Design systems and brand palette

#Design System

What a design system holds

More than fonts, colours and a logo. A design system carries everything that should stay the same from one ad to the next:

• Colours: the brand palette (see Brand palette) and the brand accent.
• Logo: the logo file, with its position and scale.
• Type: the headline and body fonts, any font files you uploaded, and the style of each text role (headline, subhead, tertiary text, CTA and disclaimer): font, weight, italic, letter case and letter spacing.
• Layout defaults: where the content sits and how it aligns, CTA alignment and corner radius, and the per-format layout.
• Shared copy: the disclaimer text, its alignment and padding.
• Generation and assets: the Global Image Prompt used for AI images, saved characters, global audio, sound presets and the shared cloud folder.

Your projects, the Library, characters and the audio library are all scoped to the design system too. Switch design system and you see that brand's work, not a mix of every client.

How to create one

The quickest way is from a website. When your account has no design systems yet, Wildfield asks you to Bring in your brand: paste a website address and it pulls the colours, fonts and logo into a new design system.

1. Paste the brand's website.
2. Check the result under Is this your brand? and edit the name if needed.
3. Press Use this brand, or Try another site if the page did not give a good read.

The import keeps the first four colours it finds, as Primary, Secondary, Dark and Light. Fonts come from the page's styles and its web font links, and the logo from the site header or the page's metadata. Treat the result as a first draft: check the logo and fonts, then add the rest of the palette by hand.

Further design systems are set up by your workspace admin, who also decides who can edit each one. Agents can create one through the API as well (see API tokens).

Picking one for a project

Choose it from the Design System menu in Input. Wildfield opens that brand's most recent project, or a fresh blank one if it has none yet. From then on every scene uses its fonts, colours and logo.

Changes save back automatically

You do not export or publish a design system. When you change a font, add or remove a palette colour, or swap the logo in a project, the change saves back into the selected design system about a second later, and every project using that brand picks it up. That is the point: fix the headline font once, not in twelve projects.

A few things to know:

• Only one person can edit a design system at a time. If someone else is already in it, a banner tells you that brand changes are not being saved, so nothing gets overwritten.
• If the design system changed elsewhere while you worked, Wildfield reloads it and tells you, rather than saving over the newer version.
• Saving needs editor access. With view access you can use the brand but not change it, and the palette shows read-only.
• Font uploads and the Logo Scale slider are saved with the next change that triggers a save, not on their own. Make one more edit, or wait for the project to autosave, before closing the tab.

Fonts and logos

Every Google Font is available, around 1,950 families. The font picker opens on a short list of popular fonts so it stays fast; type any Google Fonts name in its search box to find the rest. Each result shows its category and the weights and italics it publishes, drawn in its own face. Press Apply (or Enter) and Wildfield checks the name with Google Fonts and stores its exact spelling, so the font loads the same in the editor, playback, HTML export and the final render. A name Google does not serve is refused with a message, rather than quietly rendering in a different face. The same search works in the Aa type settings on a vector string, where a font you find there also gets its real weight and italic options. You can also upload your own with + Upload Font (woff2, woff, ttf or otf). The family name is taken from the file name, so name the file after the typeface before you upload it.

The fonts you apply most recently (up to eight) appear at the top of the picker under Recent, so a typeface you use again is one click away. The list is kept in this browser, and a font you uploaded only shows there in a project that has it. When you open the picker from an object's Font row in Layout, a copy icon sits beside Apply: it sets that font on every object of the same type in every scene, for example every Headline, as one undo step. A font that cannot be verified against Google Fonts is marked as unverified, as a warning that renders may fall back to another face: upload the file to be safe.

There is one logo per design system. Upload it from your cloud storage or from this computer (up to 25 MB). An SVG gives the sharpest result at every size. A scene can recolour the logo with a palette colour, so a single-colour SVG logo works on both light and dark scenes.

Worked example

Setting up a new client, a bakery chain, before building their first campaign.

1. On first run, paste the bakery's website and press Use this brand once the name reads right.
2. In Input, check the four imported colours. The site gave a cream background, a brown and a gold, but no accent. Add a berry red with the + at the end of the palette.
3. The site's headline font was a web font that did not verify. Upload the woff2 from the client's brand pack with + Upload Font, named after the typeface.
4. Upload the SVG logo and set its scale.
5. Build the first project. Every new project for the bakery now starts with these fonts, colours and logo, and every scene in Layout uses them.

#Brand palette

The palette is the list of brand colours shown under Design System in Input. Everything that asks you for a colour offers it: text colours, per-word colour in copy, layout colour dots, the overlay, gradients, chart lines and the Gradient Morph on particles.

Slots, not just swatches

Each colour sits in a numbered slot. A new palette starts with four: Primary, Secondary, Dark and Light. Elements that use a palette colour point at its slot, not its hex, which is why the palette is safe to share. The rules follow from that:

• Adding a colour puts it at the end and gives it the next slot, named "Colour 5", "Colour 6" and so on. It never reuses the slot of a colour you removed, so nothing that pointed at the old one suddenly turns a new colour.
• Removing a colour hides it from the pickers, but its slot and hex stay behind. Anything already using it keeps rendering exactly the same. Before you confirm, Wildfield tells you how many places in this project still use it.
• At least one colour always stays: the last one cannot be removed.

Using the palette

1. Press + at the end of the palette to add a colour. The eyedropper opens where your browser supports it (a colour picker otherwise), so you can pick a colour straight off a reference image on screen.
2. Click a swatch to copy its hex.
3. Hover a swatch and click the star to make it the brand accent. On an iPad the star and the remove button are always on the swatch: tap the star.
4. Remove a colour with its remove button, then confirm.

With no design system active, the palette is saved with this project only, which is handy for a one-off without touching any brand.

Tips

• Put the colours in a meaningful order once, early. Slots are permanent, so Primary stays slot 1 in every project.
• To change a brand colour, add the new colour and switch elements to it, then remove the old one. Existing work keeps the old hex until you move it on purpose.
• The overlay and canvas gradient pickers store the colour itself rather than the slot, so a gradient keeps its colours even if the palette changes later.

Worked example

A brand refresh swaps the old orange for a warmer coral across a client's twelve live projects.

1. In any of the client's projects, press + and pick the coral. It lands at the end, say slot 6.
2. In each ad you want to refresh, switch the CTA and headline colour to slot 6.
3. When nothing new should use the orange, remove it. The confirm shows how many places in this project still use it. Older ads that you did not touch keep rendering orange, exactly as approved.