Your Go-To Guide To Brand Assets

So you’ve dreamed up a brand—given it a name, a story, a backbone—and you’re ready to bring it to life. Graphic design offers endless possibilities to visually share your brand with the world, and we’ve compiled a suggested list of assets that you should think about having on file for your brand as you get started.

THE BASICS: BRAND GUIDELINES

  • Brand Guidelines: Depending on your brand, this can range from a simple one-pager to an entire brand book with extreme detail. This is the personality, psychology, and overall direction of how you want the brand to look and feel in the world. It helps you, and anyone engaging or working with your brand, to consistently convey a clear and meaningful message.

THE VISUAL IDENTITY

If you invest in any kind of design for your brand, it should be your brand identity. This is where your audience’s first impression is formed—and it happens almost instantly—so it’s important to do it right.

We recommend that your brand identity include the following assets: 

  • Main Logo

  • Secondary logo (in most cases) 

  • Wordmark or Favicon 

  • Color palette (with Pantone, CMYK, RGB and HEX information for application)

  • Typography

    • Font Files, with access to font licenses 

MARKETING MATERIALS

Once you have your visual identity created, you can work on creating marketing pieces over time. A few things you can build with your brand identity: 

The First Wave: 

  • Business card design

  • Letterhead design

  • Stationery suite, including note cards, stickers, a stamp, etc.

  • Supporting graphics such as icons, illustrations and infographics 

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The Second Wave:  

  • Brand Brochure

  • Press Kit or Product/Experience Deck or Presentation

  • Promotional swag and client gifts that represent your brand

  • Packaging, as needed:

    • May apply to proprietary product packaging or how your brand may be carried out of a retail space or shipped in the mail. Includes items such as custom tissue paper, stickers, stamps, shipping invoices, boxes, and custom wares and containers. 

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IMAGERY AND PHOTOGRAPHY 

In an ideal world, every new business should budget for real photography that is representative of their brand. However, we understand this isn’t always possible. In that case, we think a proper guide or mood-board around stock photography can be very helpful to anyone who will handle your marketing or social media efforts. But it’s important to note that most savvy consumers these days can sniff out stock photography from miles away. Here are a few assets to think about. 

  • Portraits

    • The Founders

    • Staff or Team

  • Lifestyle Photography for the website, marketing materials and social media

  • Product photography, if necessary 


DIGITAL ASSETS

Your digitals assets are the way to share your brand with the larger world; here’s a checklist of the digital assets you should consider capturing and developing as soon as you are ready to launch:

  • Website domain

  • Website host and platform

  • Social Media accounts, which may include:

    • Facebook

    • Instagram

    • Pinterest

    • Twitter

    • YouTube

    • LinkedIn 

      • Tip: Even if you aren’t ready to get started right away, we always suggest you double check that your handle is available and snag it up before someone else does.



Have questions? Need help? Ready to share your brand with the world? Connect with us and we’ll dive right in.

Meghan King