Brand Studio

From a logo and a site to a signed brand, and everything you do with that brand afterwards: checking, updating, sharing and passing it on to other tools. You find the studio under Design in the rail.

One rule decides everything: the brand profile is the only source. Colours, fonts, logos, buttons and tone come from it, and every studio reads them there. So what you change in the profile applies everywhere, and nothing lives in two places.

Import a brand book or add to a brand

Choose New brand > From your brand book and upload a PDF or DOCX. Progress appears while the document is read. You then choose what to keep. Scanned documents without a text layer cannot be read as text; check the reported missing fields.

On an existing brand, choose Add sources. Add a brand book, website with an optional logo, or individual files. The proposal appears beside the current colours, fonts, logos, tone, rules, values and audience. Choose to keep, replace or merge each part. Nothing is overwritten without your choice. Check which image candidates are actual logos.

The website guides online use; the handbook guides print. This is advice when sources differ; you decide. Saving creates a new draft version. Restoring a previous version copies it into a new draft. Earlier versions remain available; the active version changes only after signing.

Own brand and client brands

In one workspace you can manage several client brands next to your own brand. At the top is Check against: there you choose which brand you are working for, before you start an assignment. Every brand has its own drafts, versions and a signed profile, and a new client brand gets its own version line. An old report keeps showing the profile it was made with, even after you pick a different brand.

A draft that belongs to a client but sits in your own brand, you take over with Create a separate brand from this: the original draft and earlier results are kept. How that works, and why a client's draft may never replace your own agency brand, is explained in Own brand and client brands.

Simple or Expert

Top right in Brand Studio is a switch with two modes. Your choice is remembered, per user, and you start in Simple.

Simple is the guided route: one choice per screen, in plain language, without measurements or jargon. The steps are called Your logo and site, Your colours, Your fonts, Who are you?, Your brand guide and Deliver. For the colours you see five to eight colours large, almost identical colours already come as a suggestion to merge, and you choose Right or Edit. For the fonts you see the two fonts and one button to switch. In Who are you? you answer three short questions (what you do, for whom, how you sound); then the AI writes down your mission, values and tone and you say Right or Edit per sentence. You make the brand guide with one button and read in one sentence how it went ("2 things straightened out by itself"). When delivering you lock in your brand and your brand guide, and download or share them.
Expert shows everything: the distance (ΔE) and the readability (WCAG) between colours, the CMYK per print profile, the thresholds, the construction of the logo, the tokens and the self-check of the guide with all measurements. Where a screen has a Details heading, it is open by default in Expert.

You can switch at any time, also halfway: your data is the same in both modes. The tour on a screen adapts: a step that only exists in the other mode is skipped.

A brand, step by step

A brand runs through the brand journey. At the top of the brand you see where you are, and a card "To do now" says in one sentence what you need to do next.

Reading. Give a logo and a site. The studio reads them in live and shows what it finds: logo, colours, fonts and sentences. Starting a new brand usually takes less than an hour; the overview shows how long it actually takes. If the site is behind a password, see A site with a password below.
Choices. Every finding appears as a proposal with a certainty label: measured (a fact), derived or proposal. You click Right or Edit, remove what does not belong, or ask for a new proposal per topic. A proposal only becomes brand once you confirm it.
Colours. The palette with roles and tints and the print colour (CMYK) per print profile. What is fixed wins over what is calculated. Over a colour a card shows all its values and what may go wrong. If the printer cannot reach a colour exactly, there is a proposal: a print value that comes closer, or a slightly adjusted screen colour that can be printed and stays legible, with the distance (ΔE) before and after. You adopt it, choose yourself or deliberately leave it. Nearly identical colours can be merged. Everything you choose goes in the choice log, with the reason and the numbers. The WCAG contrast matrix, the CMYK in all profiles and the distance between colours are under Details. The main colour is the colour with the most area in your logo (wordmark, headings and large areas), the accent is the colour for buttons and links that stands out, and neutrals are background and text. If that is not right, choose Make this the main colour or Make this the accent on a colour: the two colours swap roles, the preview, the brand guide and your sites follow immediately, and your choice stays when you read this brand in again. The How it looks preview shows a heading from your brand (the promise, if you have one) and your brand's own gradient; without a gradient it shows a flat colour.
Typography. The brand fonts with a specimen you can try things out on. If the brand has its own typefaces, screens and pdfs use those. Next to the steps is Icons: the brand's icons, which you can reorder by dragging, replace, add to with a starter set, your own svg or an icon from the library, and give a style (line or filled, thickness, round or sharp) that applies to all icons at once. The brand guide, ads and websites read the same set, so an icon you replace here changes everywhere.
Logos. Every logo file gets a variant: primary, reversed, black or symbol. If the studio guesses the variant, that is noted, and you confirm it.
Brand guide. The pages of the brand book, built from the profile, with Do and Don't. You can page through it, save it as a pdf and share it. The pdf has a bookmark per chapter, the brand name as author, a language and a structure for screen readers. If a logo is a bitmap narrower than 1000 px, the guide reports that it is too small for print and that a vector (SVG) is better. See The brand guide below.
Deliver. The logo package as a folder tree with a zip, a proof pdf with your printer's output profile, and a readme. You see the folders before you download.
Sign. A signed brand is fixed; a draft you can still adjust. If you change something later, a new version is created and the old one is kept.

The brand guide

Also in the guide: Fill in the missing chapters on the Choices screen proposes mission, vision, pay-off, golden circle and tone of voice from what the brand already says about itself. Anything that exists stays; anything new is marked guessed until you read it, and it costs a few cents per brand. It works on a draft only. The Applications chapter now shows the brand in use: website, social post and story, business card, email signature, quote and a presentation slide (names and amounts are examples). If the brand has a colour in the Conversion group, the colour chapter of the extended guide gets a button page: that colour as a real button, three usage rules and a do and do-not example. Without a conversion colour, or when no text colour reads on it, the page is left out. If the brand has a symbol logo, the logo chapter of the extended guide also gets a page with the symbol on its own and three rules: where it works (profile picture, app icon, favicon), where it does not, and that the same clear space and backgrounds apply as for the full logo. On the logo page you can add a logo or an extra version (white, black, symbol, horizontal or stacked) by uploading an svg or png, on a draft.

The brand guide is the brand's brand book, built from the brand profile. It is a document to read on a screen, in landscape 16:9 (384 by 216 mm), and not to scroll. On a phone every page is shown as a single column, with the examples (website, post, story, business card) as a picture to scale.

Fixed page types instead of one template: a chapter opener, a statement, cards, a logo page with dimension lines, a colour page with swatches, typography with specimen and scale, imagery, and Do and Don't with a tick and a cross. The opener and the cards carry the brand's colours and fonts. The framing around them is neutral and calm, so that a client's guide does not look like one of ours. Everything is in the brand's colours and fonts: do and don't also take the colours for right and wrong from the brand, and without those a brand colour that fits.
Why. With colours, fonts, values and tone the guide says why the studio proposes them, with the source. If that no longer fits on the page, it moves to the next page, with the name added.
Brand rules. Under Choices you record what the brand allows: what a colour may be used for (as a fill, as text, as a frame), the highlight style (a pill behind the text or an underline), which logo background and variant are allowed, whether a logo may have a frame, which gradient is allowed, and custom rules, one per line. The studio makes a proposal; it only becomes a brand rule after you sign the brand profile.
Self-check on pixels. When the guide is made, the studio measures it itself. It goes through every page on real pixels: text contrast, logo contrast, the logo background, the logo size and whether the content fits on the page. Then the quality bar checks the guide as it is in the PDF, at page width and on a phone. Where a rule is not met, it tries to repair the layout (for a logo with too little contrast: the variant that does read on that background). A rule is never relaxed in the process. If repairing does not work, you see what is wrong under Where the guide falls short. If it meets everything, it says Self-check passed, with the number of elements measured.
When the preview fails. Reading in ends with the preview of the brand guide. If only that fails (for example because the environment it is made in is briefly unreachable), the screen says your brand is ready, and Make the preview again runs only that step and not the whole reading.
Honest about what has been read. A sentence in the brand guide that the AI proposed without a source is called guessed. You read it first and set it to Read. Only then can the brand guide be signed: a guide may not claim anything nobody has read.
Choices made. At the back is an appendix with what was chosen while making the brand: what you merged, accepted or deliberately left alone with the colours, and what the self-check straightened out itself. In Simple there is one plain sentence per choice; in Expert the numbers are included. The same list is in the zip with your logos as choices.md.
Sharing and printing. You can save it as a pdf, share it with a temporary link (see Sharing with clients) or deliver it as a proof pdf with your printer's output profile.

Design check

Check a design against the brand. You give a document (pdf, png, jpg or svg, at most 25 MB and 4 pages), a website or a Figma frame. The studio measures colour, fonts, alignment, contrast and the space around the logo, and gives a scorecard. You can choose which format you check for (for example landscape 16:9) or "free": then format, safe zone and format checks drop out, and the report says so.

The check runs against the brand you chose under Check against, and the report shows against which brand and which version it was measured.

A finding appears as a frame on the element itself, in a viewer that scrolls and lights up when you click a line.
Every finding shows how certain the verdict is. What could not be measured does not count as passed; it is noted as "could not be checked".
A failed check says why and has a button to do it again. The file and the settings are kept.
A cookie notice on a website is removed before the measurement and mentioned separately in the report, so it does not cause a false deviation.
A check is free and usually takes half a minute.

The three verdicts

At the top of the report is one sentence, for example "3 to fix, 4 to discuss, 21 OK".

Reject has to be fixed first and counts as an error in the score.
Discuss is not an error, but something a person should take a look at. If it is deliberate, choose Sign off, deliberate: the report remembers who did that and when, and the score no longer counts it. You can withdraw the approval.
OK does not appear as a finding in the report, but it is counted.
Not checked is a check that could not run. That is never an OK.

Findings are grouped by category (colour, typography, layout, shapes, imagery, logo, technique, text, completeness) and you can filter on Reject or Discuss. Behind every finding is an (i) button that explains what was measured, why it matters and what you do about it. Several edges that almost line up appear as one finding, with the places expandable underneath.

The thresholds (for example how many pixels count as "almost aligned", or the minimum contrast) have a default. An agency or brand can get its own threshold; we set that up for you. A standard such as WCAG can only be made stricter.

What it is meant for

Next to the format you choose the medium: digital, social, presentation, print or large format. The medium decides which checks apply. If you choose nothing, we derive it from the format (a channel such as Meta or LinkedIn is social, a website is digital). If that fails, we skip the print checks and the report says at the top that you can choose the medium.

Imagery: resolution at actual size (print 300 ppi, a poster or canvas 150 ppi), images that are stretched, pixelated or enlarged, images in a group that do not share one ratio, and the size for the channel (for example 1080 by 1350 for a portrait post).
Print and export (pdf): 3 mm bleed, the colour profile (against the print profile you chose), the total ink coverage (300 percent coated, 320 uncoated), small text that should be set in 100% black, the page count for stapled or perfect bound (a multiple of 4) and the export format. A pdf for print may have more than 4 pages: we then measure the first 4 and count the rest.
Text (Dutch): u and je mixed, Title Case in headings, straight quotation marks, double spaces, lorem ipsum, changing notation of amounts, dates, times and percentages, split compounds, English terms and spelling. This runs without a paid call. What is doubtful (a name, a trade term) is Discuss, never Reject.
Completeness: if you choose a briefing from Briefing, we check whether everything in it was delivered: pages, languages, variants and formats. What is missing is Reject. What was not agreed but seems logical, such as a mobile version, is Discuss. For a website choose the sitemap, because with one page we cannot say whether the rest is missing.

What the check now also looks at

Besides colour, contrast and logo, the check looks at how the design is built, for a website, a Figma frame and a PDF, PNG, JPG or SVG (where that can be measured):

Colour. Two shades that are almost the same (with a suggestion which one to use everywhere), a secondary colour that takes up too much space, and text on a photo that is only just readable (with the suggestion to put a dark layer behind it).
Typography. Is the text large enough for what it is (running text, caption) and for the medium (website, presentation, print, social)? Do all H2s have the same style? Are lines not too long? Does every text in Figma have a text style? Is a heading typeface kept out of running text?
Layout. Do margins, padding and gaps sit on a fixed scale (the brand's, or a standard one in steps of 4 and 8 px)? Do all buttons have the same padding? Do the title, logo and page number stay in the same place on every page? Is there not too much text on a slide?
Shapes. Do all icons come from one set, are lines of the same kind equally thick, are lines in print at least 0.25 pt, and do buttons and links visibly change on hover and on focus?

Every finding says what has to change, for example "Make this H2 32 px like the other H2s", and points at the place. Where a source cannot say something (a PDF has no hover, a PNG has no headings) it shows as "Not checked" with the reason. What we can only guess, for example whether a text is running text, is never more than Discuss.

While measuring: live findings

You do not have to wait until the end. After starting you see the progress per step (reading the file or reaching the website, measuring, checking against the brand profile, saving the report), and findings appear while measuring is going on. You can close the screen: the report then sits under Previously checked and gets its own address. The screen switches to the report by itself when it is done.

If a step fails, the studio tries again. After three attempts it does not keep spinning forever: the check says what went wrong, and you can try again or pick another file.

Checking a website

Give the address of the website. Only public https addresses; an internal or local address is not loaded. Choose This page only, or the pages from the sitemap, at most 30.

The studio opens the page on a laptop and on a phone, and looks at what visitors really see. Contrast and accessibility are measured with axe-core. Colours, fonts and buttons are checked against the brand profile. The page is loaded in its own, sandboxed browser environment: it has no access to your data or to the workspace's keys.

A site with a password

Does the site ask for a password, such as a test environment that is not public yet? Then the studio says: "The site requires a password". You have two options:

Enter the access details. Open This site requires a password, enter username and password and choose Save access. If you pasted the address as https://gebruiker:wachtwoord@site.nl, the studio takes the credentials from the address itself and puts them in the fields. The access is stored separately and encrypted, only for that one site (that origin), and afterwards you only see what it starts with. You can delete it. Then you choose Enter access details and try again or Read again.
Allowlist Denkploeg's IP address on the site, if you would rather not store the access with us.

This works for a site that asks for a password before it shows anything (what is called basic auth). A custom login page with a form cannot be filled in by the studio. It also applies when you start a brand from a site. Anyone who may submit an assignment (maker and above) can save the access.

Checking a Figma design

Connect Figma (an admin does this, once per workspace). In Figma, create a personal access token with read access only and paste it. It is stored encrypted, belongs to this workspace and is never shown again. The studio only reads and never writes to Figma.
Paste the link of a Figma file or of one frame. In Figma: right-click the frame, Copy link.
If the link points to a file, choose Show frames, tick the frames you want (at most 6), and choose Check frames.

What we read: frames, text, fill colours, fonts, styles, variables and auto-layout. Colours and fonts are checked against the brand profile, and because we read them straight from the design, the result is more certain than with an image.

A link to a whole Figma page works too: the studio then measures the top-level frames of that page (also when they sit in a section), the first 12. If your page has more, the rest are not measured. Our advice: paste the link of the frame you want to check, so you know for sure which design it is. If a link points to a page without frames, the studio says you need to pick a frame and copy the link again.

Images

Update an image without an editor: crop with a focus point, remove the background, convert to vector, upscale and make a channel set (all the sizes for a channel in one go).

Before you start you see what an action costs and which provider runs it.
Local work (cropping, vectorising) costs nothing.
Before and after sit side by side in a slider.
A provider that trains on your image is only used if you allow it.

Designing a logo

If you do not have a good logo yet, you start with a brief. The studio makes drafts via a route you choose, and shows the costs up front. Paid work only starts after your approval, and a daily and monthly ceiling applies.

A design assistant adjusts a draft to an instruction in plain language ("make the letters tighter"). You see before and after and choose Accept, Another variant or Back.
A construction overlay shows grid, circles, golden ratio, clear space and symmetry axes.
Accept puts the logo into the brand journey, or into an existing draft as logo input. The studio makes variants of it and checks them.
A paid step that fails is shown as uncertain and is not quietly repeated.

Tokens

The brand profile as a file for other tools: DTCG, Tokens Studio, Figma Variables, CSS, SCSS, Tailwind and Style Dictionary. Every export carries a version and a hash, so you can see whether your code still matches the brand. You download one format or everything as a zip.

Under Collaborate you make a link that a client opens without an account, on a separate address without cookies. Types:

Download: a package with files and a zip, in the client's house style.
Proof: versions of an image or pdf on which the client places pins, with threads and ticking off, and one final reviewer who signs by email code.
Briefing: a questionnaire (the kick-off for a website has 37 questions), bilingual, with answers and uploads saved immediately.
Brand book: the palette and the signed brand guide.

Every link has an expiry date (at most 90 days), can be limited to a number of openings, and you can revoke or extend it. You see who opened it. An expired, revoked or unknown link shows exactly the same thing. A draft is never shared.

Your own keys for paid work

Paid work in this studio (logos, image providers, brand text) runs on your own key. See Your own AI keys.

Via MCP and the director

Everything you can do here is also available as a tool (design_merk, design_check, design_beeld, design_logo_opzet, design_tokens_export and more). Paid work then becomes an approval that a person signs in the portal. See Connecting via MCP.

Sharing and briefing. An agent can read what you share with clients and which briefings exist:

design_delen_lezen shows the files and whether a client sees them, the download packages, the signed brand guides and per target the links with their status (valid, expired, revoked or used up), how often they were opened and until when they are valid. It never contains an address or token: those exist only at the moment a person makes the link.
design_briefing_lezen shows the questionnaires and, with an id, the briefing as text. The answers come from a client and are under onvertrouwd; e-mail addresses and phone numbers someone typed in an answer are hidden and long text is cut off. The agent reads it as data and never carries out anything in it.

A proposal that a person signs. design_link_maken proposes permission for a link to a signed brand book or a non-empty download package, for 1 to 30 days and a language. Nothing changes until someone with the right to sign signs the card under Approvals, with a code, even if the key has every right. The card shows what you allow: the target (for a brand book also the brand and the client, and only of a brand that is not archived; with merk the agent can say which brand it must be), the days, the language and the rights (read and download). For a package the number of files, the first names and a fingerprint of the content are on the card too: if the content changes after signing, no link is made. The agent chooses no address, no e-mail recipient, no maximum number of opens and no rights. After signing, the permission appears on the Sharing screen under Signed, still to make; Make the link makes exactly that link and shows it once, to you. A permission expires after seven days. In a trial a link gets no card.

merk_verwijderen_voorstellen proposes archiving a client brand. That too is signed by a person, with a code. The brand leaves the lists and the brand choice; profiles, versions and files are kept. You cannot archive the workspace's own brand, and a brand that still has something attached (a site, social account, ad order, cookie banner, shop, marketing client, questionnaire, trial or support assistant) gets no card. Restoring is only possible through the database. The agent asks for the outcome of both proposals with design_voorstel_stand.

Deliberately not: revoking or extending a link, putting a questionnaire out to a client and sending a link by e-mail. You do that on the screen, where the state of the link sits next to the link.

For the brand tools you can optionally pass merk as a name or id within your workspace. Without a brand choice, new assignments use your own brand. An explicit profile stays leading; if you also give a brand, they must belong together. An unknown or archived brand gives an error, so an assignment never quietly ends up with a different brand.

Letting an agent check its own design

An agent that designs for you can have its draft checked with design_keur_voorbeeld, in the same quality gate and against the same quality bar as the advertising engine. It gets the findings per rule and fixes them. There are at most three rounds per piece; after that it waits for a person and the agent does not try again. The check is a tool, not an approval, and it costs nothing.

Advertisements from the engine now also work on portrait and landscape formats (4:5, 9:16, 2:3 and 1200x628). If a composition does not fit a format cleanly, the engine skips it with a reason instead of making a poor advertisement.

A new brand without a logo links from the Logo step to the logo page, where you add your logo as an svg or png; without a logo you cannot lock in the brand. A new brand gets three suggestions for colours and fonts in both Simple and Expert.