Studio: your brand kit and designs

Set up your brand kit

In the console, open Studio, then Brand kit. Every design starts from what you store here.

• Logos: a main logo, a light logo for dark backgrounds, a dark logo and an icon. PNG or JPEG, up to 10 MB each.
• Colours: up to 8, each with a name and a hex value. The first is your main colour and the second your accent. If your printer gave you CMYK values, type them in and the print file uses them.
• Fonts: one for headings and one for body text.
• Sponsors: up to 12 named logos, which fill the sponsor spaces on a design in order.

An event can have a kit of its own, for when its look differs from your organization's.

Start a design

1. 1In Studio, choose New design. Filter by Event, Kind of event, Item or Occasion (corporate, events, onboarding, graduation, weddings, funerals, parties and celebrations, or church). Once you've chosen an item you can also start from a blank one.
2. 2Items include an NFC key holder, an event badge, a name tag, a lanyard, a roll-up banner, a backdrop, a flyer, a social card, a mug, a T-shirt, a table number, a certificate and a thank-you card. Each knows its size, bleed and safe zone.
3. 3Choose Use this template, name your design, and choose Create design.
4. 4Each template says what it costs from, the fewest you can order and how many days it takes, from the partners who make it.

Start from what your event needs

Choose your Event, or a Kind of event, and Studio shows the starters for that occasion, most useful first: a programme, a badge, a banner, table numbers, a certificate, a thank-you card or a T-shirt. Each has that occasion's words ready to edit, with your brand kit already on it. If your kit has no logo yet, it asks you to add one first.

A starter's words in [square brackets] are placeholders. You can't send a proof while one is left in, so nothing goes to print saying [Your event's name].

Start from a brief

Instead of choosing a template yourself, say what the item is for and Studio proposes three layouts in your brand. In Studio, choose Start from a brief.

1. 1Choose the Item, and the event it's for if there is one: its title, date and venue are filled in for you, and you can change any of them.
2. 2Choose the Occasion, write the Headline, and add the date, venue and one line of Other text if you want them.
3. 3For badges and name tags, paste the Names, one per line.
4. 4Choose a Tone: celebratory, formal, warm or solemn. It decides which arrangements come first, and whether your accent colour is used.
5. 5Choose Show three layouts.

The three differ in template, emphasis or arrangement, and each says why it was chosen, for example "Your light logo, on Forest, headline at 172 pt, centred. Fits the roll-up banner (85 × 200 cm)". Every layout passes all the print checks before it's shown. If a layout has no place for something you wrote, it says what it leaves out.

• Only your words go on a layout: the brief, the event's details, your organization's name, and a template's own heading such as "Supported by". The sample names and dates templates show are taken out.
• Logos and sponsors come from your brand kit. Nothing is drawn or made up for you.
• The same brief and brand kit always give the same three layouts.
• Edit the text on a layout and it's checked again straight away. If a change doesn't fit, it says so, and the picture keeps the last version that fits.

With a list of names, each layout is shown with the longest name, a typical one and the shortest, so a name that would be cut off is caught before the proof. Choose Fit every name to size the names so the longest fits, or shorten it.

Choose Use this layout and name the design. It starts as a draft in the editor, like any other design: you still send the proof yourself, and it's approved on the proof link. Studio never sends or approves anything for you.

Edit it

Add text, a logo or image, rectangles, circles and a QR code. Drag to move, pull a corner to resize, and things snap to the page, the safe zone and each other. Set positions in millimetres, reorder, hide and lock layers, and undo or redo. Guides shows the bleed and safe zone. Changes save themselves.

Edit without a mouse

• Select an element in Layers. The arrow keys move it 1 mm at a time, or 10 mm with Shift. Alt (Option on a Mac) with the arrow keys makes it narrower, wider, shorter or taller.
• In the element's settings, Move and size has buttons that do the same, 1 mm or 10 mm at a time.
• Move up and Move down beside each layer bring it in front of, or behind, the others.
• With a screen reader, you hear where an element ends up after each move, and when the checks change.
• Tab to the page itself and the arrow keys work there too. Escape clears the selection.

The checks

Studio checks the design as you work, the way a printer would. Some problems stop you sending a proof until they're fixed:

• An empty design, or a logo that isn't in your brand kit.
• An image far below the resolution the item needs.
• Text that doesn't fit its box.

Others are warnings: something outside the safe zone or off the page, a shape that stops short of the bleed, text too small for the item, text that's hard to read against its background, a logo that isn't the right one for its background, or a QR code smaller than 15 mm.

What counts as too small depends on the item and how it's printed: 6 pt on a badge or flyer held in the hand, 7 pt on a mug or lanyard, 8 pt on a T-shirt transfer, 24 pt on a roll-up banner and 36 pt on a backdrop read across a room. Colours print from your screen colours unless your printer gave you CMYK values in the brand kit.

Fix a check in one click

1. 1In Checks, choose Preview fix beside a warning or error that Studio can fix.
2. 2See the design before and after. Where there's more than one fix, such as a brand colour or plain near black for text that's hard to read, choose one.
3. 3Choose Apply fix. To go back, choose Undo on the message that appears, or Undo in the toolbar.

Fixes include: a colour from your brand kit that reads on the background, your light or dark logo for the background it's on, a light panel behind your logo when the kit has no light logo, stretching a shape into the bleed, moving something inside the safe zone, making text or a QR code big enough, and making text smaller so it fits its box. Each fix is checked against the same checks before it's offered, so it never adds a new problem.