Recipe Nº 03: Show Your Whole Brand Kit in One Shot

A brand is more than a logo. It's the business card, the letterhead, the envelope, the stickers, the tote bag. Seeing all of it together, in one organized shot, is the fastest way to tell whether it feels like one brand or a pile of separate pieces.

This is Recipe Nº 03 from the STS Design Kitchen: a knolling flat lay. Knolling is the style where every item is laid out at right angles with even spacing, shot from straight above. It looks calm, organized and intentional, which is exactly how you want a brand kit to feel.

What you need

We use GPT Image 2.5, which we run in Higgsfield.

• Generate at 9:16, then crop to 4:5.
• No reference image.

Starting with a tall frame and cropping afterward lets you choose where the arrangement and the empty headline space end up.

The prompt (copy as-is)

"Top-down knolling flat lay of a small business brand kit arranged at perfect right angles on a charcoal (#141619) felt surface: blank business cards, a folded letterhead, an envelope, a roll of round stickers, a tote bag, a lanyard, a pen and a stack of postcards. Every item is blank, in matte white, black and a single orange (#FF5C00) accent. Even soft overhead lighting, subtle shadows, equal spacing between items, photoreal. The top 55% of the frame is empty charcoal felt for a headline. The arrangement is compact and sits in the bottom third of the frame. No text, no logos, no letters."

Why it works

"Knolling" plus "right angles" and "equal spacing" keeps it tidy. Any one of those words on its own can still give you a loose, scattered layout. Together, they push the image toward the neat grid that makes knolling photos so satisfying to look at.

Every item is blank. The prompt asks for blank items and ends with "no text, no logos, no letters." That keeps the model from inventing a fake brand on your stationery and leaves the surfaces clean for your real artwork.

The palette is locked down. Matte white, black and a single orange accent, with hex codes for the charcoal felt and the orange. One accent color keeps the shot cohesive instead of busy. Change the hex codes to match your own brand.

The headline space is built in. The top 55% of the frame stays as empty felt, and the arrangement sits compact in the bottom third. You get an image that's ready for a headline without any extra editing.

How to use it with clients

Mock your client's kit before they order it. If you're a designer or you're helping a business pull its brand together, this is a quick way to show what the full set could look like before anything gets printed. It's much easier for someone to say yes to a kit they can see.

Drop their logo on the items later in Photoshop or Figma. The blank items are your canvas. Generate the flat lay, then place the real logo and artwork on the cards, envelope and stickers in Photoshop or Figma. That way the branding is accurate, not something an image model guessed at.

Make it yours

Swap the items for your own brand kit. A bakery might trade the lanyard for a pastry box and a stamped paper bag. A consultant might swap the tote bag for a presentation folder and a notepad. Keep the list to the things your customers actually touch.

Leave the rest of the prompt alone: the knolling language, the blank items, the palette line, the lighting and the layout. In the social version of this recipe we showed two variations alongside the original. Make a few of your own by changing one thing at a time.

From mockup to the real thing

Once the flat lay looks right, the next step is printing the pieces for real. Our business essentials cover most of this kit: business cards from $25.99, letterhead at $45.99, envelopes at $75.99, notepads at $47.99 and presentation folders at $249.99. For the stickers, the stickers, decals and DTF collection has die-cut stickers at $47.99 and roll labels at $71.99.

Every print order gets a free artwork review, so your files get a second look before anything prints.

Save this recipe. And if your flat lay comes out wrong, or you want help turning it into a real kit, see our design services or drop us a line.

— Alan