Visual Identity — Keep Every Design On-Brand

Your Brand Kit holds your colors, fonts and logo. Your visual identity says how to use them. For example: the cream color is the background, Playfair Display is the headline font, headlines are big, and buttons are coral pills.

Think of it as your brand’s rulebook. It keeps every design consistent, whether you, your team or Orsa AI made it:

• Your team has one clear reference for how the brand looks, instead of guessing or digging through old posts.
• The Quality Gate checks any design against these rules and points out anything off-brand, like a wrong color, tiny text or a misplaced logo.
• AI designs follow these rules from the start, so they look like your brand without extra back-and-forth.

Everything here is optional. Fill in what you know. Even a few fields make a big difference. Short on time? Start with the Quick start, or get suggestions from your posts.

You’ll find it at the bottom of your Brand Kit, under Visual identity. It’s made of these parts, each with its own Save button:

• Color roles: what each brand color is for
• Text styles: fonts and sizes for each kind of text
• Logo variants: which logo version goes where
• Feel and layout: the mood and overall style
• Color rules: which colors go together, and how much of each
• Shapes: corners, outlines, shadows and decorative shapes
• Buttons, cards and tags: how these look every time
• Signature elements: the graphic touches that make designs yours
• Logo rules: where the logo goes and how big it is
• Imagery: how photos are placed and treated
• Layout and type limits: favorite layouts and text limits
• What the designer sees: a preview of your rules for each format

Quick start (5 minutes)

Before you start, add your brand colors and fonts to the top of your Brand Kit. The visual identity can only use what’s there.

1. Scroll down to Visual identity.
2. In Color roles, set Background, Text on background, Primary and Accent. Click Save color roles.
3. In Text styles, set Headline and Body. Click Save text styles.
4. In Logo variants, check that your main logo is there and marked as the default.
5. In Feel and layout, add 3 words that describe your brand. Click Save.
6. Run the Quality Gate on a design, or create an AI design, to see the difference.

Example: a bakery sets Background to its cream (#FAF6EF), Text on background and Primary to its navy (#1F2A44), and Accent to its coral (#E8674A). Its headline is Playfair Display 700 (bold), its body is Inter 400, and its feel words are warm, homemade and cheerful.

Everything else is extra polish. Add it whenever you like.

How sizes work

Every size in your visual identity is entered in pixels for a 1080px-wide design, like a 1080 × 1080 Instagram post. You set it once, and it scales to every other format.

For example, a 92px headline takes up the same share of the width on a Story or a LinkedIn post as it does on a square post.

Color roles

Give each of your brand colors a job. For each role you want to use, pick a color from your Brand Kit palette. If there are no colors to pick, add them to your Brand Kit first.

What’s a reverse design? Most brands mix light designs with some bold ones that use the brand’s strong color as the background. Those bold ones are reverse designs. They use Primary for the background and Text on primary for text.

Good to know:

• You don’t need every role. Most brands only need the four in the quick start.
• Give a role to every brand color you want in your AI designs. The AI designer only uses colors with a role. The Quality Gate accepts any Brand Kit color. Pure white and pure black are always allowed.
• Use the opacity slider to make a color see-through. For example, set Muted text to your navy at about 70%.
• When you save, we check that text is easy to read on its background. If it isn’t, you’ll see a message like “Text on background” over “Background” has contrast 2.10:1, below 3.0:1. The first name is the text role. The second is the background it sits on. Pick a darker or lighter color and save again.
• Only readable at large sizes means a pair is fine for big headlines but too faint for small text. You can still save.

Text styles

Set up one style for each kind of text you use.

For each style you can set:

Example: Headline: Playfair Display 700, 92px, Sentence case, line height 1.1, max 3 lines. Label: Inter 600, 28px, UPPERCASE, letter spacing 0.08.

Good to know:

• Headline and Body each need a font.
• The headline must be bigger than the body text.
• Each weight is its own font, shown with its number, like Inter 400 and Inter 700. To use regular and bold, upload both files.
• Fonts come from your Brand Kit. If a font isn’t in the list, upload it in Brand Kit first: open your Brand Kit and add it under fonts. TTF, OTF and WOFF files work; WOFF2 files don’t.

Logo variants

Most brands have a few versions of their logo, such as full color, all white, or just the icon. Add each one here so the designer picks the right one for each background.

1. Click + Add logo and upload the file. No logo file? Type your brand name instead. This is called a wordmark: your name set in one of your brand fonts.
2. Choose the type: Primary logo, Horizontal (icon beside the name), Stacked (icon above the name), Icon only or Wordmark (the name alone).
3. Choose the tone: Full color, Reverse (the light version for dark backgrounds), Black or White.
4. Under Use on, tick the backgrounds this version looks good on, and whether it can sit on photos. For example, a white logo belongs on Primary, not on a white Background.
5. Click Make default on the version the designer should use first. Only one logo can be the default.

Example: a bakery adds two versions. Its navy Primary logo in Full color is the default, used on Background. Its Icon only version in White is used only on Primary and on photos.

Feel and layout

This tells the designer the mood and overall style of your brand.

Feel

• 3 to 5 words that describe your brand, like calm, editorial or warm. Type a word and press Enter. You can’t save with only one or two words.
• Avoid going too far: pairs like playful but not childish. These stop the designer from overdoing a word.
• In a sentence: describe your designs in one line, for example “White cards on soft gray, one confident accent color.”
• Why it works: which habits create that feel, for example “Paper backgrounds and navy serif type make it feel considered and calm.”

Layout

Click Save when you’re done. The Visual Style text in your Brand Kit updates to match.

Color rules

Fine-tune how your colors are used together. These rules refer to your color roles, so set those first.

Proportions. Add a color and its share of the design. The shares must add up to 100%. Allowed drift says how far one design may stray from these shares.

Gradients. Give each gradient a short name, pick Linear (a straight fade, with an angle) or Radial (fading out from the center), then add the colors in order with their positions from 0% to 100%. If you add none, the designer uses no gradients at all.

Status colors. For each state, enter a hex code (like #15803D) for the dot, the background and the text. You can limit status colors to certain signature elements, so they never spill into the rest of the design.

Shapes

The ring and shadow here are the style. Whether a button or card actually uses them is set in Buttons, cards and tags.

Buttons, cards and tags

Make these look the same in every design.

Turn each one on with Set, then choose:

Signature elements

Signature elements are the graphic touches that make a design recognizably yours, like a highlighter swipe behind key words, a round sticker badge or a photo frame.

Click Add element and fill in:

Example description: “A coral (#E8674A) rounded bar behind one to three key words of the headline. Slightly taller than the text, tilted about −2°.” Compare that with “a highlight”, which leaves the designer guessing.

To make the designer use your elements, set Signature elements in Layout and type limits to 1 or more.

Logo rules

Imagery

Layout and type limits

What the designer sees

Open What the designer sees at the bottom of Visual identity. Pick a format, like Instagram Story or LinkedIn Post. It turns your rules into real sizes for that format, so you can check they make sense. It’s also exactly what the AI designer gets.

It also shows each format’s safe areas. On a Story, for example, the designer keeps text away from the top and bottom, where Instagram puts its own buttons.

Suggestions from your posts

Don’t want to fill everything in by hand? Orsa can study your designs and suggest a full visual identity: color roles, text styles, logo use, all the rules above, and the feel.

Start an analysis

1. In Visual identity, click Suggest from posts or images.
2. Source: choose My past posts to learn from what you’ve published, or Inspiration images to upload designs you like, yours or another brand’s.
3. Images: pick 5 to 10. Pick a mix, like a bold headline, a list, one big photo and a quote, so we see your full range. My past posts only shows posts from your own social accounts, not competitors you follow.
4. Colors and fonts: choose how to treat colors.
   • Use my brand colors and fonts: we work out which of your Brand Kit colors plays which role, and which of your fonts is used for each text style. No new colors are suggested.
   • Also suggest new colors: the same, plus a list of colors from your images that aren’t in your Brand Kit yet.
5. Click Start analysis.

While it runs

You’ll see “We’re analyzing your designs” at the top of the section. It usually takes under an hour, and you’ll get a notification when it’s done. We only show the suggestions once everything is ready, including the sample designs.

Review the suggestions

1. Click Review suggestions.
2. At the top you’ll see sample designs made with the suggested identity, so you can see how it would look before you apply anything.
3. Below that is the list of suggestions. Each one shows how consistent your designs were, for example “80% agree”: 8 in 10 of the designs that showed it did it the same way. Suggestions with 60% or more are ticked for you.
4. Untick anything you don’t want, or tick extra ones. Only ticked items are applied. Anything you set yourself stays as it is unless you tick it.
5. Click Apply. Or click Dismiss all to ignore the suggestions.

You may also see two notes under the list:

• Colors not in your palette: colors that show up a lot in your designs but aren’t in your Brand Kit. Add them to your palette if they belong to the brand.
• Logos not uploaded yet: logo versions your designs use that aren’t in your logo variants, for example “Icon only logo, reverse on primary · 4 designs”. Upload them so the designer can use them too.

What gets suggested

Almost everything on this page, including your logo variants’ type, tone and backgrounds. A few things are never suggested, because not seeing something in your designs doesn’t mean your brand forbids it:

• Never use color pairs, banned photo effects, logo Never edits and Avoid layouts
• Status colors, which rarely show up in social posts
• The spacing unit, which can’t be measured reliably from a finished design

Set these yourself if you need them.

Copy and import

Use the ⋯ menu next to Suggest from posts or images to copy your visual identity or bring one in. This is handy for reusing a look across related brands, keeping a backup before big changes, or editing the rules in bulk.

Copy JSON copies your color roles, text styles, rules and feel to your clipboard as text. Logo variants and per-format adjustments aren’t included.

Import from JSON

1. Click ⋯, then Import from JSON.
2. Paste the text you copied, then click Preview changes.
3. The Review suggestions window opens with everything ticked. Untick anything you don’t want to change.
4. Click Apply. Nothing changes until you do.

Colors are matched by their hex code, and fonts by name, weight and style. When you import into another brand, add the same colors and fonts to that brand’s Brand Kit first. If any are missing, the import tells you which ones.

How it keeps designs on-brand

When you run the Quality Gate on any design, including ones you made yourself in the design editor, it checks it against your visual identity. It flags off-brand colors, text that’s too small or too close to the edge, hard-to-read text, and logos that are the wrong size or in the wrong place. Each issue tells you what to fix.

When you create an AI design:

• Colors, fonts, sizes and your logo come straight from your visual identity.
• Buttons, cards, tags and signature elements look the same from design to design.
• Layouts match your feel and layout mix, and change from slide to slide so carousels don’t repeat.
• The designer checks its own work once and fixes clear mistakes, like an off-brand color, before you see it.

Tips for the best results

These habits help your visual identity, the AI designer and the Quality Gate work well together.

Set up your Brand Kit first

• Add all your brand colors and fonts to your Brand Kit before you start. Color roles and text styles can only pick from there.
• The same goes for Suggest from posts or images. It can only match your designs to colors and fonts already in your Brand Kit. Font names must match, so “Playfair Display” in your designs needs “Playfair Display” in your Brand Kit.
• Upload every logo version first, too. The analysis compares your designs with your uploaded logos. Logos it doesn’t recognize show up under Logos not uploaded yet instead of being suggested.
• Upload each font weight you use. The AI designer only uses weights you’ve uploaded, so a missing bold shows up as the nearest weight you have.

Give every color a role

The AI designer only uses colors with a role, and its self-check treats a brand color with no role as off-brand. The Quality Gate is looser: it accepts any color in your Brand Kit. Pure white and pure black are always fine.

Example: your green (#2F6B4F) is in your palette but has no role. The AI designer never uses it. Set it as Surface or Card fill so it does.

Pick good images for suggestions

• Pick 5 to 10 of your best, most typical designs, with a mix of layouts.
• Leave out designs from an old look or a one-off campaign. A setting is only suggested when at least half of your designs agree on it, so mixed styles mean fewer suggestions.
• No posts of your own yet? Choose Inspiration images and upload designs you like.

Write words the designer can picture

• The AI designer and the Quality Gate both read your feel words, including each Avoid going too far pair. Visual words like airy, bold or editorial are easier to follow than amazing or professional.
• Describe each signature element like a recipe: shape, color, size and where it sits. The designer only has your words to go on.

Example: for In a sentence, “Cream background, navy serif headlines, one coral accent per post” gives the designer much more to work with than “clean and modern”.

Start with a few rules

• Add rules when you see the same problem twice, not all at once.
• Be careful with Allowed text on color. Once you add one pair, the designer may use only the pairs on the list. Every text style, button and card must use an allowed pair, or you can’t save.
• After any change, open What the designer sees to check the sizes look right.

Use your real logo file in designs

The Quality Gate checks logo position, size and clear space only when it recognizes your logo. Add your logo from your uploaded files, not from a screenshot or a re-saved copy. Sizes are checked against your default logo variant.

Check long carousels in parts

The Quality Gate’s overall style review looks at the first 6 pages of a design. Its rule checks, like margins, text size and logo placement, cover every page.

Keep a backup

Before big changes, click ⋯ next to Suggest from posts or images, then Copy JSON. Paste it somewhere safe. You can bring it back later with Import from JSON.

Common questions

I get a contrast error when I save. A text color is too close to its background color to read easily. Make one of them darker or lighter, or remove that pair.

I get “is not an allowed color pair”. You’ve added Allowed text on color pairs, so the designer may only use those. A text style, button or card uses a pair that isn’t on the list. Add the pair, or change the text style or element.

I get “Must be a key of shape.radius_scale” after changing corner sizes. A button, card or tag, or the Corners setting in Feel and layout, still uses a corner size you removed. Pick another size there, or add the size back.

I get “Proportions must add up to 1”. Your proportions don’t add up to 100%. Adjust them until the total under the list says 100%.

The Save button in Feel and layout is grayed out. You have one or two feel words. Add at least three, or remove them all.

My font isn’t in the list. Upload it in your Brand Kit first. WOFF2 files aren’t supported; use TTF, OTF or WOFF.

I get “Headline must be larger than body”. Make the headline size bigger, or the body size smaller.

My white logo is hard to see in the preview. That’s expected on light backgrounds. Under Use on, only tick dark backgrounds like Primary for that version.

A suggestion I expected isn’t in the list. We only suggest things that at least half of your designs agree on. If your designs are very different from each other, pick images that better show your usual style and run the analysis again. Colors and fonts are only suggested if they’re in your Brand Kit, so add any missing ones first.

I get “A font is required.” Headline and Body each need a font. Pick one for both in Text styles.

I get “Smaller than the minimum size ratio”. A text style is smaller than Smallest text in Layout and type limits. Make that style bigger, or lower Smallest text.

I get “Uses 3 font families; the limit is 2”. Your text styles use more fonts than Font families in Layout and type limits allows. Use fewer fonts in your text styles, or raise the limit.

The analysis failed. It needs at least 5 usable images. Pick a few more, then try again.