El Coco A brand kit for video is the set of choices every video reuses. Logo files, colors and fonts are the start. A title card, a lower third, a caption style and a thumbnail layout finish it. Build it once. After that you send raw clips and a voiceover. Each video comes back finished on your brand, ready to schedule on every platform.
What a brand kit holds when video is the job
Most brand kits stop at a logo, a palette and two fonts. That covers a business card. Video asks for more, because it moves, it talks, and it gets watched on a small screen with thumbs in the way.
- Logo: a vector file (SVG), a transparent PNG, and a version that reads on a dark frame.
- Colors: exact codes, with a note on which one goes behind text and which one never does.
- Fonts: the files, plus a license that covers video and not only the web.
- Title card: how the first two seconds look, with your name and the hook.
- Lower third: the small label that names a place, a product or a person on screen.
- Captions: font, size, colors, and a position the phone's buttons don't cover.
- Thumbnail and cover: one layout for YouTube and one vertical cover for Reels and TikTok.
- Cut style: how one shot hands over to the next. A calm dip suits a hotel. A fast cut suits a gym.
The sizes and safe areas it should pin down
A kit also fixes the numbers, so no video gets them wrong. A YouTube thumbnail is 1280 by 720 pixels. A vertical video and its cover are 1080 by 1920. Those two shapes cover YouTube, Reels, Shorts and TikTok.
That tall frame has dead zones. On YouTube Shorts the handle, the caption text and the progress bar cover roughly the bottom 280 pixels. The like, comment and share buttons run down the right edge, about 140 pixels wide. TikTok's bottom overlay runs taller, so check each app before you fix the numbers. Captions and labels that land in those zones get covered. A good kit places the captions just above the bottom strip and keeps titles in the top third.
Instagram trims the top and bottom of a cover on your profile grid. Keep the headline in the middle of the frame and it still reads after the crop.
What you send in
You don't need a script or a crew.
- Clips straight off the phone, drone or camera. Keep the originals and skip filters and app edits.
- A voiceover recorded on a phone in a quiet room. Or no voice at all, if the video carries text.
- The facts. Names, distances, prices and dates come from you. A good editor never makes them up.
- One line on who the video is for, and what they should do after watching.
Landscape footage can still make a vertical cut, as long as the subject is not at the edge of the frame. Let each clip run a few seconds longer than feels right. The editor needs room to cut on a word.
One kit, every video
You send the raw material. The kit makes the look decisions. A finished folder comes back.
- Clips from a phone, drone or camera
- A voiceover, or none
- The facts: names, distances, dates
- Who it is for
- Logo files and colors
- Fonts
- Title card and lower third
- Caption style
- Thumbnail layout
- Vertical cut for Reels, Shorts, TikTok
- Horizontal cut, if asked
- Thumbnail and cover
- Written captions and hashtags per platform
What comes back
Expect a folder you can schedule from, with one file or block for each platform.
- A vertical cut for Reels, Shorts and TikTok, usually 30 to 60 seconds.
- A horizontal cut for YouTube or your website, if you asked for one.
- Captions burned into the picture.
- A YouTube thumbnail and a vertical cover frame.
- Written captions for each platform, with hashtags picked for the people you sell to.
Burn the captions in. In a 2019 survey of 5,616 US adults aged 18 to 54 by Verizon Media and Publicis Media, 69% said they watch video with the sound off in public places. A video that needs sound to make sense loses those viewers in the first second.
Ask for the written captions too. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube each treat links and hashtags in their own way, so one paste does not fit all four. A finished package has a block for each, ready to copy.
Build the kit from your website
Your website already holds most of the answers. It has your colors as exact codes, your fonts and your tone of voice. A kit built from the site keeps a viewer inside the same brand when they tap from a Reel through to your home page.
We did this for our own videos. The teal, the headline font and the white label card from our home page became the title card, the lower third and the caption color. The thumbnail uses the same corner marks as the video frame on the home page. It took one build, and our first test cut ran on it the same day.
The test caught two things we had not planned for. The cover's two-line headline ran off the side of the vertical frame, so the kit now shrinks a headline to fit its longest line. And the first title card labelled our clips "drone" when they were animated stills. A kit makes labels look official, so the words on them have to come from what was actually shot.
Logos are where kits most often stall. Plenty of owners only have a PNG from whoever drew the logo years ago. You should not need to know the difference between PNG, SVG and JPEG. The studio sorts out which file goes where, or redraws the mark when the old file can't fill a screen. More on that in what logo design services cost.
Why a kit makes each video cheaper
Without a kit, every edit reopens the same questions. Which font? Where does the logo go? What color are the captions? An editor who bills by the hour charges for those answers each time. With a kit the questions are closed, and the hours go into picking the best shots and cutting to the voice.
A kit also keeps the feed looking like one business when several people make the content. An agent, a manager and a studio can all hand in clips. The output still matches. For listings, what a real estate videographer should deliver covers how one shoot feeds a month of posts.
What to ask a studio for
- The kit as files in your hands: logo files, color codes, font files with their licenses, caption settings.
- One finished video on your kit before you commit to a batch.
- The input list in writing, so you know what to film and how to send it.
- The output list per video: which cuts, how long, thumbnail, cover and written captions.
- Who keeps the source files and the edit project. See how to hire a video production company for the footage side.
If the kit lives only inside one editor's software, you don't own it. Ask for it as files.
Questions
Is a brand kit the same as a brand book?
No. A brand book sets the rules for the whole business: logo use, colors, type and voice. A brand kit for video puts those rules into moving pictures. If you have a brand book, the kit starts from it. What a brand identity agency delivers covers the book.
Can I record the voiceover on my phone?
Yes. A quiet room matters more than the microphone. Hold the phone about a hand's width from your mouth. If you stumble, read the line again. The editor keeps the better take.
Do I need my own fonts?
No. Many good fonts are free to use in video. Check the license either way, and keep the font files with the kit so any editor can open them.