Press Kit
Definition
A press kit — sometimes called a press page or a newsroom — exists so that somebody writing to a deadline can get what they need at two in the morning. The contents are conventional: boilerplate text in a couple of lengths, the logo in vector and raster form on light and dark backgrounds, product photography at print resolution, headshots, founding date and headcount, past announcements, and a named press contact. It is not a sales document and should not read like one. Press kit and media kit are used interchangeably in conversation, but they are different things: a press kit is material for a journalist writing about you, while a media kit is the pack an advertiser or sponsor asks for, with audience figures and rates in it.
Why It Matters
Journalists work to deadlines shorter than your reply time. If the logo is not available, the piece runs with a screenshot of your homepage or with no image at all; if the boilerplate is not available, the description of your company is whatever the writer infers from your site. Both are worse than the versions you would have chosen. There is a duller second benefit as well: a press kit ends the steady trickle of requests for the logo from partners, conference organisers and your own sales team, all of whom want the same three files and all of whom currently email somebody to get them.
How It Works
Put the kit on one page with the text visible and the assets downloadable, rather than as a single archive that has to be opened before anyone can see what is inside. Offer both: individual files for the person who wants one logo, and a ZIP archive for the person building a slide deck. Name files so they are identifiable after download — 'acme-logo-dark.svg' rather than 'logo-final-v3.svg'. State the usage terms in a line or two: what may be used, whether the logo may be recoloured, who to ask about anything else. Keep the press contact a real address that somebody reads, not a form that drops into a queue.
Real-World Example
A small games studio publishes its kit at halcyon-press.99helpers.site: one page of boilerplate, eight screenshots, a logo folder and a 30 MB archive for anyone who wants the lot. A reviewer on deadline downloads the archive at midnight, and the piece runs next morning with the studio's own key art rather than a cropped store listing. The 99helpers analytics show which screenshots are actually being downloaded, which is more useful to the studio than knowing how many people visited the page.
Common Mistakes
- ✕Hiding the kit behind a form — a journalist asked to fill in a form for a logo will instead right-click the one on your homepage, at whatever size it happens to be
- ✕Shipping only a raster logo — print and large-format work needs a vector file, and somebody will scale the PNG up until the edges go soft
- ✕Calling it a press kit and filling it with pricing and audience numbers — that is a media kit, and the journalist has to read past it to find what they came for
Related Terms
Media Kit
A media kit is the pack you send to a potential advertiser, sponsor or partner: who your audience is, how many of them there are, what the available placements cost, and how to buy one.
Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines are the document that says how an organisation's identity may be used: the logo and its clear space, the colours with their values, the typefaces, the tone of voice, and what is not allowed.
ZIP Archive
A single .zip file that holds many files and folders, each compressed separately. On a host it is used two ways: served as one download, or unpacked on upload so its contents are served individually.
Image Hosting
Storing image files somewhere on the web and serving them at addresses that can be dropped straight into an img tag, an email or a marketplace listing. The useful output is the address, not the upload.
Direct Link
A direct link points at a file's bytes rather than at a page about the file. Request it and you get the file itself, with its own Content-Type header and nothing wrapped around it.
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