How to Set Up a Canva Brand Kit From Scratch

If your team is in Canva every day but your content still looks inconsistent, the brand kit is almost always the missing piece.

A Canva brand kit is where your logos, colours, fonts, and brand assets live — all in one place, accessible to every person on your team, every time they open a design. When it is set up properly, your team stops guessing which colour to use, stops searching for the right logo, and stops producing content that looks like it came from three different businesses.

In this guide I am going to walk you through exactly how to set up a Canva brand kit from scratch, using a real example. A South African stationery brand with a small but active team producing social media content, promotions, and product launches every week. Everything I set up for them, you can replicate for your own business.

By the end of this guide your brand kit will be fully set up and your team will have everything they need to produce on-brand content without asking anyone for the right file.

What is a Canva Brand Kit?

A Canva brand kit is a centralised space inside Canva where you store all the core elements of your brand identity. This includes your logos, your colour palette, your typography, your brand voice, and your approved brand assets like photos, icons, and graphics.

Think of it as the single source of truth for your brand inside Canva. Every design your team creates pulls from the same brand kit, which means everything stays consistent without anyone having to manually check the brand guidelines every time.

Canva brand kits are available on Canva Pro and Canva Teams. If you are on the free plan, upgrading to Pro is the first step.

What you need before you start

Before you open Canva, gather the following:

Your logo files — ideally in SVG format. If you only have a PNG or JPEG, I will show you how to convert it inside Canva using the Tracer app.

Your brand colours — the exact hex codes for your primary, secondary, and neutral colours. If you do not have these, I will show you how to extract them directly from your logo inside Canva.

Your brand fonts — the names of the fonts used in your headings, subheadings, and body copy. If you use custom fonts not available in Canva, you can upload them directly.

Your brand guidelines document — if you have one. If not, do not worry. This guide will help you build one as you go.

Step 1 — Create your brand kit

Open Canva and go to the Brand section in the left sidebar. Click on Brand Kits and then click Add New Brand Kit.

Name your brand kit clearly. For Lihytic Stationery we named it Lihytic Brand Kit so every team member knows exactly what they are opening.

You will now see the brand kit dashboard with sections for logos, colours, fonts, and more. We will work through each section one at a time.

Step 2 — Upload your logos

Click on the Logos section and select Add Brand Assets.
This is where file type matters. PNG logos are the most common but they pixelate when scaled up. SVG logos are vector files that stay crisp at any size and can be recoloured with one click.

Now upload your SVG into your brand kit logos section.
For Lihytic Stationery we uploaded three logo versions — the full colour logo on a light background, the white version for dark backgrounds, and the icon only version for small spaces like social media profile pictures.

Why upload multiple logo versions?

Different designs need different logo treatments. Having all versions in the brand kit means your team always grabs the right one without having to ask.

Step 3 — Set up your colour palette

Click on the Colours section and select Add New Colour.
You can add colours in two ways. If you know your hex codes, type them directly into the colour picker. If you do not know your hex codes, use the eyedropper tool to extract colours directly from your logo or any brand image.

How to extract colours from your logo in Canva:

Open a design with your logo on it. Click on any shape or text element. Go to the colour picker. Select the eyedropper tool. Hover over your logo and click the exact colour you want to capture. Copy the hex code and add it to your brand kit.

For Lihytic Stationery the colour palette includes three groups. The primary palette is the main purple and lavender used across all branded content. The secondary palette includes soft pink and warm white for backgrounds and accent elements. The neutral palette includes black and light grey for text and dividers.

Organise your colours into groups by clicking Add Colour Group. Label each group clearly — Primary, Secondary, Neutral. This makes it easy for any team member to know which colour to use and when.

Step 4 — Set your fonts

Click on the Fonts section. You will see three slots — Heading, Subheading, and Body.

Click on each slot and search for your brand font from Canva’s font library. If you use a custom font that is not in the Canva library, click Upload a Font and add the font file directly.

For Lihytic Stationery the heading font is bold and playful to match the brand’s fun personality. The body font is clean and easy to read for captions, product descriptions, and longer text. Setting these once means every template your team uses automatically pulls the right fonts without anyone having to remember or manually change them.

Step 5 — Add your brand voice

The brand voice section is one of the most underused parts of the Canva brand kit. It is where you add a short description of how your brand communicates — the tone, the personality, the do’s and don’ts of your brand language.

For Lihytic Stationery the brand voice is warm, fun, and approachable. The captions are conversational. The language is relatable and never corporate.

Adding this to the brand kit means every team member who writes copy for a design knows how the brand should sound, not just how it should look.

Step 6 — Upload brand photos, graphics, and icons

Scroll down to the Photos, Graphics, and Icons sections. These are where you add your approved visual assets.
For Lihytic Stationery we uploaded the brand’s approved product photography, the brand pattern elements, and the icon set used across social media posts and packaging designs.
Having these in the brand kit means your team never has to search through personal folders or ask the designer for the latest product photos. Everything is right there when they need it.

Step 7 — Upload your brand guidelines using the guidelines feature
This is the step most people skip and it is one of the most powerful features in the Canva brand kit.
Canva allows you to upload a brand guidelines PDF directly into the brand kit. Once uploaded, Canva reads the document and uses it to help populate your brand assets automatically.
I built a one page brand guidelines document for Lihytic Stationery inside Canva Docs. It covers the logo usage rules, the colour palette with hex codes, the typography hierarchy, the brand voice, and the photography style. I then downloaded it as a PDF and uploaded it directly into the brand kit guidelines section.
If you do not have a brand guidelines document yet, start with a simple one page Canva Doc covering your logo, colours, fonts, and tone of voice. That is all you need to get started.

Step 8 — Apply your brand kit to a design
Now that the brand kit is set up, here is how your team uses it.
Open any design in Canva. On the left panel click on Brand. Your brand kit will appear showing all your logos, colours, and fonts.
To apply your brand colours to a design, go to Design at the top, click Styles, and select your brand colour palette. All colours in the design update instantly.
To apply your brand fonts, click on Brand Fonts and select your typography set. All fonts update across the entire design.
To add your logo, simply click on it in the brand kit and it drops directly into your design. Resize and reposition as needed.

What changes when your brand kit is set up
Before setting up the brand kit for Lihytic Stationery, the team was pulling logos from WhatsApp chats, guessing colour codes, and using whatever font looked close enough.
After the brand kit was set up, every design pulled from the same source. The same logo. The same colours. The same fonts. Every time.
The content looked consistent across Instagram, Facebook, product packaging, and promotional materials — not because the team suddenly became better designers, but because the system was doing the heavy lifting for them.

Common mistakes to avoid
Only uploading one logo version. Upload at least three — full colour, white, and icon only.
Using PNG logos instead of SVG. Convert to SVG using the Tracer app inside Canva for crisp, scalable logos.
Skipping the brand voice section. Your team needs to know how the brand sounds, not just how it looks.
Not organising colours into groups. Label your colour groups clearly so team members know which colours to use and when.
Forgetting to train the team. Setting up the brand kit is only half the job. Make sure every person on the team knows where it is and how to use it.

Conclusion
A properly set up Canva brand kit is the foundation of every brand system I build for businesses. It takes a few hours to set up and saves your team hours every single week.
If you are ready to set up your brand kit but want someone to build it for you, that is exactly what I do as part of every Canva for Teams setup. Book a free Canva audit call at eunivxrse.com and I will assess your current setup and tell you exactly what needs to be built.