Brandkit

Brand Kit — Premium Identity Image Direction

Direct an AI image model to produce brand identity imagery that looks like the work of a top-tier design studio, not a template generator. The output is a set of images: guideline boards, logo sheets, moodboards, mockup tiles.

Iron law: concept before prompt. Never generate a single image until you have written down the brand concept. A prompt without a concept produces generic "AI branding" — gradient blobs, meaningless geometric marks, ten fonts fighting each other.

Step 1 — Derive the brand concept

Before prompting, answer these four questions in writing (2–4 sentences total). Ask the user only if the answers cannot be inferred from context.

1. Symbol — What ONE visual idea carries the brand? (a form, a letter construction, a natural object, a geometric operation). One symbol. Not three.
2. Meaning — Why that symbol? What does it say about what the company does or believes? If you cannot state the meaning in one sentence, pick a different symbol.
3. Personality — Three adjectives, ordered by priority (e.g. "precise, calm, quietly confident"). These drive every later vocabulary choice.
4. Register — Pick exactly ONE aesthetic register from references/registers.md (minimal, cinematic, editorial, dark-tech, luxury, playful-consumer). The register supplies the prompt vocabulary; do not mix registers within one brand kit.

Write the concept as a short block and reuse it verbatim at the top of every prompt in the set. This is what keeps a 6-image kit looking like one brand.

BRAND CONCEPT: [name] — [symbol] representing [meaning].
Personality: [adj1], [adj2], [adj3]. Register: [register].
Palette: [1 base + 1–2 neutrals + max 1 accent, with hex].
Type feel: [e.g. "grotesque sans, tight tracking, lowercase wordmark"].

Step 2 — Plan the deliverable set

A standard kit is 4–8 images. Choose from:

Board	What it shows
Logo concept sheet	3–6 mark explorations of the SAME symbol idea, black on white
Primary guideline board	Hero board: lockup, palette, type, one mockup, in a grid
Color & type board	Swatches with hex labels + type specimen lines
Visual-world moodboard	Photography/texture direction, no logos, 6–9 tiles
Mockup tiles	The identity applied to 1–2 real objects per image
Icon / app-mark board	The mark reduced to favicon and app-icon sizes

Do not generate all of these by default. Match the set to the request: "logo concepts" = concept sheet + one guideline board; "full brand kit" = 5–6 boards.

Step 3 — Prompt structure for guideline boards

Build every board prompt in this order:

1. Format line — "Premium brand guidelines board, clean grid layout, [aspect ratio, usually 16:9 or 4:3], flat graphic design presentation, studio quality."
2. Concept block — paste the BRAND CONCEPT block.
3. Grid contents — enumerate the cells explicitly. Image models compose far better when told exactly what sits where:
   • "Top left: primary logo lockup, large, generous margin."
   • "Top right: logotype-only variant."
   • "Middle row: four color swatches as flat rectangles, each labeled with its hex code in small monospaced text ([#0A0A0A], [#F4F1EA], …)."
   • "Bottom left: type specimen — the brand name set large, plus one line of alphabet sample and one paragraph of small placeholder text."
   • "Bottom right: one photographic mockup tile ([chosen mockup])."
4. Register vocabulary — 5–10 keywords pulled from references/registers.md for the chosen register.
5. Restraint clause — always end with: "Sparse typography, only the brand name and short labels as text. Large negative space. One symbolic idea. No decorative clutter, no random icons, no lorem-ipsum walls, no watermark."

Keep in-image text minimal and specify it exactly (brand name, tagline if any, hex codes). Every word you don't specify is a word the model will misspell.

Step 4 — Logo concept sheets

• Prompt for variations of one idea, not six unrelated logos: "Six variations of a [symbol] mark: outlined, filled, negative-space cut, contained in a circle, deconstructed, combined with the letter [X]."
• Black marks on white (or single accent on near-black for dark-tech). Never rainbow sets.
• "Flat vector style, precise geometry, even stroke weights, presented in a 2×3 grid with generous spacing, each mark the same visual size."
• Add the brand name in small text under each mark — nothing else.

Rules of restraint (apply to every image)

• ONE symbolic idea per brand. If a draft board shows two competing motifs, regenerate.
• Max 2 typefaces implied (one display feel, one text feel). Describe the feel, not font names — models render feels more reliably.
• Palette: 1 base, 1–2 neutrals, max 1 accent. List hex codes in every prompt.
• Negative space is a feature. Ask for "generous margins", "airy composition", "gallery presentation".
• Forbid by default: gradients on logos (unless register calls for it), drop shadows, bevels, mockups with hands, busy backgrounds behind logo lockups, more than ~15 words of visible text per board.

Mockup selection — match the business

Pick mockups the business would actually print or ship. Wrong mockups instantly cheapen a kit.

Business type	Good mockups	Avoid
SaaS / dev tool	app icon, dark laptop screen, conference lanyard, terminal window	wine bottles, storefront awnings
Agency / studio	business card, letterhead, portfolio cover, tote	app store screenshots
Restaurant / café	menu, cup sleeve, signage, apron	letterheads, lanyards
Fashion / luxury	embossed box, hangtag, shopping bag, foil card	mugs, pens
Local service / trade	van livery, uniform patch, yard sign, invoice header	perfume boxes
Consumer app	app icon on home screen, social avatar, billboard	stationery suites

1–2 mockups per image, described physically: "matte black business card with blind-debossed mark, soft top-light, shallow depth of field".

Quality gate before delivering

For each generated image, check: single readable symbol ✱ correct palette (spot-check against hex list) ✱ text legible and correctly spelled ✱ negative space present ✱ consistent with the other boards in the set. Regenerate any image that fails — never deliver an off-concept board because it "looks nice".

See references/registers.md for the full vocabulary of each aesthetic register.