When people start setting up their Brand Kit in Canva, the temptation is often to make it as detailed as possible — more categories, more labels, more structure. That’s usually when setup starts to feel like a project in itself, and the Brand Kit quietly becomes another thing to manage rather than something that makes designing faster.
Canva’s Brand System is meant to reduce decision-making while you design, not add to it. The goal isn’t a perfect structure — it’s a structure that stays usable as your business grows.
Out of the box, the Brand Kit comes with a fixed set of default categories: Logos, Colours, Fonts, Brand Voice, Photos, Graphics, Icons, and Charts. As Canva’s Brand System has evolved, you can now create custom sections — broad groupings that sit above categories — and add categories inside those sections to organize assets further.
That flexibility is useful, but it’s also where overcomplication tends to start. If you haven’t set up your Brand Kit yet, my tutorial on how to set up your Canva Brand Kit covers the full process from the beginning.
Start With What You Actually Reuse
The simplest way to keep your Brand Kit manageable is to focus on reuse. Assets that belong here are the ones you come back to repeatedly — logos, colour palettes, fonts, core brand photos, and reusable visual elements. If something isn’t reused across your designs, it probably doesn’t need to live here.
That becomes a useful filter whenever you’re deciding what belongs: will I actually reach for this repeatedly while designing? If the answer is no, it belongs elsewhere in Canva. My post on what imagery belongs in your Canva Brand Kit goes deeper on how to make that call for visual assets specifically.
Use Fewer Sections Than You Think You Need
Custom sections are helpful when they represent broad types of assets, but a small number of clearly named sections is almost always easier to work with than a long list of specific ones. If you find yourself scanning the Brand sidebar trying to decide where something belongs, the structure is already doing too much work.
A simple setup might include one section for core brand assets — logos, colours, fonts, and brand voice — another for brand photos like headshots or signature photography, and a third for reusable graphics like patterns, textures, or illustrations. You don’t need a section for every type of content you create, just the assets that define your brand visually. My tutorial on how to create custom sections in the Canva Brand System walks through the process in detail.
Add Categories Only When You Need Them
Categories are most useful when you notice a real problem — scrolling too much, visually filtering through too many assets, or repeatedly missing what you’re looking for. If everything is already easy to find, adding categories won’t improve your workflow. It’ll just give you more places to check.
Let categories be a response to a genuine need rather than a preemptive organizing step. Inside a Brand Graphics section, for example, categories might make sense once you’re storing enough background patterns, illustrations, and icon sets that they’ve become genuinely hard to scan. Before that point, a single section is enough.
My tutorial on how to create custom categories in your Canva Brand Kit covers the process when you’re ready to add them.
Keep Campaigns and Projects Out of the Brand Kit
Your Brand Kit is not the right place for campaign assets, seasonal content, or one-off project files. It works best when it contains assets that Canva can surface repeatedly while you’re designing — the core elements that define your brand, regardless of what you’re working on.
Campaign and project assets are time-bound. Once a campaign is over, those visuals are either archived or irrelevant, and leaving them in the Brand Kit makes it harder to scan and easier for outdated content to linger. Those assets are better managed through folders and projects elsewhere in Canva.
Two exceptions are worth knowing: a recurring annual campaign with its own consistent visual identity, and a large one-off event where you’re producing enough content that a dedicated Brand Kit genuinely speeds up the work. In both cases, a separate Brand Kit keeps those assets contained without cluttering your primary brand system.
Let Your Structure Evolve
You don’t need to get this right the first time. Canva’s Brand System is flexible — you can add sections, rename categories, and simplify things later as your needs change. It’s far easier to build gradually than to untangle an overly complex setup down the road.
If something starts to feel heavy or annoying to maintain, that’s usually a sign to simplify rather than add more structure. The Brand Kit that serves you best isn’t the most detailed one — it’s the one that stays out of your way while you work.
