How to Set Up Your Canva Brand Kit (2026 Step-by-Step Tutorial)

All right, so let's talk about Canva brand kits. You might have just got

brand kits. You might have just got Canva Pro and are looking to add your own business's brand kit to Canva Pro or maybe you're considering upgrading from Canva free to Canva Pro because brand kits are a big deal. And so I'm going to

share with you today exactly how to use Canva brand kits. Everything from

uploading your logo, adding your color palettes, adding your fonts, adding your brand elements, which is really important, and a couple of little extra nuancey bits that you might need to know. So let's dive on in.

know. So let's dive on in.

Hello, welcome to this video. My name is Jackie and if we haven't met yet, I am pretty much a professional graphic designer whose main role is to teach people like you, everyday business owners, how they can use programs like

Canva to create their own professional branding and graphics for their businesses. In this video, I want to

businesses. In this video, I want to share with you exactly how to start using your own Canva brand kit. And just

to mention, if you do feel like upgrading to Pro and you're not already there and you'd love to support the channel, you can get a free Canva Pro trial using the link in the description.

And that will not only help you, but it'll help me to be able to continue to create videos just like this. So, just

to show you firstly what a brand kit will look like, I'm going to show you one that already exists and then show you how to make one exactly like this.

So, as a bit of an overview, when you're inside Canva, you can just open up a random design and anytime you're in a design, you can click on this brand kit over at the side here, and up will pop all of your brand elements. You've got

your logos, your brand colors, your fonts, and anything else you choose to upload, which might be photos or graphics or your brand voice, etc. You can add in quite a lot more, and it's very much customizable. It's been only

getting better over the last few years.

And what this means is that while you're designing, you can add everything in very, very easily. So, if I needed to add a logo in, I can just click on that and my logo is now here. If I wanted to add some text in, I can add a text box

in and I can change it to being my brand fonts really easily just by going down to this beautiful beginnings, which is what this business is called, brand font area, and that's all sitting right there for me instantly. Plus, it's the same

with our colors. I can change the color of this to being my brand colors just by clicking on the color option. And you'll

see right here is my business's brand colors right there. I don't have to guess the color. I don't have to try to find it. It's always there. and

find it. It's always there. and

accessible for me while I'm designing.

This saves us so much time while we're working. And as a business owner whose

working. And as a business owner whose time is money, saving time is always going to pay me back. So, let's dive into how to create your own brand kit.

You can do this a few places. I'm going

to go to canvas home. So, I'm just going to go to canva.com and head over to the side panel. If you don't have this on

side panel. If you don't have this on your side panel or it's grayed out, that'll be because you have Canva free.

So, make sure you jump onto that free trial via the link in the description.

So, you can upload your Canva brand kit while you're on that free trial. So, I'm

going to click on brand kit. for me

because I have a ton of brands already here. That's why this is already

here. That's why this is already populated, but yours might be totally blank. That's fine. So, I'm going to

blank. That's fine. So, I'm going to click on my little drop down here and press create new brand kit. Creating a

personal brand kit is kind of more of a team thing. I'm not going to go into it.

team thing. I'm not going to go into it.

It's wildly complicated and I don't totally get it. So, let's create a normal brand kit. I'm going to click on create new. And you can name it. So, for

create new. And you can name it. So, for

me, I'm going to call mine Brunwin mainly because I've already got Brunwin's brand kit in here. I'm going

to do it again and I don't want to get confused between them. But you would just call this your business's name if you've got Canva teams and they'll be able to all access this brand kit. Keep

in mind, you can't share your brand kit with people outside your own team. Like

you can't just copy a link to your brand kit and share that with me for funsies.

It is always just living inside your own Canva. So I'm going to press the purple

Canva. So I'm going to press the purple create button and you can see I've got a lot of different options here. It's

giving you the option here if you've got a really solidified brand already, maybe you've got really great website that people have made for you, you can actually insert your website here or your brand guidelines if you've got a

that in a fancy pants PDF and upload all of that here. Most of my clients don't have that because they are usually making their own branding or they're just starting out. But if you do have those things already existing, this could be a great way to shortcut the

process. And so I'm actually going to

process. And so I'm actually going to upload some brand guidelines briefly to show you what that's like, but then I'm going to go back and show you how to do it manually. So, if I press upload

it manually. So, if I press upload guidelines, whether you have a little style guide or a full brand kit, you can upload that here and Canva will look at that and try to pull different things out of it to save you some time. So, if

you've had a professional designer do your brand, then this could be a great thing to try. So, I've just uploaded a full brand kit that I created for my own brand and it's loaded and it says now that I can continue the setup. The brand

is off to a great start. So, if I press continue setup, what it's going to do is it's going to show me some things it's already picked up. It's picked up some main colors. It's picked up my accent

main colors. It's picked up my accent colors. Hasn't picked up any themes. Um,

colors. Hasn't picked up any themes. Um,

but we'll see what else it's got. Has it

got the fonts? It's picked up a couple of fonts a little bit correctly.

It's picked up some of my brand voice, not any photos and not any brand elements. So, this

kind of saved me a little bit of time, but if you don't have some PDF brand guidelines, then I wouldn't stress about this process too much. So let's go back again and I'm going to start from scratch this time to show you how you can implement these things by yourself.

So you can see you can either click on these boxes down here or you can use the side panel. These are both one and the

side panel. These are both one and the same. Doesn't matter which one you use.

same. Doesn't matter which one you use.

I can also add in any new categories. So

if you have a category that you would like to add, like you've got specific particular graphics you want to upload, you can make your own little categories here as well. I'm going to leave them as normal though because I think these ones

are actually pretty good. So let's start with the logo. So I'm going to click on logos here. And here is when you can

logos here. And here is when you can upload your brand logos. Ideally, you'll

have these in what's called a vector format from your designer or having created them for yourself. If you've

ever worked with me or you've watched my logo design lessons, you'll know how to upload and create the right sort of logo for Canva. I recommend SVG files if

for Canva. I recommend SVG files if you're using Canva to create your brand or at the very minimum PGs that are transparent. You can only save both of

transparent. You can only save both of those formats if you have Canva Pro, just as a bit of an FYI. I'm going to now add some of my logos in by pressing this add brand assets button. And so

when I click that, I can either choose to add a category or a folder or just upload the files straight to this. I

don't think we need any particular categories for this section. It's just

logo files. So I'm going to go to upload files and I'm going to go to my computer and find some logo files. So I've

actually saved a few of these for myself. I'm going to select those and

myself. I'm going to select those and upload them here. So you'll see that Canva is loading them in. I've already

named these files on my computer, so they're already named well. You can

easily update the name once you've uploaded it. All you need to do is click

uploaded it. All you need to do is click on this little pencil and you can change the name of it right there and type in whatever I would desire. Now, you'll see here a good logo and I've got this in my other videos doesn't isn't just one logo

format. It is a variety of different

format. It is a variety of different layouts and formats to suit the different needs you have for your business. Plus, they are transparent

business. Plus, they are transparent backgrounds. The beauty of all of these

backgrounds. The beauty of all of these logos is they are also colorable inside Canva, which means I don't need to upload a ton of different variations. I

can just do these ones and change them on the go while I'm designing. So, all

of those logos are right now inside my Canva brand kit, which is the dream. If

you ever need to update any of these logos in the future, like you realize that something's a little bit wrong, you can actually update that logo by pressing these three dots and press replace across designs. But because I don't have any designs that have been

using this cuz it's brand new, then it's not working. But I just wanted to let

not working. But I just wanted to let you know that that feature is there if you do ever need to fix your logo or change it um across different things.

All right, next up, let's move to colors. So, I could either go back to

colors. So, I could either go back to this all assets button to see that home screen again, or I can just toggle on the side here down to colors. So, what

it's going to do is because I've uploaded SVG files of my logo, it's able to pick up the colors from inside those graphics. So, it's already picked up

graphics. So, it's already picked up some colors here for me. I can choose to keep these or remove them. Um, I'm going to just keep one of these. So, I'm going to press remove because these are mostly the same. Remove, remove, remove. This

the same. Remove, remove, remove. This

one's nice cuz it's got a lot. So, I'm

going to remove that one. And I'm going to leave that there. And I'm going to actually press keep. And I'm going to change the name of this. So I'm going to say main brand colors. And then you can either just have one section or you can

add another section if you want to. I

could press this little plus button and press add palette, add custom palette. And I might choose to say um accent if I have some additional colors. So I'm

going to head over to my other tab which has uh the brand that we originally made together. Me and Bronwin worked on this

together. Me and Bronwin worked on this and made this whole brand right inside Canva. And you can see we have a few

Canva. And you can see we have a few extra colors here. I'm going to show you two ways that you can bring your color palette in. The first is a bit of a

palette in. The first is a bit of a cheat way and it is amazing. Uh the

other one is totally manual. So the

cheat way, let's do manual first. I'm

going to do manual then I'll show you the cheat way. It's always good to know the manual way to do things. So if we look here, I've already got these colors in. The other colors are more accent

in. The other colors are more accent colors. So I'm going to add those to

colors. So I'm going to add those to this section down here. So I'm going to find say this blue. If I click on any color that I ever have inside Canva, I can then click on the color as it appears in the toolbar. And when I do

that, it shows me up here. Now, if I click on this again, it's going to reveal to me the hex code. The hex code is a sixdigit kind of combination that tells you the name of that color. So, if

I actually highlight that color, right click, and press copy or C on my keyboard, I can then go to my add new color button here, and then add that in here. Right? And you can see it's picked

here. Right? And you can see it's picked up that exact same color, blue. You can

also add the CMYK versions if that's something you need to do, or you can even add in a gradient version of your color as well.

Once I'm happy with that, I can press add new color. And I might go in and add another one. So maybe I add in our

another one. So maybe I add in our off-white kind of color. So we don't have to use a stark white. And again,

I'm just going to click on the color, click on the color as it appears in this section down here, and I can copy that text. Go back over here and paste it.

text. Go back over here and paste it.

You can do that as many times as you need to for any of the colors that you have. All right, so that's enough for

have. All right, so that's enough for now. If I wanted to name these colors, I

now. If I wanted to name these colors, I totally could. I could call this one

totally could. I could call this one navy. I could call this one yellow. I

navy. I could call this one yellow. I

could call this one pink. Or you could think of some kind of fancy name like um bubblegum or dreams or whatever dreamy lie like whatever you want to but I'm just going to name them simple for now.

And you can see that that's got that name or it'll just automatically have the hex code accompanying it. There are

some more features down here around color themes. But I think most of us

color themes. But I think most of us business owners are probably going to not do that straight away. So I'm going to leave that out for now. But please

know that feature is there should you need to kind of go further. Now I just want to show you that cheats way that I mentioned of adding your colors if you don't want to do the just the copying of the hex codes. If you have your color palette just sitting inside Canva like I

do here, I could actually right click on all of these graphics. So, I'm just clicking and dragging to select all of these circles, then I can right click and then I can press download selection and then I'm going to download these

colors as an SVG file. So, if I just change my file type here to SVG, it's all going to make sense and press download. Then I can go back to my Canva

download. Then I can go back to my Canva brand kit and remember how when I uploaded my logos, it picked up all the colors. I could do that to get all my

colors. I could do that to get all my colors but then delete my logo. So, for

example, this is what I mean. Going to

go to my logo section, then upload a file. I'm going to choose that little

file. I'm going to choose that little file I just made before of my circles.

I'm going to open that. And it's going to upload that as my colors. I'm going

to come back and delete this shortly.

So, I don't need to worry about anything in particular. But, if I go back to my

in particular. But, if I go back to my colors down here, cuz you can see suggested palette created from brand asset. I can go to review or I can click

asset. I can go to review or I can click on colors. And you can see that it's

on colors. And you can see that it's picked up all of those colors just from that graphic that I just saved. So, if I wanted to, I could just press keep and name this as main brand colors and that would be done. I am actually going to

delete that because I have already done it. But that option is there for you,

it. But that option is there for you, too. I'm also going to go back to my

too. I'm also going to go back to my logos now and delete this by clicking on the three dots and pressing delete. All

right, now let's move to fonts. I'm

going to move down on the side panel here to fonts. You can either choose Canva fonts or as a Canva Pro user, you can upload your own fonts that you purchase online elsewhere. Just make

sure that you have the full rights to be able to use them. So to add a font, so say I want to add in a title font, I can just click on this word here and I can choose a font from canvas font library.

So from for Bronwin, it's Kalis Stoga.

So I'm going to click on that and I can choose to preset some sizing if I want to. Maybe making it quite large cuz this

to. Maybe making it quite large cuz this is often going to be used for a heading or I could leave it as so. It doesn't

matter too much. Once I'm done, I would then press the save button. Now, you

don't have to add in all of these options. This can feel a little bit

options. This can feel a little bit overwhelming. So, I usually add in the

overwhelming. So, I usually add in the title, maybe a subheading font, and I just go through and check and change those as needed. And body text font. I

think that one's important for her. It

is Poppins. All right. So, we've got some fonts added in there. If I needed to upload a font, I could just go to this plus button and I could press upload a font. So, if you have purchased a font and you have the font file for

it, you can just press that plus button and load it in here. It'll usually be an F or a TTF file. Then, it can be something that you add into these font sections as well. But I'm just going to stop there because I don't want to overwhelm myself with too many different

examples. Let's now go down to brand

examples. Let's now go down to brand voice. You might choose to add this in

voice. You might choose to add this in or not. This is really only relevant if

or not. This is really only relevant if you've got other people working on your brand or you're using Canva AI to write some of your text. Me, I don't need that. So, I'm not going to add in a

that. So, I'm not going to add in a brand voice in particular. But if you wanted to, you would just press add brand voice and you would type out something that would describe your brand's voice. Next, we've got photos.

brand's voice. Next, we've got photos.

So, in here is where you can upload your business's brand photos. You could add this into a folder inside your Canva normally or if you want it always accessible then you can do that here. So

I'm going to press add brand assets and again I could choose to link a folder.

Although this may if you don't see this option it may be because I have Canva teams not just a Canva pro account. So

if you don't see this it's not you it's Canva. I've frequently asked them to be

Canva. I've frequently asked them to be able to add in adding a folder for just normal pro accounts. So stay tuned. Um

and then I'm also going to have the option to upload files. So, if I press upload files, I'm going to choose some of Brunwin's photos from my computer.

Press open and it's going to add Bronwin's photos into here. Again, as

always, I can click on this pencil and change the name of them if I wanted to.

I could even name it something like Bronin sitting on chair or Bronin typing on laptop to make that super easy to find if I started to create a whole library of these. But I can add those in

just like so. Next, we have components.

This is a new area of Canva that they released in the latest update. And

components is where you can save pre-made graphics or collections of graphics to this area. I'm going to come back to this because I also want to share with you graphics. Graphics is

often what I teach my students of is brand elements. Brand elements are kind

brand elements. Brand elements are kind of if I show you on Bonwin's brand here, little elements and graphics you can add to your designs to make them more unique, to make them more like you, to make them more fun, um, and to make them

more personal. And so these graphics you

more personal. And so these graphics you could add into this folder. Now again,

you can press brand assets and you can either upload those or if you have Canva teams, you can link a folder. I

personally love linking a folder uh because it makes it so much easier. So

say for example, I wanted to add this as a brand element. I could actually click on these three dots cuz this is actually a Canva element. I just got this from Canvas element library over here. So if

I wanted to find this and add it to a folder, I can press this three dots on here. I could press info

here. I could press info and I could then press add to folder and I could create a little folder called brand elements and add all of my graphics to a folder called brand

elements and then link that folder of brand elements to my Canva Pro design.

The other option that we have now is to create a component and use that. So if I actually right click on this, I can press create component and I might say purple flower. And if I press save to

purple flower. And if I press save to brand kit here, it's actually going to be able to link this and grab add this little asset to a folder inside my brand

kit. So if I click here, I can see the

kit. So if I click here, I can see the asset category. I don't want it in

asset category. I don't want it in logos, but I would love it to be in my graphics folder. So I can press

graphics folder. So I can press graphics, press create, and that's going to create that as a little element that I can then have and use inside my brand kit. So you can see it's added in down

kit. So you can see it's added in down in here. This is an old brand kit that

in here. This is an old brand kit that I've made, so it won't be visible over here yet cuz I haven't got the right one selected. Um, but let's select the right

selected. Um, but let's select the right one. and I can show you exactly what

one. and I can show you exactly what that would look like.

Let's add this one in instead. Click on

the element, click on the three dots, press create component, give it a name, save to brand kit, and choose where I want that to be. I can

either have it in the components folder or in the graphics folder or you can make up your own folder. Doesn't matter

as long as you know where it is and it makes sense to anyone working with you.

Going to then press create and that's then going to appear in my elements. And

that means when I go to create a graphic, like say I'm creating a graphic over here, and I want to use this pink squiggle, it's already right here, ready for me to use. Beautiful. The other

sections inside your brand kit are icons, where you can pretty much do a similar thing to your elements and add in icons instead. Particularly, this is probably mostly relevant if you've had a designer work on your brand and they've given you a whole pack of elements. Same

with graphics. If you've got some custommade elements you want to add in, you would just press plus and you would upload the files that they gave you.

Ideally, they would be transparent files. SVG is great because it's color

files. SVG is great because it's color changeable or a PNG if it's a slightly more complex design is fine. Um, then

you've got your icons. You might want to upload those. And you've got charts as

upload those. And you've got charts as well. If you have a particular way you

well. If you have a particular way you like to do a chart or some colors you like to do, Canva obviously does great charts. And you can have like a pre-made

charts. And you can have like a pre-made style stuck in here to make that process a little faster if it's something you're working on regularly. So, you can see you've got a whole lot of sections here that are really quite easy and quick to fill in. And it means that when you get

fill in. And it means that when you get to designing random graphics, everything's where you need it to be.

You don't have to walk around. you don't

have to try and upload them again cuz you lost the file or try to remember your font name or try to remember the color hex code. Although my husband does know his business's hex code color, which is wild to me. And then there's also extra areas we can explore. There's

brand templates where you can save pre-made Canva designs to those areas.

If you would like to do that, you can just press share when you're in a design and make it and click on this button, brand template, and that will become a brand template that you can access easily while you're creating your graphics. You can also add in brand

graphics. You can also add in brand guidelines if you do have a PDF made up to kind of direct people on how to use your brand. Otherwise, everything is

your brand. Otherwise, everything is kind of here for you, ready to just use at an instant. So, I hope that's been really useful for you. And I'll be honest, it'll take you about half an hour to set up, but once it's done, it's going to save you absolute hours in the

process of creating your graphics over time. So, make sure you prioritize

time. So, make sure you prioritize setting that up. And again, if you don't have Canva Pro yet, but you'd like to give it a try, hit the link in the description. And if you're looking at

description. And if you're looking at all of this and saying, "Jackie, that's great, but I don't know my colors. I

don't know my fonts. I don't know my logos. I don't know my graphics

logos. I don't know my graphics elements, then I would love to support you. I have two ways to do so. Firstly,

you. I have two ways to do so. Firstly,

if you're looking for something free to kind of kick you off and get you excited and give you a few guidelines, I have a master class. It's called design tools

master class. It's called design tools to get to 100K online. And I'll show you some more examples of using a brand in practice. I'll share with you some

practice. I'll share with you some design mistakes you're probably making in your designs that are making them look amateur. And I'll share with you

look amateur. And I'll share with you some canvas shortcuts to make that process quicker. Or if you're ready to

process quicker. Or if you're ready to kind of commit to this, you're owning your business and you're like, you know what, it's time I stop fluffing around.

it's time I actually create a brand that I can use consistently that sets me up like a professional, then I have a course. It's called DIY Design My Biz.

course. It's called DIY Design My Biz.

And it's exactly that. I'm going to help you to DIY your own brand, your own business graphics for your business right inside Canva, just like Bronin and I did. And so, it's going to take you

I did. And so, it's going to take you through the whole process of building out a brand. And not just a brand that looks pretty, a brand that's strategic, a brand that's based on what your audience is going to be attracted to and what's going to stand the test of time and actually look professional and not

get you into any legal complications either. And so if that course sounds

either. And so if that course sounds interesting to you, it's going to help you go through the whole brand process, plus actually learn how to create professional graphics ongoing. You also

get feedback from me and my team for a few months. That's all included inside

few months. That's all included inside that program. And I would love to have

that program. And I would love to have you, if you're ready to kind of make this brand, your business, really shine through the designs that you're sharing and creating in Canva. So make sure you hit the QR code on the screen or hit the link in the description if you'd like to

know more of that. In the meantime, make sure you are subscribed if you're not already and thank you for joining me for this video and I'll see you next week for a brand new tutorial. Bye.