A user sent three carousels on the same topic — one Clean, one Solid, one Pop — and said the obvious thing: "I assume they should actually look different from one another ;)"
She was right, and it was worse than it looked.
What a Look actually controlled
Every token a Look owned was a shape token. Corner radius 24, 6 or 14. Border width 3, 4 or 2. Title weight 900, 900 or 800. Letter spacing, padding, and a decorative grid that is invisible on a dark background.
On a light, high-contrast brand those read as three styles. On her navy brand they read as one. The eyebrow pill was even the same 999px in two of the three.
It wasn't a discoverability problem
The easy assumption was that nobody used the picker. We checked, and the opposite was true: 41% of active brand kits had chosen a Look deliberately, and one composer post in six changes it again for that single post.
People were choosing constantly and getting the same picture back. That makes the report worse, not milder — the control was being used and then not honoured.
What a Look is now
Each Look spends your brand colour differently, and in a different shape:
| | how it uses colour | how much of the slide |
|---|---|---|
| Pop | two accent shapes bleeding off opposite edges, filled rotated eyebrow | ~35% |
| Solid | one slab of accent carrying the whole title block, edge to edge | ~28%, in one mass |
| Clean | no fills at all — a hairline, and an outlined button | under 4% |
Coverage and shape survive any palette: light, dark, monochrome, two colours or eight. A corner radius does not.
Two colours in, two colours out
The same pass fixed a second complaint. A brand kit accepts up to eight colours; the renderer had exactly four slots — background, text, accent, and a light tone. Colours five and six were accepted and then thrown away.
13.6% of active kits were handing us colours we discarded. There are now two more slots, and both derive from what a kit already has — so a two-colour brand renders exactly as it did before.
Your existing posts
The Library renders every preview and every download from the current renderer, so a carousel you made in August will look different the next time you download it. Better, we think, but different. Nobody has ever complained that their Looks were too distinct.
