# Brand Studio & the Brand Layer (Pro) Build your brand once — logo, colors, type, voice, photos — approve each piece, and every project and workflow in CoreReflex inherits it automatically. **On this page** - [What is Brand Studio?](#what-is-brand-studio) - [Why you'd use it](#why-youd-use-it) - [Before you start](#before-you-start) - [Open Brand Studio](#open-brand-studio) - [Create your first brand](#create-your-first-brand) - [Generate a logo and brand voice](#generate-a-logo-and-brand-voice) - [Approve, remove, and manage assets](#approve-remove-and-manage-assets) - [Upload your own assets](#upload-your-own-assets) - [Add brand context](#add-brand-context) - [Connect the brand to a project (the cascade)](#connect-the-brand-to-a-project-the-cascade) - [Where your brand shows up](#where-your-brand-shows-up) - [The Studio tab: the logo workshop](#the-studio-tab-the-logo-workshop) - [The logo batch: concepts and the 4-up viewpane](#the-logo-batch-concepts-and-the-4-up-viewpane) - [True SVG export](#true-svg-export) - [Palette, typography, voice, and mockups](#palette-typography-voice-and-mockups) - [Export the brand pack](#export-the-brand-pack) - [Storage meter and add-ons](#storage-meter-and-add-ons) - [Tips](#tips) - [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting) - [Related pages](#related-pages) --- ## What is Brand Studio? Brand Studio is where your brand lives in CoreReflex. It has two connected ideas: 1. **Brands** — account-level containers of approved brand assets. A brand isn't a form you fill in once; it's a living collection where each individual piece — a logo, a color palette, a brand voice, a tagline, photos — is added, reviewed, and **approved one by one**. Only approved assets count as "the brand." 2. **The brand layer (the cascade)** — the hierarchy that carries your brand through the product: **Account → Brand → Project → everything you make**. Brands belong to your account. Any project can be linked to a brand, and once linked, that project inherits the brand's approved assets: workflow briefs prefill your audience and voice, and generated copy stays on-brand automatically. The workflow for every asset is the same: **draft → approve → (remove/archive when retired)**. Anything you generate arrives as a draft and waits for your approval. Anything you upload yourself (your existing logo, real photos) joins the brand as already approved — you brought it, so it's trusted. Nothing half-finished ever cascades into your work. --- ## Why you'd use it - **Stop retyping your brand.** Set your audience, voice, and positioning once; every workflow brief in a linked project prefills them. - **Keep generated content on-brand.** Copy produced by workflows and the Write studio automatically uses your approved brand voice. - **Get a real logo system, not one image.** The logo workshop generates distinct concepts in different artistic directions, and shows each mark four ways — color, grayscale, a black & white stamp, and a reverse for dark backgrounds — all derived from the same master so they stay perfectly consistent. - **Own the files.** Download true vector SVGs (single-color stamp and full-color), transparent PNGs, promo mockups, and a complete zipped brand pack with a self-contained brand guide. - **Run more than one brand.** Agencies can keep a brand per client under one account and link each client project to the right one. --- ## Before you start - **Plan**: Brand Studio is a **Pro** feature (Pro and Enterprise plans). On the Free tier you'll see an upgrade notice when you try to create a brand or generate assets. See [Plans & Billing](plans-and-billing.md). - **Account**: sign in at [corereflex.com](https://corereflex.com) first — the studio editor shares your session. - **Where it lives**: Brand Studio is a mode inside the studio editor at [editor.corereflex.com](https://editor.corereflex.com). See [Getting Started](getting-started.md) if you haven't opened the editor before. - **Credits**: generating logos and brand voice uses AI generation, which draws from your workspace's credit balance like other generation does. Uploading your own assets costs nothing. - **Storage**: brand assets count toward your account's storage allowance (see [Storage meter and add-ons](#storage-meter-and-add-ons)). --- ## Open Brand Studio 1. Sign in at [corereflex.com](https://corereflex.com). 2. Open a project in the studio editor at [editor.corereflex.com](https://editor.corereflex.com). 3. In the mode bar across the top of the editor (Video · Audio · Image · **Brand** · Slides · …), click **Brand**. 4. Brand Studio opens with two tabs at the top: - **Brands** — the account-level brand board (this is where the cascade lives). It opens first. - **Studio** — the hands-on logo and kit workshop for the current project. You can also deep-link straight in: add `?mode=brand` to your editor project URL. --- ## Create your first brand 1. On the **Brands** tab, find the **Brands** rail on the left. 2. Type a name into the **New brand name** field (e.g. your company or your client's name). 3. Click **Create brand**. The new brand is selected and a **start wizard** appears with three ways to begin: - **Create a logo** — describe your brand and generate logo options to choose from. - **Upload your logo** — already have one? Bring your own SVG, PNG, or JPG. It joins the brand immediately as your approved logo. - **or set it up manually** — skip the wizard and go straight to the full board to add assets in any order. 4. Pick a path. As soon as the brand holds its first asset, the wizard is replaced by the full brand board. The left rail lists every brand in your account with a live count of approved and draft assets, so you always know which brands are ready and which still have drafts waiting for review. --- ## Generate a logo and brand voice The one-click way to fill a new brand: 1. Select the brand, then find the **Generate** card (it's the first step of the "Create a logo" wizard path, and it stays available on the full board so you can generate more at any time). 2. Describe the brand in the text box — for example: *"A confident fintech for SMB founders."* A sentence is enough; more detail steers the results. 3. Click **Generate logo + voice**. 4. Wait a few moments. The drafts land on the board below: - Up to **four logo options** (labeled Option 1–4), each a distinct design. - One **brand voice** draft — a short set of tone-of-voice descriptors synthesized from your description. 5. Nothing is live yet. Every generated asset arrives as a **draft** — review them and approve the ones you want (next section). If you gave the brand an audience in its context (see [Add brand context](#add-brand-context)), the voice generation takes it into account. > Want more control over the logo — multiple artistic directions, per-concept reprompting, and the 4-up treatment viewpane? Use the **Studio** tab's logo workshop instead: [The logo batch](#the-logo-batch-concepts-and-the-4-up-viewpane). You can generate there, download the files, and upload your final pick to the brand board. --- ## Approve, remove, and manage assets The board groups the brand's assets by kind — Logo, Palette, Typography, Voice, Tagline, Context, Photos, Icons, Patterns, Other — each row showing a preview, its label, and its status (**draft** or **approved**). **To approve a draft:** 1. Find the asset row. 2. Click **Approve**. The status flips to approved, and from that moment the asset is part of the brand everywhere the brand cascades. **To remove an asset (draft or approved):** 1. Find the asset row. 2. Click **Remove**. The asset is archived — it leaves the brand and stops cascading. There's no undo button for this on the board, so remove deliberately. **Good to know:** - Only **approved** assets cascade. Drafts are a private tray for your review. - For "one of a kind" asset types (logo, palette, voice, tagline, context), the **first approved asset of that kind** is the one that cascades. Keep one approved logo and one approved voice per brand so there's no ambiguity — remove the old one when you replace it. - Photos are different: **every** approved photo joins the brand's photo set. --- ## Upload your own assets Not everything needs generating. Two upload paths live on the board: **Upload your logo** (start-wizard path, or replace later): 1. Click **Upload your logo** in the wizard (or upload from the full board via the same flow). 2. Choose an SVG, PNG, or JPG file. 3. It uploads and joins the brand immediately as your **approved** logo. **Upload photos** (full board): 1. Click **Upload photos**. 2. Select one or more image files — real product shots, team photos, location photography. 3. Each photo uploads and joins the brand as an **approved** photo asset. Uploads count toward your account storage (see [Storage meter and add-ons](#storage-meter-and-add-ons)). --- ## Add brand context Brand context is the positioning information the rest of the product reads — it's what saves you from retyping your audience into every brief. 1. On the full board, scroll to the **Brand context** card. 2. Fill in: - **Audience** — who the brand speaks to (e.g. *"SMB founders"*). - **About / positioning** — a short description of what the brand is and stands for. 3. Click **Save context**. Context is authored by you, so it saves as approved immediately. The Workflow Brief inherits the **Audience** directly (see the next two sections). --- ## Connect the brand to a project (the cascade) Linking is how a brand starts flowing into your work: 1. Open the project you want branded (Brand Studio works on whichever project you have open). 2. On the **Brands** tab, select the brand. 3. Click **Use in this project** (top right of the board). 4. You'll see the confirmation: *"This project now inherits this brand."* From then on, this project resolves its brand identity from that brand's **approved** assets. You can link any number of projects to the same brand — update the brand once, and every linked project picks up the change. To switch a project to a different brand, you can also use the brand picker inside the Workflow Brief (below), which includes a **No brand** option to unlink. --- ## Where your brand shows up Once a project is linked to a brand with approved assets: - **The Workflow Brief** (the editor's Workflow mode): the Brief shows your brand's logo and name at the top with a brand picker, and **prefills** the recipe's fields from the brand — **Audience** from your brand context, and **Brand voice** from your approved voice. Inherited fields are marked, and you can still override either one per run. Switching the brand in the picker re-applies the new brand's context on the spot. - **Generated copy**: workflow recipes and Write-studio copy default to your approved **brand voice**, so scripts, posts, and page copy come out sounding like you without any per-run setup. - Only recipes that actually have an audience or brand-voice input inherit those fields — a recipe with neither simply runs as normal. --- ## The Studio tab: the logo workshop The **Studio** tab is the hands-on workshop: it works on **brand kits** stored inside the current project, and it's where the full logo-design workflow, palette extraction, mockups, and the brand-pack export live. Think of it as the design bench; the Brands tab is the library of record. The layout: a live **Brand Guide preview** in the center (name, logo, color schematic, typography, voice — updated as you edit), and a tools panel on the right: - **Brand kit** — a kit picker with **+ New** to keep several kits, and the kit's **Name** field. Kits autosave a moment after each edit; no manual save needed. - **Logo** — the heart of the workshop: - A brief field and **✦ Generate logo options** — opens the logo batch (next section). - **⬆ Upload logo** — use your own image as the kit logo. - **🎨 Extract palette** — read a color palette straight out of the logo. - **✐ Vectorize → SVG** — convert the kit's raster logo to an SVG (needs the logo to have finished uploading first). - **🖼 Promo mockups** — composite the logo onto branded collateral scenes. - **Colour schematic** — the extracted swatches at a glance. - **Brand voice** — a free-text tagline or tone-of-voice note. - At the bottom: **✦ Use for autopilot copy** (make this kit the project's default brand voice for generated copy — note that if the project is linked to an account brand on the Brands tab, the linked brand takes precedence) and **⬇ Export brand pack** (see [Export the brand pack](#export-the-brand-pack)). --- ## The logo batch: concepts and the 4-up viewpane This is the flagship logo workflow. A **batch** is a set of distinct logo **concepts** — not four near-identical variations, but genuinely different design approaches — and each concept is shown as a **4-up viewpane of treatments** derived from one master, so every treatment is the *same mark* shown four ways. **Start a batch:** 1. On the **Studio** tab, type your brief into the Logo field — brand name plus style works well (e.g. *"Acme — bold, geometric"*). 2. Click **✦ Generate logo options**. The batch studio opens (*"Step 1 · Choose your logo"*) and generates **four concepts**, each in a different **artistic direction**. **The nine artistic directions** (each concept is pinned to one, shown in its card's dropdown): | Direction | The idea | |---|---| | Geometric | Clean shapes and precise construction | | Abstract | A non-literal, expressive mark | | Emblem | The mark inside a contained badge/crest | | Pictorial | A recognizable object or symbol | | Negative space | A hidden second read inside the silhouette | | Monoline | A single consistent stroke weight | | Wordmark | The brand name itself, set as the logo | | Lettermark | Initials as the mark | | Combination | Symbol + name together | **The 4-up treatment viewpane** — each concept card shows four tiles: | Tile | What it is | Use it for | |---|---|---| | **Colour** | The master — the generated design, untouched | Primary usage | | **Grayscale** | A tonal, desaturated reproduction | Print in one ink density, subdued placements | | **Black & White** | A solid black **stamp** on a transparent background | Stamping on anything: engraving, embroidery, screen print, favicons | | **Reverse** | A white knockout on transparency, previewed on dark | Dark backgrounds, footers, video overlays | Because the grayscale, stamp, and reverse are **derived from the color master** (not generated separately), the silhouette and proportions are identical across all four — which is exactly what a real logo system requires. **Work each concept:** - **Edit its brief** — every card has its own brief field (*"Tweak this concept's brief…"*). Change just this concept's wording without touching the rest of the batch. - **Change its direction** — pick a different artistic direction from the card's dropdown. - **↻ Reprompt** — regenerate *only this card* from its edited brief and pinned direction. The other concepts stay put. The four treatments re-derive automatically. - **✕ Discard** — drop a concept from the batch. - **Use this logo** — approve this concept's color master as the kit's logo. Approving also auto-extracts a palette from the mark (if the kit doesn't have one yet) and seeds a default type pairing, so the kit lands rich rather than empty. The batch closes and you're back at the brand guide. **Batch-level controls:** - **✦ New batch** — regenerate the whole set from the (editable) batch brief. - **+ Add concept** — append one more concept, automatically picking a direction the batch doesn't have yet (up to 12 concepts). - **Enrich brief** (checkbox, on by default) — expands a thin brief into richer per-concept prompts for the symbol directions. Wordmarks and lettermarks always keep your exact text. Turn it off if you've written a precise brief and want it followed literally. **Downloads on every tile** — hover a tile for its download links: - Every tile: **PNG**. - The **Colour** tile also offers **Transparent** (the color mark with the background knocked out to transparency) and **SVG** (full-color vector — see below). - The **Black & White** tile also offers **SVG** (the single-color vector stamp). --- ## True SVG export Two vector routes, both producing genuine vector paths (not an image wrapped in an SVG file), so the files scale to any size — business card to billboard: - **Single-color stamp SVG** (from the Black & White tile): the mark traced as one solid ink. This is the file for screen printing, engraving, embroidery, and cutting. - **Full-color SVG** (from the Colour tile): the mark's colors separated into stacked vector layers (up to six colors), with the white background dropped to transparency — a layered, editable full-color vector. Both exports happen right in your browser when you click **SVG** on the tile and download immediately. Separately, the Studio tab's **✐ Vectorize → SVG** button converts the kit's current logo to an SVG and attaches it to the kit — that's the SVG that ships inside the brand pack. --- ## Palette, typography, voice, and mockups **Extract a palette:** 1. Make sure the kit has a logo (approved from a batch, or uploaded). 2. Click **🎨 Extract palette**. CoreReflex reads the actual colors out of the mark and builds a role-tagged schematic: **primary**, **secondary**, **accent**, and neutral swatches, each with its hex code. 3. The schematic appears in the brand guide preview and the side panel. **Typography:** approving a generated logo seeds a heading/body type pairing so the guide isn't bare. The pairing is part of the kit and appears in the brand guide and the exported pack. **Brand voice:** type a short tagline or tone-of-voice note into the **Brand voice** box. It shows in the brand guide and exports with the pack. (The account-level brand voice that cascades into workflows is the one you approve on the **Brands** tab.) **Promo mockups:** 1. With a logo in the kit, click **🖼 Promo mockups**. 2. Four collateral scenes are composited using your logo and palette colors: - **Business card** - **Social avatar** - **Letterhead** - **Signage** 3. Each appears under the brand guide with a **Download** link (PNG). They're also bundled into the brand pack. --- ## Export the brand pack One click bundles everything a client, printer, or teammate needs: 1. On the **Studio** tab, click **⬇ Export brand pack**. 2. A `.zip` named after your brand downloads, containing: - `logo.png` — the raster logo. - `logo.svg` — the vector logo (included when you've run **Vectorize → SVG**). - `mockups/` — the four promo mockups as PNGs (business card, social avatar, letterhead, signage). - `palette.json` — the brand name, role-tagged color palette, fonts, and voice in a machine-readable file. - `brand-guide.html` — a self-contained, openable brand guide page: logo, color schematic with hex codes, type samples, voice, and the mockups in context. Send the zip as-is — the guide opens in any browser with no dependencies. --- ## Storage meter and add-ons Everything stored in your account — generated logo options, uploaded logos and photos, and your other project assets — counts toward one account-wide storage allowance: | Plan | Included storage | |---|---| | Free | 1 GB | | Pro | 25 GB | | Enterprise | 500 GB | The **Storage** meter in the Brands rail (bottom left of the brand board) shows your current usage against your limit, with a progress bar. **When you hit the limit:** generation that stores new files refuses with *"Storage limit reached — add storage to keep generating."* Free up space by removing assets, or add storage. **Add-ons** (buttons under the meter): - **Add storage** — a one-time purchase that permanently raises your account's limit by **+50 GB** per purchase. Add-ons stack, and they work on any plan. - **Add credits** — a one-time purchase of **+1,000 credits** for metered AI generation. Clicking either takes you to a secure checkout; the grant lands on your account as soon as payment completes. If purchases aren't enabled on your deployment, the button reports that instead — contact your administrator. For how plans, credits, and metering work overall, see [Plans & Billing](plans-and-billing.md). --- ## Tips - **Approve deliberately, keep one of each.** For logo, voice, palette, and tagline, the first approved asset of that kind is what cascades — when you replace one, remove the old one so the brand stays unambiguous. - **Name in the brief.** For wordmark and lettermark directions, put the exact brand name in the brief — those directions render your text literally. - **Reprompt beats new batch.** If three concepts are close and one is off, edit that card's brief and **↻ Reprompt** just that card rather than regenerating everything. - **Grab the stamp SVG early.** The single-color stamp is the most reusable file you'll export — it works everywhere from favicons to embroidery. - **Turn "Enrich brief" off for precise briefs.** Enrichment helps thin briefs; a carefully written one is often better followed literally. - **Photos make briefs real.** Uploading genuine product and team photos gives the brand real material to cascade, not just generated marks. - **Agencies: one brand per client.** Keep each client as its own brand under your account and link each client project to it — switching the brand in a Workflow Brief re-applies that client's audience and voice instantly. - **The two tabs play different roles.** Design and iterate on the **Studio** tab; make it official by uploading the final files to the **Brands** tab and approving them — that's what cascades. --- ## Troubleshooting **"Brand Studio is a Pro feature — upgrade to enable."** Creating brands, generating assets, approving/removing, and linking projects require Pro or Enterprise. Upgrade at corereflex.com — see [Plans & Billing](plans-and-billing.md). **"Storage limit reached — add storage to keep generating."** Your account is at its storage allowance. Click **Add storage** under the meter, or remove assets you no longer need, then generate again. **Generation returned logos but no brand voice (or vice versa).** The two are generated independently and each is best-effort — if one side of the AI generation is temporarily unavailable, the other still lands. Click **Generate logo + voice** again to fill the gap. **"Could not read the logo colours" when extracting a palette.** The logo image couldn't be read for color analysis (this happens with some remotely hosted images). Upload the logo as a file from your computer and extract again. **"Vectorize needs the uploaded (cloud) logo URL."** **Vectorize → SVG** works on the stored copy of your logo. If you just uploaded it, give the upload a moment to finish, then try again. **A concept's Grayscale / Black & White / Reverse tiles never fill in.** The treatments are derived in your browser from the color master; if the master image can't be read, only Colour displays. Reprompt the concept to get a fresh master. **The Workflow Brief isn't showing my audience or voice.** Check three things: the project is linked to the brand (**Use in this project**, or pick it in the Brief's brand dropdown); the brand actually has an **approved** voice and saved **context** (drafts don't cascade); and the recipe you selected has audience/brand-voice fields to fill — recipes without them run unbranded by design. **"No Stripe price configured for the storage add-on."** Add-on purchases aren't switched on for this deployment. Contact your administrator. **Approve button missing on an asset.** It's already approved — uploads (your logo, photos) and saved context arrive approved. Only generated drafts need approval. --- ## Related pages - [Plans & Billing](plans-and-billing.md) — tiers, credits, and what Pro unlocks. - [Writing & Content](writing-and-content.md) — where the brand voice lands in generated copy. - [Getting Started](getting-started.md) — signing in and opening the studio editor. - [Client Operations (Pro)](client-operations.md) — the white-label agency layer that pairs with per-client brands.