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Brands

A brand is the look your clips wear: eight colours, three fonts, a logo, a background, a presenter badge, a soundtrack, an intro and an outro, the two lines across the top of a clip and the two along the bottom, and the text every post under it carries. You define a brand once here and pick it when you make a channel.

What a brand holds: identity, logo, eight colours, three typefaces, presenter, background, soundtrack, the three parts and the post text

Brands come first in the set-up because a channel cannot be made without one. If the workspace has no brands, the brand field on the new channel dialogue is replaced by the sentence "There are no brands to pick. Make one under Brands, then come back here."

The Brands screen, one row per brand with its logo, who wears it and its type, and Settings, Used by and More on the right

Each row shows the brand's logo, or a frame with a cross in it where it has none, its name, the channels wearing it and its type, whether it is active, and Settings, Used by and More, which holds Pause, Duplicate and Remove. The count on the Used by button is there because "nothing is wearing this" is the one fact about a brand you cannot see by looking at the brand. Pause stops every channel wearing the brand from making new clips until you press Resume. With more than one brand, the search above the table finds one by name, and Status shows only the active or only the paused ones.

Every new workspace starts with one, Default brand, already wearing the starter files from the media library: example-logo.png as its logo, example-badge.png as the presenter badge with John Doe and Presenter as its two lines, example-background-image-universal.jpg as its background (one picture for every shape, cropped from the centre), example-font.ttf as its headline font and example-sound.mp3 as its soundtrack, playing over the clip and whichever of the stinger, the intro and the outro are on. It also holds a Universal stinger, intro and outro, switched off: turn one on and it plays in every shape of your channels. Its name is drawn across the top and along the bottom of the clip. Under Post text it already has a description, the hashtag #mybrand and a link to https://www.example.com, so every post shows where the brand's words go. Each of these is a placeholder: replace it with your own in Settings.

The editor​

Settings opens the brand, and Add new brand opens the same editor empty. The same editor also opens over a channel's dialogue and over Create clip, from the Settings button beside the brand picked there, so you can check or change the brand without leaving what you were doing. On the right is a Review column that draws a mock clip in the eight colours and three fonts the form sets, with the post text under it, so you can see a change before you save it. Where the brand has more than one language, a picker above it chooses which one the Review shows.

The brand editor, with the review column on the right

The review is an illustration, not a preview of your clips. Every template has its own layout and its own graphic design. What they all take from a brand is its colours, its fonts and its files. To see the real thing, use Preview in Clip studio.

The editor asks, from the top:

  • Brand name, which is only ever shown in the dashboard, never drawn on a clip.
  • Logo, in any shape. A wide wordmark is drawn as tall as a square mark would be and takes the width it needs, and a title beside it gets a little smaller to make room; only a very wide one comes down in height. A logo on a clear background, without empty margins round it in the file, sits best. How big it is drawn is chosen per clip, in the template's Look: Logo size, Standard, Small or Large.
  • Logo on dark, optional: the same logo made for dark backgrounds, with light letters. With it, the Logo above is the one for light backgrounds and plates, and every template draws whichever of the two reads on what is behind it. In the dashboard's dark look, the lists show it in place of the logo.
  • Mark, optional: your symbol alone, without the name, best square. Templates draw it where the full logo would come out too small to read, or where the style keeps the logo in a disc or a badge.
  • Colours: eight of them. Background, Card and Border are the surfaces, Brand colour the highlights and the figure that matters, Positive and Negative anything going well or badly, and Primary text and Secondary text the words. Dark shuffle and Light shuffle pick a set that is legible on a dark or a light ground, replacing every colour, and ask first only where you have picked a colour by hand since the last shuffle; then change any of the eight.
  • Theme: the page your clips are drawn on, whatever style they are in: Brand colours, Light, Dark or Bold brand colour. The style's own, where a brand starts, leaves it to each style. A clip or a channel's source that chooses its own Theme keeps it.
  • Headline font, Body font and Frame font. The frame is the brand's own lines at the top and bottom of the clip, sized on their own so a large headline does not bring a large legal line with it. A preinstalled face or your own font file fills each of the three. Text in a script the chosen font does not carry, such as Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil or Hebrew, is drawn in Noto Sans, so a clip renders in every language whichever font you pick; for those letters in a face of your own, upload a font file that carries them.
  • Sound: a soundtrack, and under Used for whether it plays over the clip only, or over the stinger, the intro, the outro or any of them as well. It starts once and plays on across them, starts again from the beginning if it is shorter than what it covers, and fades out over its last second. A stinger, intro or outro with sound of its own keeps it unless you choose to play the soundtrack over it. A soundtrack can be uploaded, chosen from your library or taken from Reelwire's sound database (the next item).
  • Add from database, in the dialogue behind Add or Replace of the sound slot, lists Reelwire's sound database: ready-made soundtracks recorded for Reelwire, played on real instruments wherever the style has them, from calm to punchy. Search them or narrow the list by genre and energy, press Play to listen and Select to give the brand the track. They are free to use in your clips and count against none of your storage, since they stay in the database rather than in your media library. Each one is about a minute long, starts at full strength and ends where it begins, so it plays on seamlessly under a longer clip.
  • Transitions: how the stinger, the intro, the clip and the outro pass into each other. Off cuts straight from one to the next. Every other choice runs the end of one part into the start of the next in 0.4 seconds, so a video with a stinger, an intro and an outro is about 1.2 seconds shorter. There are thirty-eight, in families: the dissolves, Dissolve, Blur dissolve, Noise dissolve and Light dissolve, which shows the next part's brightest places first; the dips, Dip to black, Dip to white, Dip to the brand colour (your Brand colour), Flash, a burst of light that keeps the picture's shapes, and Light leak, a warm glow drifting across; the moves, Push to the left, Push to the right, Push up, Push down, Slide in from the right, Slide in from the left, Slide in from below, Slide in from above, Split and Whip pan; the wipes, Soft wipe, Soft wipe from the right, Diagonal wipe, Barn door, Clock wipe, Radial wipe, Blinds, Ink, where the next part spreads in like ink, and Brand sweep and Shutter, which hide the cut under your Brand colour; the irises, Iris, Diamond iris and Box iris; and the effects, Zoom through, Zoom blur, Zoom out, Spin, Pixelate and Glitch. Spin and Zoom blur fill the corners they leave with the picture mirrored. The soundtrack plays on across them. Only the frames of each transition are drawn, so a video with one is ready a few seconds after one with straight cuts would be. Every one of them is shown playing on Transitions.
  • Logo and title line, a switch, on unless you turn it off: the line at the top of every clip made from a format template, with your logo, the title line and the style's decoration around them. Off leaves all of it out and the content starts at the top. A single clip can leave it out too, with Hide logo and title in the template's Look. Intros, outros, stingers and overlays always show your logo.
  • Footer line, the same kind of switch: the line at the foot of every clip made from a format template, your footer primary and secondary, with whatever the style draws only to carry them. Off leaves it out, its legal sentence included, and the content reaches further down; your presenter and the source line stay, and the words stay saved for when you turn it back on. A single clip can leave it out too, with Hide footer line in the template's Look. The preview beside the form leaves out whatever these two switches turn off.
  • Then Localizable properties, below: see Languages.
  • Last, Advanced options, the settings few brands need, in a dialogue of their own: see Advanced options.

Add from database, behind Add or Replace of a brand's Sound: Reelwire's ready-made soundtracks, each with Play, its style and length and Select, searched and narrowed by genre and energy

The brand editor's Transitions, Logo and title line and Footer line, with the Review on the right

Closing the editor with a change in it asks whether to save it, discard it or keep editing. Files count too: a logo, background, badge, intro, outro, soundtrack or font file added, replaced or removed shows at once in the editor, and reaches the brand only when you save. Discard leaves the brand exactly as it was, its files included.

The two things people get wrong​

Pressing "Add new brand" creates nothing. The brand exists when you press Create, and the files you chose are attached to it then. Opening the dialogue and closing it again leaves nothing behind, whatever you added in it.

Saving changes every channel already wearing the brand. That is the point of a brand, and it is still the thing that surprises people. The editor says so at the top: "Every channel wearing this brand uses these settings. Saving changes them for all of those channels at once, including how clips published earlier are described." Clips already rendered keep the look they went out with, but the post text under them is read from the brand and changes with it. Press Used by first to see which channels you are about to affect.

Languages​

Below the look sits Localizable properties: what a brand says rather than what it looks like. It holds Texts on the clip (two lines at the top and two along the bottom, and the Slogan, up to 60 characters, which an intro and an outro show under the logo when their own content has none), Badge, Background, Stinger, Intro video, Outro video and Post text. Fill in the default alone and every channel wears it whatever language it posts in. Add further language adds a section: tick only the fields that differ. Anything left unticked falls back to the default, and is shown greyed out so you can see what the default draws.

Colours, fonts, the logo and the sound are not among them: a brand looks the same in every language. Where a language does need a look of its own, such as a logo written in another script, it is set under Advanced options.

Advanced options​

At the foot of the editor, Advanced options says what is set and Open advanced options opens a dialogue with the settings few brands need. They are kept when you save the brand, and Discard drops them with everything else; Done only closes the dialogue.

  • Safe areas: per shape, how far from each edge of the finished video, in pixels, every template keeps its words, its logo and its figures, clear of what a platform draws over a video, such as its buttons and the caption. A template keeps its own margin wherever that is larger, so these can only make it wider. A shape left empty keeps each template's own margins; Remove empties a shape again.
  • Colours from a palette: instead of picking every colour under Colours, answer a few questions (dark or light, your brand colour, the ground, which colours mean up and down) and Reelwire works out the cards, the lines and the two text colours, each checked for contrast. Fine tuning sets one of them yourself. While it is on, the colours under Colours follow it; picking a colour there switches it off again and keeps the colours as they are. An AI assistant setting up a brand usually chooses its colours this way.
  • A language's own logo, colours and fonts: for a language that needs a look of its own. Open that language's section, then tick what it does differently: its Logo, Logo on dark or Mark, its colours, its Headline font or Body font with their colours, or its safe areas. Anything left unticked is the default's. A brand needs a further language under Localizable properties first.

Your AI assistant can change all of these too, when you ask it to: the safe areas, the palette and a language's colours and fonts are part of the brand it changes, and a language's own logo or font file is put into that language's slot. In the API they are safeAreas, palette and locales on a brand.

Background, stinger, intro and outro​

A finished clip plays the Stinger first, then the Intro video, the clip itself and the Outro video. Each has its switch, as the Background and the Badge do; off keeps everything set there and adds nothing (the background then is the first design colour). The background also asks whether it is an image or a video; changing that lets its files go, as the badge's does. An image, for the background as for the badge, may be a PNG, JPEG, WebP or SVG, and an animated SVG moves in the clip.

A finished video part by part: the stinger, the intro, the clip and the outro, joined by a straight cut or a transition

Each takes a list of files, one per shape and one Universal. Add a file for another shape or Universal adds a row for one aspect ratio (9x16, 4x5, 1x1, 16x9 or 2x3) or for Universal, and the bin beside its name takes it out again. A file is used in its own shape. Universal is used in every shape that has no file of its own, scaled to fill the frame and cropped from the centre: upload one picture or video that does not follow any aspect ratio and every shape uses it, so keep what matters in the middle and leave the edges to spare. A shape with neither has none: a background is drawn on the first design colour in it, and a stinger, intro or outro plays nothing in it; another shape's file never stands in. The note under each list says so, and names the shapes your own channels post in that have neither.

An intro or outro here is added to templates that have no opening or closing of their own, and replaces the one they have. The Default brand's starter stinger, intro and outro are made in all five shapes and as a Universal one, so none is fitted into another; they are examples to replace with your own.

Create one with Reelwire​

Reelwire makes four of these films itself, from templates of its own: the background (when it is a video), the stinger, the intro and the outro. Every row of those four lists has a black button with the Reelwire mark, and the Add or Replace dialogue offers Create one with Reelwire beside Upload and Choose from library.

It opens a short Create clip with the Background, Stinger, Intro or Outro template and the brand already chosen: pick a style, preview it, set what it shows, and under Make it for tick the rows to make it for. Only the list's own rows are offered, the shapes you added (add a shape to the list first to make one for it); with no row yet, the shapes your channels post in. Universal is never offered: Reelwire makes a film for a real shape, and you can use it as a Universal file afterwards by choosing it from the library. The row you came from is ticked. Render (Render 2 videos, and so on) makes one video per shape, and each plays in the dialogue once it is done. Use these (Use this, for one) puts them in your media library and lays each on its row; save the brand to keep them. The videos count against your allowance like any other and wear the brand as last saved, so save colour changes first; a brand not created yet wears what its dialogue holds so far. They are made on their own, without the brand's stinger, intro, outro or soundtrack, so a new intro never opens with the old one, and without its background unless Brand background is switched on under Look: a stinger, intro or outro then draws your background picture or film in place of the style's own; the same holds when you render these four templates in Clip studio. Extra time at the end, under Look as well, makes a stinger, intro or outro one to five seconds longer, its last moment held that much longer: the label or the logo before it leaves, the end card before the video ends. The brand remembers the style and the content each film was made with, so opening Create one with Reelwire on it again starts from them, ready to refine; they are kept when you save the brand. Closing the dialogue instead leaves them under Exported videos in Clip studio without adding them to the library or the brand.

What an intro and an outro can show​

Every Look switch left on The style's own says in brackets what that style chooses, such as The style's own (Brand colours): choosing that same value changes nothing. The same holds for Theme, Pace, Corners and Text alignment in every other template.

  • Logo, in every template: The style's own draws the logo on the style's plate (a card, a disc, a badge) and, where your logo would not read on it, puts it on a light or a dark plate instead, or draws your Logo on dark where that reads better. As it is draws no plate at all. On a light plate, On a dark plate and On a plate in the brand colour draw that plate in every style, also in styles that draw none.
  • Logo form, in every template: The style's own draws your Mark where the style keeps the logo in a disc or a badge, or where the full logo would come out too small: on an intro or an outro smaller than about 80 pixels on a 1080-pixel side, on any other clip where the place had to shrink a wide logo to well under the height the style planned. Mark and Full logo choose one always. Without a mark in the brand, the full logo is drawn.
  • Brand background, in every template with a background of its own: your background picture or film under any Theme, under a veil of the page so the words stay readable. Under Brand colours a clip always draws it.
  • Slogan, on the intro and now on the outro too: under the logo on an intro, under the website on an outro, up to 60 characters in at most two lines. Left empty, the brand's own Slogan is shown where it has one.
  • Call to action: Words only, no icon draws the button with its words alone. No call to action leaves the whole button out, words included.
  • QR code address: where the QR code leads when that is not the website on the card, an address starting with https:// of up to 100 characters. The website stays as written, and the QR code can be shown without a website too.
  • Ways to reach you: a line can be a Website, and a Social handle can name its Platform, whose own glyph is drawn in place of the @ sign: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Snapchat, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Mastodon or Bluesky. LinkedIn draws the @ sign, as LinkedIn asks icon sets not to carry its mark.

The glyphs are drawn in one colour, the colour the style gives every icon on the card, beside your own handle on that network. Most networks' brand guidelines ask for their glyph in their own colour, in black or in white. Where yours must follow them to the letter, choose a theme in which the icons come out black or white, or leave the platform out. The guidelines: Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Discord, Mastodon. For TikTok, Telegram and Bluesky, look on their own sites.

The post text budget​

Description, hashtags and link share 300 characters, and the editor counts them for you. That budget is not the platform's limit: it is the room the brand takes out of every post, and the post's own caption gives way to fit around it. Going over turns the count red, and the brand cannot be saved until you shorten the description, the link or the hashtags.

The link is a button under the post on Telegram, and a link in the text on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Instagram and TikTok do not make links in a post clickable, so it is left out there.

Frequency watches​

Under the list of brands, the Frequency watches card says how many posts a week some brands should go out with together, and Reelwire tells you before the posts it has planned for them fall short. Several channels often serve one brand (its Instagram, its TikTok, its LinkedIn), and one brand often has sub-brands of its own, such as a news brand with its Breaking, Hot and Just In, so how often it is heard from is the sum of all of them. A watch adds them up.

Each row shows the watch's name, the brands it counts, its posts a week or a day for each week, and whether the posts made and planned keep it: ON TRACK, RUNS SHORT with the day it starts, or SHORT OF POSTS with this week's count. Settings changes a watch, Remove removes it (the brands, their channels and their posts stay as they are), and Add new frequency watch under the table makes one. A brand can be in more than one watch.

The dialogue asks a Name, the Brands it counts, ticked in their table, and Posts a week or a day: for Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3 and after a number and whether it is posts a week or posts a day. A number a day counts over the whole week, so 2 posts a day is 14 a week. A new watch starts at 3 posts a week, then 1 a day, then 2 a day from the third week. The weeks count from the first post of any of its brands, so new accounts can start with fewer posts and build up, which platforms trust more than a burst from the first day. Brands that have not posted yet count from their first planned post, or from the day the numbers are saved. Not checked leaves a week out, and at least one week needs a number.

Under them, The next eight weeks shows the week running and the seven after it, each with what was Made this week, what is Planned, the Target (a week's posts, with the day's number under it where the week counts a day) and whether it is on track or how many posts it is short, judged by the numbers chosen before you save. A green note says the posts made and planned keep the frequency for the eight weeks; an amber one says from when the brands run short, or how many posts this week has. Unlike most screens, which show your own time zone, the weeks are counted in UTC.

A frequency watch's Settings, scrolled to The next eight weeks: for each week what was made, what is planned, the target and whether the week is on track or how many posts it is short, under an amber note saying from when the brands run short

What counts is what Reelwire makes, and only that:

  • Made is the posts the brands' channels made in the week running, before now, from any source.
  • Planned is what the Schedule shows for those channels from now to the week's end: the posts of their post lists and the ready-made feeds that post at set times.
  • A post that goes out on several channels, or on a brand and its sub-brand, counts once.
  • Posts you put up yourself are not counted, since Reelwire cannot see them.
  • A source that posts at no set time (a custom feed, a feed that posts whenever its data changes) cannot be counted ahead. The dialogue lists them; what they made counts once it is made.
  • Paused channels plan nothing and are left out.

Whoever publishes for the workspace (the owner and everybody with Operations) gets an email two weeks before a week falls short, one week before it, and once when it begins, naming each watch, its brands, the week and how many posts it has of how many. Nothing more is sent while the watch stays short; the next email is about the next time it runs short after being filled. No email goes out for a watch whose brands are all paused, whose channels are all paused, or while Stop everything holds, and none about the week in which its numbers were last changed, which you are looking at already.

Brand kit​

The Brand kit card, last on the Brands screen, makes a brand into one document to share with anybody outside Reelwire: an agency, a designer, a printer or a colleague who never signs in. Press Download brand kit, choose the Brand and either PDF, pages to print or send, or HTML page, one file that opens in any browser, and press Add to the queue. It is written in your language and holds:

  • the logos: the logo on a light ground, the logo for dark surfaces on a dark one, and the mark, each with what it is for: every clip draws the logo, and every template chooses the other two where they read better;
  • the colours: the ones you gave the brand, every colour a clip draws worked out from them with what each is for, the six chart colours, and the contrast of every pairing a clip relies on, measured against the target it has to reach on a phone in daylight;
  • the type: the headline, body and frame fonts and the small text, each set in its own font on the brand's own ground, with its size and colour;
  • the texts on the clip: the title line, the footer line, the slogan, and whether the format templates draw the logo and title line and the footer line;
  • the background and the presenter, with their pictures;
  • the stinger, the intro and the outro, whether each is on, and three frames of every file they hold, universal and per shape: its start, its middle and its end, taken from the file itself;
  • the transition between the parts and where the soundtrack plays;
  • clips in this brand: a frame of six clips drawn in the brand. First what its channels post, each in its channel's shape: the posts of its post lists with their own words and title, and its ready-made and custom feeds. Where they post fewer, templates in different styles fill the rest with their own example. An AI assistant making the kit through Reelwire's MCP server can write up to six sample posts about your business instead, which come first and leave the templates' examples out; the card here draws what your channels post;
  • the post text, the languages with what each one changes, and the channels wearing the brand.

The Download brand kit dialogue: the brand the kit is made of, the format, PDF or HTML page, and Add to the queue

The pictures are drawn one at a time, so a kit takes a minute or two; its row on the card shows how far it is. Your workspace's kits are made one after the other, and you can ask for the next while one is made. Each row has Cancel while it waits or is drawn, Download once it is made and Remove to take it off the list. One you asked for on the page downloads by itself once it is made while the page is open; any other waits on the card for its Download. A kit stays there for an hour from when it is made. Nothing in the brand changes and no video is counted.

The kit shows the brand as it is saved: changes still open in a brand's Settings are not in it until you save them. In the HTML page, press a picture to see it larger. The PDF sets each font in its own face where it can; where it cannot (Open Sans, and a few fonts whose files draw their thinnest weight by default), it names the font and the HTML page shows it.

An AI assistant makes the same kit with reelwire_brand and kit: it presents the brand's colours, fonts and parts in the conversation, then hands you the file as a link that works for two hours, with its pictures. See Brands over the API for the routes.

Duplicating a brand​

Duplicate makes a second brand like this one, for a brand that differs in one or two things: the same look in another language, or a sister company with its own logo. The dialogue opens with the brand's name in it; change it to the copy's name, which no other brand may have, and press Duplicate. The copy has everything the brand has: its colours and type, names and legal line, post text, languages and files, and the name you gave it. Files uploaded to the brand are copied, so they count against your storage a second time; files chosen from the media library are shared, and stay there once. No channel wears the copy until you choose it for one under Channels.

The same copy can be made without leaving Create clip or a channel's dialogue: Duplicate this brand, under the Brand dropdown, asks the new brand's name, chooses the copy in the dropdown and opens its Settings, so a clip or a channel can wear a variation of a brand while the original stays as it is everywhere else.

Removing a brand​

Removal hides a brand rather than deleting it. Clips it already drew keep its look and their posts stay in Posts, marked as removed. The dialogue asks you to type the brand's name. If channels are wearing it you must choose another brand for them in the same dialogue, and if there is no other brand the removal is refused: "There is no other brand to move them to. Add one first, then remove this one."