No more blank canvases
Six brand assets your team can pull from every time, and why each one matters.
Part 4 of 5. This week I’m putting what I believe about brand in writing, one question a day.
Yesterday we defined the brand. Today we make it.
Most identity projects end with one gorgeous logo on a perfect mockup, applauded on the call, then handed to a team that has to make a webinar banner by Thursday with nothing else in the box. So they start from scratch. Then they do it again for the blog cover, and again for the sales deck, and six months later nothing looks related.
The point of building brand assets is that nobody ever has to start from scratch again. You want a suite of parts your team defaults to, so every new piece feels like part of the family while still having room to flex. Familial, not identical.
Here are the six parts and why each one matters. What they look like is up to you, and to what you defined yesterday. Build them all together. The only one that waits is the logo, which some be designed after you have parts 1–5.
1. Typography and layout
Typography is the most consistent asset you have. It shows up at every single touchpoint: your website, your social posts, your deck, your invoices. Nothing else in your brand travels as far. Choose your typefaces and stick with them.
Layout is the secondary stylistic choice. Conventional grids with lots of whitespace, something more fun and bubbly, or something less expected, like off-column or uneven grids. Each one says something different before anyone reads a word.
2. Color
Color is one of the places you can differentiate yourself the most, which is why it’s worth picking a color that lands for your brand and your brand only.
From there, you want a set of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors you use over and over, with designated pairings between them so everything stays legible and has enough contrast.
3. Pattern and texture
Pattern and texture give you a visual language for the background of your assets. It’s a subtle through line that can run under nearly every touchpoint: ads, your website, banners, physical collateral. Sometimes it’s built from the logo. Sometimes it’s pulled from somewhere else entirely.
4. Shapes, illustration, and icons
These should feel connected, not like five different kits. They overlap a little, but each one has its own job:
Shapes: Recurring motifs, almost like a pattern but used more deliberately. Shapes also cover how your buttons, cards, and other elements sit together: the shadows, strokes, and corner radius they share.
Illustration: A familial set, with one consistent style across the board. The same goes for photography. Your photo styling should feel like it came from the same place as your illustrations.
Product visuals: Simplified, branded abstractions of your product that show the key idea without the noise of a raw screenshot.
Icons: Think in three levels. Pentagram’s identity for Impala nails this: functional icons (one color, geometric), illustrative icons (multicolored, more detail), and technical icons (precisely drawn line art). Same family, different jobs.
5. Motion and interaction
Better minimal than excessive. AI tools make it easier than ever to animate everything, which is exactly why you should start small and focus on feeling. A button hover can feel playful, or it can feel subtle and sophisticated. Get details like that right before reaching for anything flashy.
6. The logo
Judge it on SAD:
Simple: Does it hold its integrity at small and large sizes, or do you have a system in place that helps it do so?
Appropriate: Does it align with your creative direction?
Distinct: The most important of the three. It should never look like your competitors’.
Build these six once and nobody on your team stares at a blank canvas again. They reach into the box, pull out the parts, and make something new that still looks like it belongs.
Look at the last thing your team made from scratch. Which of these would have saved them the trouble?
— Zach
