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Brand & theme builder

This article describes how the feature works from main users' perspective. For the admin/workspace side, see this article.

The brand & theme builder helps you build a complete, on-brand theme for your Howspace account in a few guided steps, instead of adjusting visual settings one at a time. Once created, a theme can be applied across your workspaces and reused whenever you need it.

Creating a theme

  1. Navigate to Account Manager -> Brand & theme.

  2. Click "create theme". You will see the following modal:

  3. Give the theme a name.

  4. Choose one of the following approaches:

    1. Import a style based on a URL address. The system will read colours, find your logo, and try to match your fonts as closely as possible. You can edit any of these manually afterwards.

    2. Create the theme manually from scratch.

  5. Add/edit your brand colours in HEX. As you add your primary, secondary, and highlight colours, the palette below will be filled in.

    1. Primary

      1. Tints the navigation, page and widget backgrounds (how strongly depends on the theme style)

      2. The Contrast widget header (a dark shade of primary), the Tinted widget background and the Bold widget background

      3. Palette colour 1

    2. Secondary:

      1. Only the Accent widget background

      2. Palette colour 2

    3. Highlight (falls back to primary if left empty):

      1. All buttons in every widget style: filled, outline and text buttons, plus their hover states

      2. The accent colour inside widgets: links, icons, selected states

      3. Palette colour 3

    4. Palette: colours 4–12 are variations of your primary, secondary, and highlight colour. The palette is used for example in Poll and Pulse results and appears in the colour picker inside workspaces.

  6. To edit any colour in the palette, simply click on it. When you add and change colours, you can see a preview of what they might look like in a workspace on the right side of the modal.

  7. Select theme style between light, soft, contrast, and dark

  8. Add/edit logo and typography:

    1. You can add a separate file for light and dark logos or add only a light one and have the system generate one for dark navigation backgrounds.

    2. Adjust logo height

    3. Choose heading and body fonts

  9. Review widget styles and shapes:

    1. The tool automatically creates six widget styles based on your brand colours. You can preview them by clicking through the styles and adjust by editing your brand colours.

    2. Select button style between "square", "rounded", and "pill".

    3. Adjust how sharp/round you want widget corners to be.

    4. Set widget edge between "no edge", "thin line", and "default shadow".

    5. Select widget text size between S, M, L, and XL.

  10. Finally, click "save theme".

Managing existing themes

You're not limited to one theme. Create as many as you need - they're accessible to all your workspace admins, and you can set any one of them as the account's global default to make sure new workspaces stay on brand.

To see and manage your existing themes, open Account Manager and navigate to Brand & theme.

Here, you can:

  • See all your active and archived themes.

  • In the "..." menu next to any theme,

    • Edit the theme

    • Show usage: see which workspaces the theme is being used in

    • Set as default theme: this theme will be applied to any new workspace opened under your Howspace account.

    • Archive the theme

    • For archived themes, you have the option to restore or delete them.

Note: archiving or deleting a theme that is being used in any workspace is not possible. First, change the theme used in those workspaces to something else.

How themes apply to workspaces

  • New workspaces automatically inherit the account's current default theme.

  • Edits made to a theme are reflected in all workspaces using it after refreshing the session.

  • Existing workspaces keep their current look untouched. A banner in Workspace Manager -> Visuals lets admins opt in to themes whenever they want.

Note: A refresh will not be forced if user is currently in the middle of for example writing a chat comment or editing a widget.

In addition, page and container backgrounds will remain even if theme is changed.

FAQ

Will this change how my existing workspaces look?

No. Nothing changes for existing workspaces unless admins opt in via the banner at the top of the workspace visuals page. Workspace admins can return to the custom visuals they had before at any time.

Can I still use the old visual editor?

Yes. If you switch to using themes, you can see a "custom" theme. Selecting that gets you back to the same legacy editor as before.

What if I update my logo or colors in a theme later?

Edits are reflected in all workspaces that use the theme after refreshing the session. A refresh will not be forced if user is currently in the middle of for example writing a chat comment or editing a widget.

In addition, page and container backgrounds will remain even if theme is changed.

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