Apple. Google. Amazon. What do these three companies have in common aside from the fact that they operate in the tech industry and are all part of the Big Five tech companies in the United States?
There’s another common denominator. Irrespective of if you use their products or not, each one’s brand identity is etched in your mind.
Just take Apple as an example. You can see that the same amount of research has gone into designing its brand message than the actual products.
With some little extra thought, you too can boast a memorable brand. As so many touch points must be considered when you’re creating a brand, it’s best to pay for a branding package. This way, you’ll know that all the different elements will work together from the start.
Here’s a closer look at what a branding package typically includes along with what you can expect to pay. Then, to show the value that a branding investment can bring, be sure to check out the branding package examples too.
You might be interested in: Brand Design Strategies
The Importance of Branding in 2025
Branding isn’t a new concept. Apple started building their brand identity in the late 1970s already.
Fast-forward over 40 years and the consumer expectations have changed, though. Nowadays, they want to know the story behind a business too. In fact, branding statistics reveal that more than half of consumers are more inclined to support a brand if they like the brand’s story.
In today’s climate, you need to show to your customers that you’re trustworthy and authentic. The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: The Collapse of the Purchase Funnel interviewed 13,802 respondents in 14 countries over two weeks and found that brand trust is one of the top three buying considerations. You need to communicate that your business practices are above board and that these reflect what you stand for. To do that, you need a solid brand identity.
The results?
71% of consumers find it’s more important to trust the brands that they buy or use today than in the past.
What Is a Branding Package?
In a nutshell, a branding package refers to a collection of elements that capture a company’s identity, personality, values, and mission. From logos to letterheads, it includes a wide array of visual assets.
Not only does it include numerous digital assets, but a branding package can also serve multiple purposes. For starters, it helps to make a brand easily recognizable and different from its competitors.
Then, it also ensures that the brand is portrayed consistently across all the different channels like its business website, social media channels, and print material. Careful thought is given to the different elements like typography, illustrations, color schemes, etc. so that everything works together to create a unified look and feel.
Key Components of Branding Packages
A branding package commonly includes the following visual assets:
Logo
Effective business logos arouse immediate brand recognition. Just take Nike’s logo, for example.
The Swoosh can’t be mistaken for anything else. It also doesn’t need to appear with the business name to make sense. Even though only about 1 out of 2 Americans uses Nike products, 94% could recognize the brand when they were shown the brand’s logo.
Source: Statista.com
As you would expect, your business logo is one of the key elements included in a branding package. All in all, it’s one of the most important visual assets and a good branding package will include a few logo variations. You’ll, for example, need a smaller version as well as a black-and-white version too.
Logos should also “age” well. While it’s not uncommon for brands to update their logos from time to time, it’s a practice that can’t happen every few years. This means that your brand designer should be able to craft a logo that’s versatile so that it can grow with trends and your company.
Color Palette
Choosing your color palette is probably one of the most exciting steps of designing your brand identity. It’s an opportunity to add color to your vision, so to speak.
Luckily, you don’t have to stick to only one color. Your color palette will include all the colors that you plan on using in digital assets like your website as well as other print assets such as signage, marketing material, and packaging.
The challenge when deciding on a color scheme, though, is that you need to keep in mind the psychology of color. While you might love red, it might get potential customers’ hearts racing for the wrong reason.
Aside from each color’s connotation, you also need to keep in mind how the color will display digitally and in print. There should be little difference to ensure brand recall and consistency.
Once you’ve decided on a few colors (there should be about four colors in your branding kit), the branding package should also include the Pantone color code or CMYK/RGB value. This way, all the creatives on your team will know precisely which shade of gray they should use (there are basically infinite shade variations — much more than just 50).
Source: app.uxcel.com
All in all, a color scheme is one of the visual elements in a branding package that has the most significant impacts on brand perception. At the very least, you’ll want to entrust color choices to a brand designer instead of your own personal preferences.
Typography
Typography is the text’s design and style (or, put differently, the text’s overall appearance) that you’ll use in your communication. Even the negative space can make a positive contribution to how your target audience will perceive your business.
Let your brand’s personality guide you. Along with your logo, the chosen typography should be immediately associated with the brand.
Like your brand colors, it should ideally also be limited to only a few fonts. These fonts should be able to work on their own as well as together.
Using too many fonts will only over complicate matters and can distract target audiences. On the other hand, sticking to one font can become boring.
In addition to specifying which fonts, you should also include guidelines for other elements like sizing and capitalization. For example, will all the words be written with a capital letter in headings or will it be reserved only for the first word?
Stationery
Even with everything that’s basically only digital nowadays, there’s still a need for designs like business cards and letterheads. After all, word-of-mouth advertising remains one of the most effective strategies and without a business card your business will lack credibility.
The same can be said for letterheads. While most of your communication can be completed via informal emails, at times you’ll need to send official communication like an invoice, policy update, etc. for which you’ll need a letterhead.
You can even extend your stationery to other items like branded notebooks, calendars, sticky notes, and planners. This way, you can also turn employees into brand advocates. In fact, according to a survey completed by MSL Group, employee advocacy can boost your brand awareness by a massive 561%.
Employee advocacy can improve brand awareness by 561%.
Social Media Graphics
Social media graphics aren’t generally considered to be part of the basics like a logo and color scheme, but for online businesses social media graphics are essential. You’ll need to have social media pages in addition to an official business website and these profiles should align with your website design.
As social media is inherently visual in nature, there are numerous visual assets that you’ll need to create a consistent look. These include a profile image, video thumbnails, and templates for posts.
Packaging Design
For businesses that sell physical products, including packaging design in the branding package is also key. After all, the actual packaging is one of the most significant interactions that customers will have with your brand. Browsing a website is a visual experience, but opening the product is a visual as well as tactile experience.
With increased focus on sustainability, it can also be a good opportunity to show your commitment to fighting climate change. A recent survey found that at least 25% of consumers admit that sustainable packaging encourages them to support an online brand.
Where possible, limit the use of plastic. Also, aside from material choice, look at how little packaging you can use as possible.
Sustainable packaging sways a quarter of consumers to support an online brand.
Iconography and Illustrations
Images are much easier to digest than large chunks of text. Aside from being used to convey information, illustrations and icons are also one of the most effective ways to capture attention. All businesses, irrespective of their industry or target audience, will need to use icons and illustrations from time to time.
While you can use stock photography, using custom images will let your brand appear more trustworthy to Google, helping you to rank higher. Plus, a generic stock image won’t convey your brand’s unique personality nearly as well as custom artwork.
Source: arctouch.com
That being said, like typography, your images should also have an overarching style. From line width to saturation, there are various elements that you need to keep in mind so that all your images complement one another and, more importantly, your brand’s image.
Marketing Collateral
There are also various other types of marketing collateral that can be branded. Some of the most important visual assets not listed separately above include:
- An email signature
- Email templates
- A one-pager describing your product range or list of services
- eBooks
- Online ads
- Landing pages
- Case studies
- Pitch decks
- Explainer videos
- Merchandise
Brand Guidelines
Then, to ensure that all these visual elements get used correctly, ensure to create guidelines. It’s especially important for businesses with big teams where it’s even more challenging to get everyone on the same page.
Basically, your brand guidelines (also called style guidelines or brand style guide) are branding specifications for how your logo, color scheme, and typography must be used. It also has notes for style and tone of any written content. It can be very granular to zoom in on specifics like formatting and comma usage, for example.
After all, the reason why you’re investing in a branding package is to create a consistent image, right?
Put simply, your brand guidelines are like a set of rules. It’s the manual that comes with the brand identity.
Best Branding Package Examples
To give you a better idea of the end result that branding packages can achieve, here are a few branding package examples that have the online community talking:
1. Kosan Gas
You don’t necessarily need to sell an interesting product in order to have a nice-looking brand identity. Kosan Gas is a great example that even products that are made to be out of sight can be top of mind.
What makes Kosan Gas also a good example of a great brand identity package is that it successfully incorporates one of the most challenging colors to use as brand colors — orange. On the one hand, the color orange can be linked to fun and energy. However, it also has connotations of danger.
The team at Ineo Designlab, a visual brand agency based in Denmark, managed to incorporate both connotations to create a positive corporate identity. Gas remains one of the most popular forms of energy, yet strict regulations are needed for transport, storage, and usage. The use of orange reminds consumers of the level of danger involved, but also gets them excited about the possibilities that gas unlocks. This design effectively conveys the brand’s archetype and consistency. Whether it’s recharging your own batteries over a camp stove or used on a much bigger scale to fuel the economy, gas is all about energy potential.
Source: ineo.dk
2. AWSM Sauce
For an example of a more quirky brand package, you can check out the work that Herefor Studio, a branding and packaging design studio in New York and Hawaii, completed for AWSM Sauce, a sauce company that’s built upon sustainability.
All in all, it’s a great example of how you should let your target audience also guide you when you design your brand identity. AWSM targets consumers who want to join them on their mission to reduce single-use plastics in the kitchen. Its solution is to sell sauce in powder form. This way, consumers can prepare only the amount of sauce they need by mixing the powder with water. The result — much less wastage.
It’s the modesty of this target group that inspired much of the color palette, typography, and patterns. What’s more, the different visual elements also work together to communicate the playful nature of the product itself.
The color palette is another core ingredient to their brand identity package’s secret sauce. The colors are as bold as the company’s mission itself.
Source: dribbble.com
3. Big Bud Press
Big Bud Press is a fast-growing clothing label located in Los Angeles. Like AWSM Sauce, sustainability is at the core of their brand. Aside from doing their part for the environment, they also strive to promote inclusivity by selling unisex clothing that fit most body types. And, when it comes to color, they’re just as inclusive.
What makes Big Bud Press such a great example of a branding package is that even though its product range features such a huge collection of clothing pieces in virtually all the colors under the sun, there’s still a cohesive style that you can pick up. The shades of brown along with the retro fonts give a vintage feel and flair.
Source: bigbudpress.com
How Much Does a Branding Package Cost?
A branding package can cost anything from as little as a few thousand dollars (between $1,000 and $5,000 typically) to over $100,000. The company’s size, project’s scope, and turnaround time, will all impact the final total.
The branding/design agency’s own size and location are also criteria to consider.
For example, the average minimum campaign size of branding agencies in New York City are nearly $13,000. However, if you travel south, the costs of branding packages also take a downward trajectory. For example, the top branding agencies in the state of Florida charge only about $3,800 on average as a minimum campaign size.
Full-service agencies that can help with marketing campaigns too are generally more expensive. Irrespective of if you partner with a full-stack agency or a startup branding agency, when working with an agency you’ll also need to keep in mind that there will possibly be a minimum project spend.
It’s seldom that agencies charge an hourly rate. If they do it ranges between $80 and $120 on average. Freelance designers, on the other hand, more commonly charge an hourly rate. Their rates are also more affordable than the rate of a big branding agency.
Considering these branding package pricing averages, Duck Design’s branding identity design services become a lot more attractive. For as little as $1,599 per month, you can get access to various graphic designs for your day-to-day marketing needs.
Transform Your Business With Duck Design: A Brand That Will be Remembered
Rated as one of the best package design companies, the Duck Design team knows how important it is that you package something correctly. They know that to sell your products you need to sell your brand too.
To help you package your brand in a way so that its vision, mission, and true identity can be picked up in a glance, they can help with all your branding needs. From the fundamentals like logo to other important components such as stationery, they know how to let your business shine online as well as offline.
You can think of us as your one-stop shop for all your branding needs. We have a dedicated team of top designers that grow with your needs. Plus, if you’re growing quickly, 24-hour turnarounds can be arranged.
People will remember your brand and what you’ll remember about the experience designing your brand was that you weren’t taken for an expensive ride. In fact, our services can be as much as 30% more affordable than hiring a traditional branding agency or appointing your own in-house team.
Conclusion
Creating a memorable brand requires much more than simply designing a logo and adding a dash of color. Branding standards are much higher as these examples have shown. You need to think about the emotions that certain colors evoke, the nature of your product and that path that you see your brand will take. It’s about seeing the big picture, but without losing sight of smaller branding elements like spacing, line width, and punctuation.
A branding package offers businesses the peace of mind that all their bases have been covered. You’ll know that thought has been given to all the branding elements, that these work together, and that your team will know how to use them going forward to ensure the integrity of your brand.
