more feminine. So that is why there is a light blush pink throughout the brand. If I didn’t have those warmer colors my brand would definitely feel more masculine. Which I didn’t want.

Create Templates To Match Your Brand Kit And Save Time

Creating templates that match your brand kit can save you valuable time while maintaining consistency in your branding efforts. 

Canva has a tone of brand designs that will get you started but I find it faster to buy a brand kit off of etsy. They are very affordable and I found kits that were much closer to the style I was looking for. Plus they have designs for EVERY aspect of your business. In canva you have to find blog headers, then go find social graphics that are close to that, and then email graphics, and so on. It’s much faster if you simply find a full kit you like.

Plus if you don’t have a canva pro account you likely won’t be able to use more than 1/3rd of the designs you see and you will have to redo some of the designs. 

Once your templates are customized, save them in your Canva library for easy access and future use. This way, you can reuse and update your templates whenever you need them, saving you time in the long run. 

But be careful not to have such a huge collection of templates that they don’t show consistency. Templates are addictive for content creators and its easy to slow down your work by having too many images and templates to choose from. Keep your canva account clean and neat.

Personalize the elements of your brand.

People connect with people much quicker than a bearing business name that has no connection points. When creating your branding assets try to choose something that feels closer to something you would do, wear, say, and be. 

Give your ideal customer something to latch on to. 

Where can You use logos, brand style guide, and color palette?

Everywhere your brand has an online presence. Your website, Facebook page, Instagram, in your emails, Pinterest, and even the places customers come to you in person. 

It’s going to feel like a big chore to get everything you do branded. But take it one step at a time and make things better as you can. Keep a running list of things you would like to make better to help you feel more in control.

Here are the different ways in which they can be used:

1.  Color Palette: Your brand’s color palette is probably one of the most important things for you to use consistently. Our eyes and brains latch on to those colors faster than reading words. Colors evoke specific emotions. — It should be consistently applied across all marketing materials, including social media graphics, website design, and printed materials like labels, brochures, or catalogs. By using the shades and colors consistently, you enhance brand recognition and create a unified brand experience for your audience.

2. Logos: Your logo is the visual representation of your brand and serves as a key identifier. It should be prominently displayed on all marketing materials, such as business cards, letterheads, and packaging. Additionally, it should be present on your website’s homepage, social media profiles, and email signatures to reinforce brand recognition. – But most importantly MAKE IT EASY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND. I see this bite people in the butt so much.

3. Brand Style Guide: A brand style guide outlines the rules and guidelines for using your brand’s visual elements consistently. It helps ensure that all communication materials adhere to your brand’s aesthetic and messaging. This guide should specify the correct usage of logos, fonts, color schemes, and graphic elements. It can be used by anyone involved in producing content for your brand, both internally and externally, to maintain brand consistency.

By utilizing logos, brand style guides, and color palettes effectively, you can maintain brand consistency and strengthen your brand’s identity across all touchpoints, leaving a lasting impression on your target audience. 

Brand Kit Templates To Get The Job Done FAST

It took me a lot of time to finally find the right feel for the brand that was right for me. Be willing to play with it and make tweaks as you go. 

Also keep in mind that your brand will grow and change as you do. So what works for you now probably wont be what works for you in the future.