Quick answer: A brand kit is a compact, shareable set of logo files, colors, fonts, voice notes and image rules that lets anyone produce on-brand work without asking a designer. The brand kit examples below show how ten organizations package theirs, and what you can copy for your own.
Key facts
- A usable brand kit covers six asset groups: logo, color, typography, voice, imagery and social templates.
- WCAG 2.2 asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal-size text, which is the first test any palette should pass.
- Mailchimp's public Content Style Guide spans more than 10 topics, from voice and tone to translation and accessibility.
- Canva Help lists Brand Kit on its Pro, Teams, Enterprise, Education and Non-profit plans.
- Publiqa's Brand Kit stores colors, logos, fonts, tone, audience personas and negative keywords for each brand.
- Publiqa's Growth plan supports 5 brands with isolated brand kits, and Agency supports 20.
What is a brand kit, and how is it different from brand guidelines?
A brand kit is the working toolbox of a brand: the files and short rules people reach for every day. Brand guidelines are the longer rulebook that explains why those choices were made. A media kit is the press-facing package, with logos, product shots and a boilerplate paragraph for journalists.
People mix the three up, and the confusion shows in search. "Brand media kit examples" and "brand identity kit examples" describe overlapping but different documents.
| Document | Audience | Typical length | Main job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand kit | Your team, freelancers, clients | 1 to 10 pages or a shared folder | Make daily work fast and consistent |
| Brand guidelines | Designers, agencies, partners | 20 to 100+ pages | Explain identity decisions in depth |
| Media kit | Journalists, event hosts | 2 to 6 pages | Supply approved logos and facts |
If you only have an afternoon, build the kit first. Guidelines can grow out of it later.
What should a brand kit include?
Six groups of assets cover nearly every request a small team gets. The best brand kit examples include all six, and skipping a group means someone will invent their own version of it by next Tuesday.
- Logo: primary, stacked, icon-only and one-color versions in SVG and PNG, plus clear-space and minimum-size rules.
- Color: one or two primary colors, two or three secondary ones and a set of neutrals, each with HEX, RGB and CMYK values.
- Typography: one or two font families, named weights for headlines and body copy, and a fallback for tools that lack your font.
- Voice: three adjectives, a short do and don't list and two or three sample sentences.
- Imagery: photo style, illustration style, and a line on what never appears.
- Social assets: profile images, post templates, caption style and safe areas for platform overlays.
Check contrast before you lock the palette. The W3C accessibility guidance asks for 4.5:1 on normal text, and a brand color that fails it should be reserved for large headings or backgrounds.
10 brand kit examples worth studying
All ten are public. Open the links, read the originals and treat this section as a reading list rather than a replacement. Descriptions below come from each site's own pages.
1. Mailchimp Content Style Guide
Mailchimp's guide covers voice and tone, grammar, social media, email newsletters, blog posts, accessibility and translation. Steal its habit of giving every channel its own short rules inside one voice.
2. Dropbox Brand Guidelines
Dropbox describes its guidelines as the foundation for how the brand looks, feels and sounds, from icons and illustration to logos and language. It is a good model for linking visual and verbal identity in one place.
3. GitHub Brand Toolkit
GitHub's toolkit opens with principles for creating on-brand work with confidence, then points to open-source design systems for product and marketing interfaces. Copy the principles-first order.
4. Shopify: Using our brand
Shopify's page is a tight logo-usage reference: primary and monotone logos, clear space, minimum size, best practices and trademark rules. If your kit has to be three pages, this is the shape.
5. Slack Media Kit
Slack's media kit bundles a logo library, product screenshots in four languages and a link to its Brand Center. It shows how a press-facing kit differs from an internal one.
6. Zendesk Garden
Garden is Zendesk's design system, built from components, standards and tools for product designers. Study it when your kit starts to need reusable building blocks.
7. IBM Design Language
IBM's language provides the guidance and assets used to express the brand across products, communications, marketing, events and digital experiences. Note the breadth: one system, many surfaces.
8. Material Design 3
Material Design 3 is Google's open-source design system, with guidelines, styles and components. It shows how color and type rules become something developers can use directly.
9. Atlassian Design
Atlassian Design pairs its design system with a news feed, so teams can see when the rules change. A visible changelog is a cheap habit to borrow.
10. NASA Graphics Standards Manual
The 1975 manual was republished by Standards Manual, a New York publisher that archives design history. Its scope, from stationery to vehicles, proves how far a rulebook can go.
An eleventh example is the Brand Kit inside Publiqa's AI studio, covered below. Search for "brand kit examples pdf" and you will also find many downloadable decks. Prefer PDFs the owner published themselves, and credit them.
Social media brand kit examples: what to add for feeds
Most public kits are written for print and web, so feeds need a few extra lines. Social media brand kit examples usually add four things.
- Format templates: 4:5 for Instagram and LinkedIn carousels, 9:16 for Reels, Shorts and TikTok.
- Safe areas: keep text away from the zones platforms cover with buttons and captions.
- Caption style: length, emoji policy, hashtag habits and how you write the first line.
- Reply voice: how you answer comments, which is where brand voice shows most.
Keep the sizes themselves out of the kit, because platforms change them. Link to a spec sheet that you update instead.
How do you create a brand kit in Canva?
Canva is a reasonable place to start if your team already designs there. Canva Help describes a Brand Kit as a store for logos, colors, fonts and other assets. You open the Brand section from the home page side panel, create a new kit, name it and upload logos, add color palettes or upload fonts. There is also a builder that can pull logos, colors and public fonts from a website or a PDF.
Plan access matters. Per Canva Help, Brand Kit is available on Canva Pro, Teams, Enterprise, Education and Non-profit plans. To force team members to use only the kit's colors and fonts, you also need Brand Controls. Check the current plan page before you commit, since Canva changes packaging often.
Brand kit checklist you can print
Copy this list into a document and tick it off.
- Logo: 4 versions, SVG and PNG, clear space and minimum size stated
- Colors: primary, secondary and neutrals with HEX, RGB and CMYK
- Contrast: every text and background pair checked at 4.5:1
- Fonts: families, weights and a fallback
- Voice: three adjectives, five do and don't lines, three sample posts
- Words to avoid: banned phrases and competitor names
- Imagery: photo and illustration rules, plus a "never" list
- Social: profile images, two post templates, caption style
- Owner: one person who approves exceptions
- Location: one link that everyone uses
How long does a brand kit take to build?
An afternoon is enough for a version you can use. Spend 60 minutes collecting what already exists: logo files, the hex codes in your website CSS and the fonts your site loads. Spend 45 minutes on the voice page, using five of your best posts as evidence. Give 60 minutes to templates and the checklist, and the final 30 minutes to a test: ask someone who has never seen the brand to make a post from the kit alone.
If they get stuck, the kit has a gap. Patch it, then repeat the test with a second person. For the voice page in particular, our brand voice guide shows how to write the rules down.
How Publiqa helps keep a brand kit consistent across 12 channels
The hard part of a brand kit is not writing it. It is applying it to every post on every channel. Publiqa's Brand Kits store colors, logos, fonts, tone, audience personas and negative keywords, and the Campaign Studio uses them when it adapts one idea for up to 12 channels, including the blog and YouTube Shorts.
A worked example for an agency: create one kit per client, add the client's three tone adjectives and a list of words they never use, then generate a campaign from a single article. Each client's kit stays isolated from the others on the Growth plan (5 brands) and the Agency plan (20 brands), and multi-brand workspaces give Owner, Admin and Member roles. A Solo plan includes 1 brand, and an extra brand kit costs 600 credits a month. See the plans for details.
Your afternoon plan
Block four hours this week and measure your draft against the brand kit examples above. Use hour one to gather files, hour two for the voice page, hour three for templates, and hour four to test the kit on a stranger. Then store it in one place.
When the kit is ready, put it to work: the free trial comes with 200 credits and no credit card requirement. Load your first brand kit and generate a post from it.
FAQ
What is a brand kit?
A brand kit is a short, shareable collection of a brand's logo files, colors, fonts, voice rules and image guidance. Its purpose is speed and consistency: a freelancer or teammate can create on-brand work from the kit alone, without waiting for a designer to answer.
How to create a brand kit?
Collect your logo files, palette values and fonts, write a half-page voice guide, and add post templates for the channels you use. Keep it to one shared location and name one owner. Test it by asking a newcomer to build a post from it.
What is a brand kit on Canva?
On Canva, a Brand Kit is a saved set of logos, colors and fonts that you can apply to designs in one click. Per Canva Help, it is available on Pro, Teams, Enterprise, Education and Non-profit plans, and Brand Controls can restrict teammates to approved styles.
How to create a brand kit in Canva?
Open the Brand section from the side panel, choose to create a new kit, and name it. Upload your logos, add color palettes and upload fonts, or let the builder extract them from your website or a PDF. Review the result before sharing.