Your colours, type and logo

There is no brand panel

You are looking for the screen with the swatches and the font list on it. It is not hidden and you have not missed it. It does not exist. There is no palette picker, no typeface menu, and nowhere to paste a colour and have it saved as a setting against your site.

What exists instead is the box you type into, and the ability to attach a file to a message. Colours and type are asked for in words. A logo is a file you send. Most of what follows is how to use those two things properly.

There is one screen that shows you colour instead of asking you for it, and you may already have met it. Before a project's first build you can be offered a set of drawn directions to choose between, and the one you pick decides the palette. It is offered once per site, it is not a setting you can go back and change, and it has its own part of this page below.

Note. This is a real absence rather than a control in a corner you have not pressed. Nothing here stores a colour, a typeface or a logo against a project — the site's own code holds them, the same way it holds its headings.

Say your colours out loud

Colours go in the same sentence everything else goes in. You can say them in the first description, before a site exists, or in any turn afterwards.

Two things separate getting what you meant from getting something next to it. Be exact about the colour, and say where it goes.

Exact means a hex code if you have one. There is no field for it, so it rides in the message like every other word — and nothing pins it afterwards, because there is no setting holding that value and no check that the built page matches it. It is still the most precise thing you can say, and it is what you would hand a designer.

Where it goes matters because the instructions the build works to put colour on links, buttons and one or two details, and keep it well away from the background. So naming a colour and stopping there will most likely reach the buttons. A coloured page is a different request and needs saying as one.

• "Our colour is #1f6f4a. Use it on the buttons and the links."
• "Dark green and off-white, nothing else."
• "The whole page should be near-black, with one warm accent on it."
• "Take the colours from the logo I have attached."

Note. The build is told to set every colour once, at the top of the stylesheet, and to name each one by the job it does — page, surface, text, hairline, accent. Where it holds to that, changing the accent later is one small turn rather than a hunt through every file.

What you get if you ask for nothing

Most people describe their business and say nothing about colour at all. That case is answered in the instructions rather than left to chance, and it is worth knowing what the answer is.

The ground is white. Type is near-black rather than pure black. One or two bands sit a shade off white where a section has to separate from the one above it. Colour arrives as a single accent and stays out of the background.

One palette is specifically refused as a default, and the reason says something true about how this works. Cream, oat, bone and sand grounds, with a display serif and a terracotta accent, make a handsome site for a restaurant or a maker. Left alone it turned up every single time — on repair trades, on clinics, on dashboards it did not suit — so every customer got the same beige page and the ones it was wrong for had to argue their way out of it. It is ruled out as the thing that happens by default. It is not ruled out as a choice: ask for it and you get it.

That is the general answer. There is a second one underneath it, which is your trade. A same-day callout business, a salon, a restaurant and a clinic each have their own written brief here, and colour is part of each. A callout trade gets workwear rather than software — a dark navy or graphite ground with one high-visibility accent used on the call button and nowhere else. A salon gets no accent colour at all, on the argument that the work already supplies the colour.

When nothing about colour is said

Page

White

Bands

One or two shades off white, where a section needs to separate

Text

Near-black rather than pure black

Colour

One accent, on links and buttons, away from the background

Refused by default

Cream-and-terracotta, unless you ask for it by name

Overrides all of it

Anything you said, or a drawn direction you chose

Tip. A stated theme wins outright. Warm and rustic, dark mode, match our green — the white default is there to fill a silence, and it does not argue with a request.

Unless you chose one of the drawn directions

All of that describes a build with nothing to go on. Before a project's first build there may be one thing: pictures drawn of what the site could look like — three of them for a website, each in a different design language, or a single wide one for an app. Choose one and the white default stops applying to that build.

What the choice does is stronger than a preference. The build is told to reproduce that picture's palette exactly, along with its type, its spacing and its shapes. Somebody holding the picture beside the finished page is meant to recognise every part of it. So if your site came back dark, or warm, or anything other than the white ground described above, the picture you pressed is the most likely reason.

It is a separate purchase from the build, with its price on the panel before you press anything, and you can decline it and build straight away. The step is offered once per site, before the first build and never after it. Every change to the colours from then on is an ordinary turn, asked for in words. There is a page on what that panel says and what the two ways out of it are.

Note. The picture is a reference the build looks at, and it is never written into your site. Nothing about it can be adjusted afterwards by going back to it, because there is nothing to go back to — a change to the palette it produced is an ordinary turn, described in words.

Type: what is there, and what is not

This is the part where the product does less than you are expecting, so here it is plainly. There is no font upload. There is no web font service behind a build. Every site is set in typefaces the reading device already has, because the instructions forbid loading a font from anywhere outside the site's own files.

So the exact typeface on your van and your invoices is not something that can be put on the page. Name it and you will get something in its spirit from what is available, which is sometimes close and is never the same letterforms. If a brand guideline holds you to the real thing, say so to yourself now rather than after four turns of trying.

What does work is describing the shape you want, because that is a genuine decision the build makes rather than a preference it files away. Serif or sans. Tight and confident or quiet and narrow. Industrial and condensed, or plain. Those change a page more than most people expect them to.

Note. If the exact typeface is not negotiable, the route out is the export. Every file of the site downloads, and adding a face you hold a licence for is an ordinary job for whoever takes the code on.

A logo you already own

There is no logo field, so a logo reaches a site the way every other picture does: attached to a message. Two routes lead there and they end in the same place — a file written into your site, and a sentence telling the build where to put it.

What an upload takes

Formats

PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF and SVG

How many

Four images on one message

Before sending

A photo or PNG is shrunk in your browser to 1,400 pixels on the long edge

Where it lands

A file inside your site, used like any other

Tip. An SVG is the one that behaves differently, and the menu says so on the row itself. It goes into the site and works there, but it is not a format the build can look at — so asking it to match the header to your logo cannot work from one. Send a PNG of the same mark when you want the colours read off it.

From the box you type into

1. Press the plus beside the message box.
2. Under Files, choose Upload a photo or a logo.
3. Say in the message what it is — the logo, for the header — and send.

Note. This is also how you hand over anything else worth matching: a van photo, a signwritten shopfront, a business card. The build is told to match the palette and mood to the pictures you attach, so a photograph of your own livery is a colour instruction as much as a picture.

The logo and favicon rows

At the far left of the editor's top bar, before the mark and the project's name, there is a small picture button. It opens two rows: Logo, which goes in the header, and Favicon, which is the little icon on the browser tab. Pick a file from either and it sends a build turn with the wording already written for you.

That is the whole of it — a shortcut to a sentence you would otherwise have to phrase. It spends a turn like any other change, it is greyed out while a turn is already running, and there is no logo store sitting behind it.

Note. The button is on the wide layout only. On a phone, and in a narrow window, the bar is a shorter row and this is not on it — use the plus beside the message box instead and say where the picture goes.

What it will not make up, and the one thing it will

The instructions that go out with every build carry a list of things it must never invent. It is worth knowing, because it explains some of what comes back.

• A phone number, an email address or a street address.
• A certification, a registration number or an insurance policy.
• A star rating, a review count or a years-in-business figure.

Why there is a gap where your registration should be

Where it has no real value for one of those, it is told to write a plainly marked placeholder and say in one line what it needs from you. That is the rule working rather than the build being lazy. A made-up registration number on a real trade's live site is a trading standards problem, not a copy problem, and a plausible one is worse than an obvious gap because nobody checks it.

So fill those in yourself, in a turn, in your own words. They are the sentences a customer decides on.

The mark you get when you send nothing

A logo is not on that list, and it is worth being straight about what that means. Send no file and the header still needs something in it — so it carries your business name, set as type, or as a small mark drawn in code from its letters.

That is a stand-in and it is honest about being one. It makes no claim about your business the way a registration number would, and it is not a logo you own in any sense worth relying on. Send a real file whenever you have one and the header takes it.

Tip. If you have no logo at all, that is a perfectly good place to be. A business name set well in one confident typeface beats most cheap marks, and nothing else on the site depends on having one.

Whether it stays that way

Once a colour is in the site, it is in the site's own files. It is not a setting anything can quietly forget — it survives because it is written down, the same way your headings are.

• A later turn that changes one section leaves the palette alone. It was not asked to redecorate.
• The deep pass is told plainly not to hand you a different design: the palette and the type and spacing scales were chosen for this business and are the ones you said yes to. It is meant to sharpen them, not swap them.
• A second site starts from nothing. Colours do not travel between projects, because they were never held anywhere except in the first one's files.

Note. If you build for the same brand again and again — your own, or a client's — the one place a standing rule lives is an agent's brief. A taught line naming your colour is spent on every build that agent runs. That is a different screen, and it has its own page.

Common questions

Can I give it a hex code?

Yes, in the sentence. There is no field for it, so it travels in the message like everything else, and it is far more exact than a colour name. After the build, the value lives in your site's own stylesheet.

Can I upload my brand font?

No. There is no font upload, and a build is not allowed to load a typeface from outside the site's files — so it works from what the reader's device already has. Describe the shape you want, or export the files and add the font yourself.

Why did my SVG logo not set the colours?

Because an SVG goes into the site but is not one of the picture formats a build can look at. It gets placed where you asked; it cannot be described back to you. Send a PNG of the same mark if you want the palette taken from it.

Will it design me a logo?

Not from a panel, and not on its own initiative. With nothing supplied, the header carries your business name set as type or a small mark drawn from its letters. That is a stand-in, and it is replaced the moment you send a real file.

Does changing the colours cost a turn?

Yes. It is an ordinary build turn, including the ones the logo and favicon rows send for you. There is no free settings screen behind any of this, because there is no settings screen.