# 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) - [The delivery pack: select, 1, 2, 3](#the-delivery-pack-select-1-2-3) - [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** are 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)** is 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 studio bar, open **Mode ▾ → Brand**. 4. Brand Studio opens with two tabs at the top: - **Brands** is the account-level brand board (this is where the cascade lives). It opens first. - **Studio** is 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, with 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, and 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, all 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** is the heart of the workshop: - A brief field and **✦ Generate logo options**, which 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** shows the extracted swatches at a glance. - **Brand voice** holds 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 four 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** regenerates *only this card* from its edited brief and pinned direction. The other concepts stay put. The four treatments re-derive automatically. - **✕ Discard** drops a concept from the batch. - **Use this logo** approves 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** regenerates the whole set from the (editable) batch brief. - **+ Add concept** appends 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, from 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. --- ## The delivery pack: select, 1, 2, 3 The full professional logo package is one flow, with no settings to hunt for. Crisp output is the default: 1. **Describe.** Type the brand and the vision ("a Jamaican doctor bird in a hammock between two coconut trees, the tail looping into the words…") and generate concepts. Each costs a few cents and arrives in seconds. 2. **Pick.** Choose the concept that matches the vision. Reprompt or discard the rest; only the winner moves forward. 3. **Pack.** Every concept already arrives with its true-vector SVG twin, created the moment it was generated, so the file you approve IS the final vector, never a re-creation of it. The pack step builds the rest of the package from that exact approved file: - **Full-color vector SVG** for websites, vinyl, signage, t-shirt printing - **One-color stamp SVG** for screen printing, embroidery, engraving - **Round badge lockup** for stickers, labels, social avatars - Everything lands in **Files**, openable in the editor, ready to download. The same flow works from the API and from AI agents (MCP): `POST /api/logo/options` for step 1, `POST /api/logo/pack` with your chosen master's URL for step 3, so an agent can run the whole pipeline and the results still wait for you in the editor. **Why this order matters:** generating images cheaply first lets you *choose* before paying for finishing, and vectorizing the approved master (rather than tracing it) is what makes lines print-crisp. The whole pipeline typically costs under ten cents per finished logo. ## 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` is the raster logo. - `logo.svg` is the vector logo (included when you've run **Vectorize → SVG**). - `mockups/` holds the four promo mockups as PNGs (business card, social avatar, letterhead, signage). - `palette.json` carries the brand name, role-tagged color palette, fonts, and voice in a machine-readable file. - `brand-guide.html` is 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** is 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** is 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) shows 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.