Bringing together all of your brand identity elements into a cohesive branding package is a shortcut to business success. Here, discover how to create a branding package, including inspiring examples from Airbnb, Spotify, and Google, plus brand kit templates to get you started.
License the images used in this collage via Anton Vierietin and Master1305.
What Is a Branding Package?
A branding package, also known as a brand kit, pulls together all of the different elements of a business’ brand identity into a single, cohesive brand package.
The branding package will include all of the visual assets needed to create brand communications for print and digital, such as logo files, color palettes, email templates, social media templates, and more.
A branding package, also known as a brand kit, pulls together all of the different elements of a business’ brand identity into a single, cohesive brand package.
The main advantage of creating a brand identity package is that all of the individuals who create branded media for a business are able to find everything they need in one convenient place.
The brand package can be hosted online, through a file-sharing platform, or stored internally, for employees to access with ease.
Do All Companies Need a Branding Package?
The short answer is no—not all companies need a branding package, although businesses with more than one employee or team member will certainly find a brand package useful.
If your business has a growing team or enlists the help of external contractors or freelancers, a brand package is a useful way to keep everyone on the same branding page, and can be shared via a simple link.
How Much Does It Cost to Create a Branding Package?
The cost for branding packages can vary depending on the size and maturity of your business, and whether you choose to create the brand package in-house, through an agency, or with a freelance designer.
This leads to another question: Should you hire someone to make a branding package?
Some large businesses have an internal design and marketing team, which means that some or all of the brand package design can be done in-house.
For new businesses, it may be necessary to create a completely new brand identity from scratch, in which case using a design agency would probably be the best route to go.
For more established businesses, a brand package can be assimilated with the help of freelancers, in combination with the brand assets already in use by the business.
Agency Costs
Depending on the size of your business and how extensive you would require a brand package to be, a design agency would likely charge as little as $5,000 for a basic brand package, rising up to as much as $100,000 for a very comprehensive brand identity package, which might include full suites of templates for advertising, social media, and website designs.
Using an agency to create your brand package will likely include agreeing to contract terms, and signing off several phases of design work.
Freelancer Costs
Usually a more budget-friendly option, freelance designers normally charge by the hour, which can vary between $25 to $300 per hour, depending on the designer’s skills and experience.
Freelance designers can help with creating additional brand assets—such as email templates and social media images—that can beef up your brand package, creating a more usable brand kit for your business team.
Should You Only Have One Branding Package?
As a business grows and expands, it might be necessary to create multiple branding packages to cater for different types of project or different departments.
A common reason for creating more than one brand package design is to have a branding kit that can be shared with internal members of the business and a second, perhaps slightly more limited, branding package that can be shared with external contractors.
This allows the business to maintain internal control over the full suite of brand assets, and only share what is necessary for freelancers to complete supporting tasks.
The Key Elements of a Branding Package
What is included in a branding package? A branding package should contain all the brand assets that work together to build your visual brand, including logo files, color palette, brand typography, and a brand style guide for reference.
You can also expand your brand package to include additional brand elements, such as social media graphics, stationery templates, presentation templates, email templates, illustration, photography, and ad design templates.
Some businesses will also benefit from extra miscellaneous brand assets, such as merchandise templates or app templates.
Let’s look at some of these branding design elements that should be included in your brand package, in more detail.
Logo Files
The cornerstone of your business brand identity is your brand logo, and should be the starting point of how to make a brand kit.
A comprehensive set of logo packages should be included in your brand kit, including your principle brand logo in a range of file formats, including vector EPS and PNG files, and brand colorways.
You can also include variations of the logo for use on social media and website designs, as well as icon designs, in the logo section of your brand package, to create a comprehensive set of logo graphics to suit every purpose.
Color Palette
A brand color palette breathes life and personality into your branding design, but colors need to be fully usable to make a mood-setting impact.
In your brand package, you can provide a color palette in swatch format, saving your color swatches as RGB and CMYK colors as an Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) file for use in Adobe design programs.
For website designs and social media graphics, provide your color swatches as a list of HEX codes (which appear in the format #111111). To convert your color palette to HEX format, you can do this through design software or by using an online color code convertor.
Brand Typography
Typography shapes how a business’ messaging is perceived by its customers, making it particularly important that brand typography is used consistently across the board—on both print media and digital designs.
In your branding package, you should include a set of font files that can be used for print and web designs. Print designs usually require TTF (TrueType) or OTF (OpenType) font files, while type for websites, apps, and social media designs should be in Webfont (WOFF or WOFF2) format.
As with brand logos and brand color palettes, you should include clear and actionable guidance on how to use brand typography in the brand style guide (see below), including rules about font sizing, font pairing, and font colors.
Brand Style Guide
It is extremely difficult to put a brand identity into action and expect completely consistent output without the help of a brand style guide.
A brand style guide, or brand guidelines document, acts as the handbook for using your business’ brand elements, and all employees should be encouraged to refer to the style guide before creating any brand designs.
A brand style guide is a PDF document or webpage that details the elements included in the business brand identity, and explains how the elements should and should not be used, using visual examples to demonstrate the brand in use.
You can create a brand style guide using a brand guidelines template, or build a brand guidelines document with the help of a designer using a publishing layout program like Adobe InDesign.
Additional Brand Assets for Your Brand Package
These optional brand package elements will flesh out your brand identity further, giving you more potential for creating brand designs quickly and efficiently.
Social Media Graphics
With social media marketing becoming such a huge part of most business’ digital marketing strategy, it can be extremely helpful to have a selection of social media graphics and social media templates on hand for creating content for posts, stories, banners, and reels on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
You can create social media templates in an online design app like Shutterstock Create or Canva, sharing the links to these template folders as part of your branding package.
Make sure to include all the relevant banner sizes for your templates, and consider including video clips, icons, or sticker graphics that can bring more fun and interest to online brand content.
Presentation Templates
When pitching to a client, presenting your financial end-of-year report or hosting a team meeting, it’s always useful to have a branded presentation template that can be adapted with your presentation content at a moment’s notice.
As part of a brand package design, you can include one or two presentation decks, usable in slide presenter software like PowerPoint or Google Slides.
Include your brand colors, logo, and brand graphics on each slide to create a quick, on-brand template design.
Email Templates
The early touching point for many business’ new customers will be through email, so it’s paramount that you consider including a few email template examples as part of your brand package.
This can be as simple as formatting your email template design with a clickable logo header, text boxes set in your brand fonts, and an example image or video, teamed with suggested use of your brand color palette.
Make sure to include your email design template in a usable format, whether it’s a Mailchimp email template or HTML email template, and consider presenting a few different email design options for common uses, such as new customer emails, seasonal sales emails, and newsletter emails.
Illustration and Photography
Imagine the speed at which your team would be able to create new brand designs with a deck of brand illustrations and brand photography on hand?
Particularly if your company uses certain image types and styles regularly, a pre-approved folder of brand photographs is super convenient, and avoids the issue of non-branded imagery being used in its place.
Consider including sub-folders of stock photo styles that would be regularly used by your team, such as product mockup images, black and white portrait photos of team members, or textured background images that can be used with versatility across website backgrounds and social media banners.
Brand graphics and illustrations are also a key part of many brand identity packages, and bring character and quirk to a range of designs.
You may want to include a deck of vector graphics that can be used in the background of slides, social media posts, or web pages, as well as illustrated icons and complete brand illustrations that represent your branding in creative form.
Examples of Branding Packages
Looking for brand kit inspiration? These branding package examples show just how impactful a beautifully pulled-together brand identity can be, and how these handy kits can really make a brand identity feel aspirational and actionable for business teams.
Google Brand Package
One of the strongest brand kit examples for demonstrating the power of super simple and direct brand guidance, Google’s online brand resource center allows viewers to easily locate guidance and resources for actioning Google’s brand identity for online designs and physical events.
Clean, minimal, and fuss-free, the style of this brand package is a perfect reflection of the tech company’s brand identity.
Airbnb Brand Package
After a terrific ‘Belong Anywhere’ rebrand helmed by DesignStudio, home hosting platform Airbnb consolidated its extensive library of brand assets into an internal branding package and a media assets package for external use.
Featuring a colorful brand style guide that includes both visual and tonal guidelines, a playful logo package that includes both hand-drawn and clean logo variations, and beautifully designed stationery templates, this comprehensive brand package has everything Airbnb’s employees and hosts would want or need to promote the company brand.
Cohere Brand Package
Design agency Pentagram created a brand kit with a digital difference for NLP pioneering company Cohere. As an almost exclusively online and app-based business, the agency focused on building digital templates that would incorporate Cohere’s new nature-inspired brand identity.
Dozens of social media templates, website page examples, and animated 3D illustrations give the Cohere team plenty to work with when creating digital designs.
License the images used in this collage via Anton Vierietin and Master1305.
How to Create a Branding Package for Your Brand
Inspired by the above branding package examples and ready to build your own? While you can enlist the help of an agency or designer to build a brand kit from scratch, creating a cohesive brand kit for your company is simple using a branding package template.
A branding package template includes a bundle of different design templates to create all of your brand assets, including logos, email templates, style guides and much more. Consider these brand kit examples as a solid foundation for introducing your own brand style to your team in a polished, professional format. Discover our pick of the best branding package templates and brand kit template bundles below.
Create Your Own Brand Kit | Shutterstock
Build your own brand kit with this how-to guide to creating brand packages. A great starter point for small businesses, this article is well worth a look for those looking to create a beautiful brand identity on a budget.
Brand Starter Kit | Creative Market
This bundle of Adobe InDesign templates includes a brand guidelines template, corporate proposal template, plus stationery templates for creating branded business cards and postcards.
Editable with your own branded content, the templates have a minimal yet colorful style—suitable for corporate branding, as well as independent businesses.
Brand Package Template | Figma
Create a complete branding package template by building from this brand guidelines template, editable in Figma. Level up your brand designs by simply adjusting the color palette, logo, and photography, then save as a ready-to-share PDF.
Modern Canva Presentation Package | Etsy
With an emphasis on presentation templates, this versatile brand template can be used for brand presentations, brand guidelines, and pitch decks, and is editable in Canva, Google Slides, Keynote, and PowerPoint.
Conclusion: Build Your Way to Brand Success!
Successful business branding is much more than creating a memorable logo design. Building a library of actionable brand assets will give you the best foundation for applying your brand identity consistently and effectively, making it well worth the time and effort.
For more brand building advice, tutorials, and resources, don’t miss these helpful articles:
License the images used in the cover collage via Anton Vierietin and Master1305.
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