Brand Identity Package

✔️ Brand typography

Typography-related decisions have a major impact on how people view your brand. After all, the masthead of The New York Times wouldn’t look quite the same without its signature decorative serifs and Engravers’ Old English BT font. Typography refers to the overall appearance of your text.

Whether you’re designing a printed banner or an email header, you need to think about font type, text size, and text placement. Negative space — the empty space around text and graphics — is also an important consideration. Your brand guidelines should tell designers what fonts they can use and include explicit instructions regarding capitalization, spacing, and size.

✔️ Brand style guide

Think of the style guide as a comprehensive manual used to define your brand and promote consistent communication. Once you have a basic brand identity package, you can create a style guide by adding photography guidelines, rules for logo usage, and details to help content writers and other employees achieve just the right tone when developing your marketing materials.

The most comprehensive style guides also include rules for grammar, formatting, and word choice. For example, a brand style guide may contain a list of words that should never be used to refer to the brand or guidelines regarding the use of hyphens, bulleted lists, and serial commas.

Other branding package collateral

Once you have the basic elements of your branding package in place, you can create additional assets and use them to make your communications even more consistent. The right elements for a branding package depend heavily on the size of your business and what type of audience you serve. Consider adding the following to your existing package or creating a new branding package to accompany a complete rebrand of your business.

✔️ Social media graphics

Your social media pages should match your website and other promotional materials in terms of colors, fonts, and typography. One of the best ways to ensure consistency is to add social media graphics to your branding package. Many of these graphics are used as headings on profile pages, ensuring that anyone who sees your profile associates it with your brand.

You can also hire a designer to create video thumbnails, profile images, infographics, quote graphics, or any other type of social media templates. To deliver a cohesive experience to your target audience, these items should have the same look and feel as your other marketing materials.

✔️ Stationery

As you create your branding package, don’t forget about stationery templates and guidelines for using company stationery in a way that’s consistent with your brand image. These stationery guidelines from William & Mary are a good example of how to incorporate this information into your branding package. As you can see, they provide plenty of detail — right down to how to set the margins on each version of the letterhead — to help employees comply with the college’s standards.

✔️ Slide deck presentation template

Many business branding packages also come with slide deck presentation templates, or collections of slides that can be used to create PowerPoint presentations. While creating a slide deck presentation template, be sure to refer to your branding guidelines. You should use the same typography, logos, and color palette for the slide deck template as you would for a poster or an email newsletter. When someone in your target audience sees the presentation, they should immediately associate the design with your brand.

✔️ Illustration system

If your company works with several graphic designers, you want them all to be able to create artwork that matches your brand’s personality. You don’t want each one to apply their own personal style to your company’s designs. That’s why it’s important to include an illustration system in your branding kit. An illustration system is a set of guidelines used to create artwork in a specific style.

This resource typically includes standards related to color usage, icons, brush weight, composition, and props. If you give your designers access to a comprehensive illustration system, they’ll be able to produce graphic elements that are an exact match for your brand’s style and personality.

✔️ Email templates

Before you write a single word of copy, you must have an eye-catching design that adheres to the guidelines in your branding package. Using email templates can help you save time and increase consistency, reducing the number of revisions needed before you click “send”. According to the email marketing experts at Constant Contact, a good email template should include the following elements:

• Logos: Every email should include your company’s logo. It’s also standard to link your logo to your website to make it easier for readers to find out more about your company.
• Colors: Use your standard color palette to choose colors for your email template. Your headline, dividers, buttons, and backgrounds should match the palette exactly.
• Images: If you use images, they should support your brand identity and adhere to your company’s photography guidelines.
• Text: All text should be large enough for readers to see without having to enlarge their screens. It should also conform to your company’s typography guidelines.
• Footer: Ensure your footer matches your company’s color palette and typography guidelines. Include your contact information to make it easier for readers to connect with you.

✔️ Ad designs

Whether you’re sticking to print or going digital, your branding package should include sample ad designs to guide graphic designers and advertising professionals as they create new campaigns. Each ad should contain your company name, your logo, a visual representation of your product or service offering, a value proposition, and a call-to-action button. Every element should also follow your brand guidelines in terms of typography, color palette, photography, and illustrations.

✔️ Photography

Rachel Gillett of Fast Company reports that people are more likely to remember content that has images in it. That makes high-quality photography extremely important for companies of all sizes. Whether you have an in-house photographer or plan to hire a freelancer, you can get better results if you take the time to include photography guidelines in your branding package.

You may want to write guidelines regarding composition, content, tone, and color palette. It’s also a good idea to document whether you want to focus on people or objects in your company’s photos. The more detail you include in your branding guidelines, the easier it is for a photographer to achieve just the right look. If you create a guideline emphasizing candid shots instead of posed photos, for example, your photographer will be able to plan accordingly.

✔️ Miscellaneous assets

Big companies may have more than a dozen assets in their brand packages. These assets include icon sets, stickers, product packaging, signage, event branding, company merchandise (“merch”), and brochures. The more guidelines and samples you include in your branding package, the more opportunities you have to ensure consistency in every brand message. Including these items also makes it easier to hire and manage graphic designers, photographers, freelance writers, and other independent contractors who have the skills needed to grow your brand.