covers, cards and clip captions, redrawn

the short version

the cover, the episode card, the words over a clip and the card a clip ends on have all been redrawn.

they used to be plotted line by line in code. now each one is a designed page, set the way a designer would set it, with the brand's real typefaces at every weight, and captured frame by frame into the file.

and before anyone else sees a finished episode or clip, underway looks over its frames for the things that make a video look careless: words cut off at the edge, a caption sitting on your face, a blank frame, the label missing.

why it changed

the first thing anyone sees of an episode is not you. it is the cover in a grid, then the card, then the captions. if those look like a template, the episode reads as a template before you have said a word.

the old drawings followed the brand guide on paper and missed it on screen. lines broke in odd places, a long title shrank until it looked apologetic, the display face came out at one weight. founders noticed, and said so.

type set as a page fixes most of that on its own. lines are balanced so a title does not end on one lonely word. the display face has its full range of weights and widths. sizes are fitted to the words rather than guessed.

what you will see

• the cover: a real frame of you, or your card, with the episode label top left and the headline low and large, balanced across its lines, the last line on your accent
• the episode card: the episode's name rises into place and the accent rule draws itself in the first half second, then it holds, with the line on what was at stake under it
• a clip's opening line: large, on a dark band near the top, clear of your face, for the first seconds whatever the length of the first sentence
• a clip's captions: a few words at a time in the lower third, the word you are saying lit on your accent as you say it
• a clip's end card: your logo, the episode in mono, watch the full episode said large, a play mark, then where: on youtube when it is there, your own page's address, and the directory of everyone else building in public

the episode's own captions are unchanged in style. the word you are saying now has room either side of its block, because the look over the frames caught it running into the words beside it.

the preview is the file

the card in the episode page's preview is the same page the render captures, motion included. there is no second drawing of it for the screen. what you see before you press anything is what goes out.

covers are the same page wherever they are made: on the episode page, on the phone, or when an episode posts to youtube or instagram. the vault, your page and every platform show the same picture.

the look over the frames

when a file is finished, a handful of stills are taken from it: the card, three moments of footage, a clip's end card. each goes with a note of what the brand guide says should be on screen there. anything that looks wrong is looked at again, closely, one frame at a time, and only what survives the second look is kept.

it never holds an episode back. the file is already made, and a careful report is worth more than a nervous one. what it finds goes to the people who build underway, so a fault in the drawing gets fixed for every series at once, not noticed by you on a phone in a queue.

what did not change

nothing about what is said. cuts stay in the order you said things, nothing is reordered for a hook, no word is added that you did not say. the graphics are the frame around the diary, not the diary.

your brand is still yours and still set once: logo, one accent, one typeface, one image behind the cards. a typeface you uploaded is used on the new pages too. and nothing goes over your face but the small corner mark you chose.

the look is set once, under brand, and applies to every episode. start a series.