# Brand identity

import { TileBrandColors } from "../../../src/tiles/TileBrandColors";

**Brand Identity** in the sidebar holds what your organization looks and sounds like:
**Logos**, **Colors** and **Fonts**, plus three written guides, **Brand Foundation**,
**Messaging Guidelines** and **Visual Identity Guidelines**.

Setting it up takes about half an hour and changes the output of everything else in the
product, so do it before anyone generates much.

## What to add

**Colors.** Your palette, named. The design editor's brand rules use the extremes (the
darkest for text, the lightest for backgrounds), so include the full range rather than
only the two or three you use most.

<figure className="gai-mock">
	<TileBrandColors title="Brand Colors" />
	<figcaption>
		Load the whole system, not just the two or three colors you reach for most.
		Applying the brand kit to a design picks the darkest for text and the lightest for
		backgrounds, so a palette missing its extremes produces flat work.
	</figcaption>
</figure>

**Fonts.** Your typefaces, with the weights you license. Generated work is set in these.

**Logos.** Every logo you have: full lockup, mark alone, light and dark versions,
horizontal and stacked. Put a program's or a team's logos in their own group so they
are only used for that program. Give each one a picture, say which background it is
drawn for, and write a line about when to reach for it. That is what the automatic
choice reads. Vector masters can ride along on the same record for people to download.

**The guides.** Written descriptions of the brand, in three parts. **Brand Foundation**
is mission, values, voice and tone, audience, and the words the brand does and does not
use. **Messaging Guidelines** is how the brand talks about itself: positioning, value
propositions, boilerplate, and the claims it may make. **Visual Identity Guidelines** is
how it looks: logo usage, color and type application, imagery and layout. All three are
prose rather than forms, and the AI reads them whenever it writes anything for you.

## What uses your brand identity

| | |
|---|---|
| [Designs](/guide/studio/designs) | **Apply brand kit** recolors and re-fonts a design to the palette. |
| [Presentations](/guide/studio/presentations) | Decks are generated against your template and palette. |
| [Infographics](/guide/studio/infographics) | Charts are styled to the brand. |
| [Website content](/guide/automation/website-content) | Copy is written in the brand's tone. |
| [AI images](/guide/studio/ai-images) | Generation is steered by the palette and guidelines. |
| [Agents](/guide/ai/agents) | An agent with the brand knowledge base attached answers in the brand's voice. |

## How brand identity is stored

Brand Identity is implemented as a set of [knowledge
bases](/guide/ai/knowledge-bases) in the `brand-identity` category, which is why an
agent can be given the brand as a source the same way it is given your product catalog.

The same rules therefore apply: people with knowledge permissions can edit them, they
are versioned, and changes appear in **Administration → History**.

## Two common mistakes

**An incomplete palette.** Loading the four colors from the website header rather than
the brand's full system means every generated design comes out in those four colors.
Load the whole palette.

**Empty guides.** With nothing in Brand Foundation or Messaging Guidelines, generated
copy has no standard to meet and reads like generic marketing. Even a few hundred words
(who you are, who you talk to, three things you never say) changes the output noticeably.

<Callout type="note">
	If the design editor reports that no brand kit is set up, this screen is empty. The
	message links straight here.
</Callout>