The brand needed to be lively and appetizing, with a bright palette and type system that could flex across formats. I landed on a creative direction that felt whimsical but elevated: bright colors that read as friendly and grounded, drawing inspiration from folk art and Scandinavian patterns to give the brand a distinct, handmade warmth without tipping into twee. The biggest challenge was Substack itself: it crops each cover image differently depending on where it appears (homepage thumbnail, archive, social share preview), so early designs looked right in one place and cut off in another. I researched how the platform handles cropping, including the difference between its centered and smart-focus modes, and found that smart focus was sometimes misreading images and pushing the subject off-center. I rebuilt the templates around a safe zone, keeping key text and imagery in the center of a social-preview-sized canvas (1200×630) so the important content survives every crop, then tested layouts across placements and adjusted the account's cropping setting to make results more predictable.

The client now has a full brand toolkit and a repeatable template system that holds up across thumbnails and social previews, plus clear guidance on how Substack's cropping works, so future posts don't require guesswork.