What is in a brand kit

In Australia. The card in our kits is drawn at 85.5 × 54mm, credit card size. Our separate card templates also ship the size most Australian printers quote.

What one of our brand kits contains

Logo arrangements	3, each as SVG and a transparent PNG at 2000px wide
Business card	front and back at 85.5 × 54mm, as PDFs with 3mm bleed
Letterhead	210 × 297mm, as a PDF with 3mm bleed
Social posts	6, delivered at 2160 × 2160px
Also	palette and type sheets, a one-page website, a repeating pattern and a logo reveal
Guidelines	a 12 page brand guidelines document
Price	$199

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.

Which logo lockups does a brand kit need?

Most businesses need three or four lockups, each one a fixed arrangement of the logo elements.

• 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.

What goes in a brand colour palette?

A palette is a short list of colours with exact values: hex for screens, CMYK for print, and 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.

How many typefaces should a brand use?

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.

What stationery comes in a brand kit?

A business card and a 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.

What social artwork should a brand kit include?

It should include 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.

What is a brand guide for?

A brand guide 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.

Is a brand kit the same as a brand?

No. A kit is the visual toolkit, and your brand is what people say about you when you are not there, which no file set changes 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.

Which parts of a brand kit get used most?

The primary lockup and the colour values get used most, because both go into the website, the booking system and the invoice template. A business card is printed once and reordered later. Social templates see heavy use at launch. A letterhead is used if the business sends documents and not otherwise.

Buy for the lockups and the colour values, and treat the rest as included.

Should you buy a brand 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 is in a BrandLaunch brand kit?

Each of our 51 kits is $199 and contains 3 logo arrangements, a business card at 85.5 × 54mm, a letterhead, 6 social posts, palette and type sheets, a one-page website, a 12 page guidelines document, a repeating pattern and an animated logo reveal. Each kit lists its exact artboards on its own page, so you can see 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.