What to Expect in a Complete Brand Package
A brand package is essentially a toolkit that you can use to design your organization's materials. It includes a brand guide along with coordinating files. It could be small, medium, or large, depending on how minimal or extensive your design needs are. We always tailor the level of detail on these packages to the organization and what would be most useful for their unique needs.
Base Brand Package
The following is the minimum level of detail that we include in a brand package:
Logo
PNG, EPS, and SVG file types
Full color dark, full color light, white, and dark versions
Logo orientations: Horizontal, vertical, abbreviated, acronym, or tagline versions (depending on the design and needs of the org)
Color Palette
Primary and Secondary colors defined
Color specs (HEX, RGB, any others needed)
Typography
Headings font
Body copy font
Basic Assets
Social media profile image
Favicon (browser tab icon)
After the minimum package, you could add any number of design tools to the toolkit. These are things that help you create coordinated materials with ease. This can be a mix of photography styles, illustrations, icons, patterns, and other design elements that are unique to your brand. Switch it up and keep it interesting to make users notice your content again and again, while still helping them recognize that it all fits under the umbrella of “you.”
Brand Expansion Options
Here are some things that can be added to a brand package to expand your design toolkit:
Illustrations & Icon Sets
Illustrations and icons are useful for so many things – documents, websites, social graphics, infographics – pretty much everything. It’s helpful to be able to grab a graphic from a premade kit and add interest to an otherwise basic design. Illustration and icon style guidance can help ensure that you’re not using random illustrations that don’t align with your brand.
Photography Styles and Guidance
Imagery is a critical part of any design. If the organization is large enough to create a ton of materials, it’s nice to have a set of guidelines on how to select photographs and how to style them according to your brand. This helps create consistency among your photos even if they are taken from multiple sources.
Typography as Art
In addition to your basic functional typography (for headings and paragraphs), you could also introduce a typography style that is used for bolder, more eye-catching short statements. This is usually an opportunity to be more creative and use type as art.
Sub-Branding
This can be useful for programs within your organization – similar to the way universities have schools within them that are similarly branded. This is usually for large organizations – smaller organizations generally don’t need this level of separation.
Patterns, Textures, or Borders
These are handy for adding interest quickly – being able to consistently add a subtle texture or even a bold graphic pattern can help tie materials together.
Unique Elements and More!
This could be something custom to your brand – for example, Vegan Hacktivists uses a branded pixel block style to reference their tech services, and it’s a useful tool to build their materials. This could be any shape or line style that is unique to you and your work!
Having multiple elements in your brand package helps you create consistent yet varied materials to keep your audience interested, while maintaining your brand image.
Sometimes, we consult with a client and we determine that their brand foundation is solid. In that case, they aren’t in need of a full rebrand – they might just need a few additional tools added to the toolkit to help them with their daily design needs. Often, a brand will begin small, with limited needs, and can thrive on just a logo, font, and color palette. However, as they grow, their design needs will expand and it’s possible that their original brand package isn’t enough anymore – so a brand expansion could be a good next step to help propel them into the future.
Whether you’re just getting started and need a fresh new brand, or if you’re an established organization who’s curious about a rebrand or brand expansion, feel free to reach out to chat about our pro-bono design services.
