Brand kits

The Brand kits tab defines how your organization's outputs look: colours, type, logo and motion. A kit is applied to the cards and videos Nuvelics draws for your social outputs. The idea is explained in Templates, brand kits and checks.

Who can use itCopy Anchor Link

Owners and admins (brand_kit:manage). The tab is missing for Members and Viewers.

Read the listCopy Anchor Link

The list shows each kit's Name, whether it is the Default for its scope, and whether it is Active or Inactive. Open a kit to see a Preview of its caption card, caption over footage, end card and stings, drawn from your settings.

Create a kitCopy Anchor Link

1. Choose New brand kit.

2. Fill in the form:

   • Name: for example "Acme News". Required, up to 120 characters.
   • Desk: offer the kit only on one newsdesk, or leave it on The org's (every desk).
   • Colours: three pairs, each a ground and the text set on it. Background and Text on background are the page; Surface and Text on surface are cards and the caption panel; Accent and Text on accent are emphasis such as rules and end-card fills. Each is a six-digit hex colour such as #1b1f24.
   • Display typeface and Body typeface: the face for headlines and caption cards, and the face for running text such as standfirsts. Each shows its current face; choose Change to pick another (see Choose a typeface). A new kit starts on Archivo for display and Inter for body.
   • Heaviest weight: under each typeface, an optional cap on how heavy it draws. Layouts that set the face heavier use this weight instead; lighter ones keep theirs. It defaults to As each layout sets it. A face with a single weight shows "This face has one weight, [weight], so layouts cannot make it heavier or lighter." instead.
   • Logo for light backgrounds and Logo for dark backgrounds: PNG only, up to 2 MiB.
   • Card ground texture: optional PNG, up to 5 MiB. It is laid under the background of still social cards that carry no photo; without one they are flat.
   • Logo placement: Top left, Top right, Bottom left or Bottom right.
   • Logo margin: the inset from the frame edges as a percentage of the shorter edge, from 0 to 25. Required.
   • Intro sting and Outro sting (optional motion): your own clips, webm (VP9 with alpha) or a ProRes 4444 .mov, up to 50 MiB. A kit with none renders fine: the clip starts on content and ends on a static end card.
   • Caption scrim opacity: the opacity of the panel a caption sits on when composited over footage. It defaults to 0.85.

   Beside the form, a Preview draws your caption card, caption over footage, end card and stings as you type. It shows Unsaved changes once the form differs from its starting values (when you edit a kit, from the saved kit).

3. Choose Create kit.

You see Brand kit created.

Choose a typefaceCopy Anchor Link

Change opens a chooser titled Choose the display face or Choose the body face. Pick a Google font or one of your custom fonts.

• Google Fonts: search the catalog with Search families by name and narrow it with Category (Serif, Sans, Display, Handwriting, Mono). Each family shows Variable for a variable family, otherwise its number of weights, and a family that lacks a script the kit's desk needs (every desk's, for an organization-wide kit) is marked, for example "No Cyrillic". When more than 100 families match, a notice above the list says "Showing 100 of [total] — refine the search"; narrow the search to see the rest. Choose Use [family]. Previews load from Google Fonts while the chooser is open, and the face you choose is copied once into Nuvelics, so every render uses that copy. If the copy fails you see the reason, or "The font could not be copied. Try again."
• Custom fonts: the fonts on the Custom fonts tab, with the kits that use each. Add a custom font adds one here, with the same file and licence steps, and uses it straight away.

At the top of the Google Fonts tab, a Used in your kits strip lists the Google faces your kits already use, for a quick pick. In the Google and custom font lists, the face the field holds now is marked In use.

If the Google Fonts catalog cannot be loaded you see "The Google Fonts catalog could not be loaded" and Try again. Custom fonts still work, and faces already in your kits are unaffected. A kit whose face has since been removed shows "This face's font no longer exists. Choose another."

What the form checksCopy Anchor Link

• Each colour pair must meet WCAG AA contrast, 4.5 to 1. A pair that falls short shows a message such as "3.1:1 — WCAG AA needs 4.5:1", and a pair that passes shows meets WCAG AA. A colour that is not a six-digit hex is refused with "Enter a six-digit hex colour, e.g. #1b1f24".
• The caption scrim opacity must be high enough to keep caption text legible over both light and dark footage. If it is not, saving is refused.
• A file that is too large or of the wrong type is refused with the reason, such as "This file is 3 MB; the limit here is 2 MB." or "This file type isn't accepted here."
• A failed upload says Upload failed. Try again.

Edit a kitCopy Anchor Link

1. Open the kit and choose Edit.
2. Change what you need. Use Choose file, Replace file or Remove file for uploads.
3. Choose Save changes.

You see Brand kit saved. If another person saved first you are told "This kit changed since you loaded it - reload and try again."

Two switches appear when you edit:

• Default kit: "Make this the default kit for its scope." A scope is one newsdesk or, for a kit with no desk, the whole organization. Making a kit the default replaces the scope's previous default. When an output is drawn, it uses the output template's own kit if it names an active one, otherwise the desk's default kit, otherwise the organization's default.
• Active: "Offer this kit on the output template picker." A kit that is inactive is skipped when a default is looked up: an inactive desk default falls through to the organization's, and an inactive organization default means no kit.

Delete a kitCopy Anchor Link

1. Open the kit's Brand kit actions menu and choose Delete.
2. Confirm. The kit is deleted for good and this cannot be undone (Brand kit deleted.).

A kit an output template still refers to cannot be deleted: "This kit is referenced by an output template, so it cannot be deleted. Deactivate it instead."

Other ways to manage kitsCopy Anchor Link

• API: Brand kits.
• Choosing a kit in a template: Output templates.