Visuals is your branded image and slide composer. You use it to create single images or multi-slide carousels – each with a photo in the background and your brand text on top. Everything you see is a live preview: that's exactly how the finished image will look.
Visuals is included from the Pro plan and lives in the menu under Create → Visuals – on a computer also as Visuals in the icon bar on the left. A visual with just one slide is a single image; several slides make a carousel.
Visuals is still in beta – we're expanding it continuously. If something's missing or feels off, we'd love your feedback.
Creating a visual
Open Visuals from the menu and click New visual in the bar at the bottom. The overview shows all of your team's visuals; in the page header at the top you can filter them by format. From pool in the bar starts a visual right away with photos from one of your media pools, and Brand kit takes you to your brand kit. In the dialog you give your visual a name and pick the format and the style set right away – you can change both later at any time. The visual doesn't start empty but as a finished title page with sample text – so you can see straight away how a slide is put together, and simply replace the text with your own. You land straight in the editor – as everywhere in maebe, with the workspace and preview on one side and the settings on the other. Everything you change saves automatically – next to your visual's name at the top you can always see whether it's saving or everything is safely stored. In the bar at the bottom you'll also find the Save button: one click stores the current state and refreshes your visual's preview image in the overview.
Choosing the format
In the editor the format sits at the very top – since you already chose it when creating the visual, this section starts collapsed; click its heading to open it again (the same goes for the Image section). There you pick the format – the aspect ratio of your image (e.g. square 1:1, portrait 4:5 or 9:16 for stories). The small tiles show you the ratio directly. Choose the format to match the platform you want to post on.
Setting the background
- Upload a photo: Add an image that fills the slide. You can also pull photos from one of your media pools.
- Position the crop: Drag the photo with your mouse or finger to the right spot – that's how you decide which part of the image is visible.
- Zoom: Use the slider to enlarge the photo if you want to get closer.
Choosing the style set
Above the layout templates you choose the style set – the basic look of your visual. Each set comes with its own templates:
- Editorial: the classic maebe look with a serif headline, kicker and buttons – title page, big number, numbered steps, quote, chapter and closing slide.
- Statement: text straight on the photo, no frame and no logo – like in Reels. You can pick Top & bottom (one line at the top edge, one at the bottom), the Word stack (big words stacked in the centre) and the Caption (small text like a subtitle, at the top, centre or bottom).
- Magazine: a newsroom look with your logo. The Headline combines an overline and a bold headline over a dark gradient, the Quote card puts a quote on a solid colour, and the Guide brings a section tag, headline and text – optionally with the photo tinted in your brand colour.
If you switch the set, all slides get matching templates from the new set. Your own texts are kept.
Layout & text
Pick a layout template – for example a title page, a big number, a numbered step, a quote, a chapter page or a closing page. The preview tiles show each template with sample texts; use the arrows to browse all types. When you pick a template, maebe fills the still-empty fields with those samples – so you instantly see which field does what, and simply replace them with your content. Your own texts are always kept when switching templates.
The input fields look like what they produce: the headline large, the kicker small in capitals, the big number bold. Clear a field and it tells you again what it's for.
- Emphasize a word: Put a word in the headline between asterisks – like
*this*– and it appears in an elegant italic typeface from your brand.
Fine-tuning the look
In the style area you pick the accent colour and the text colour from your brand kit – or a free colour. Below that sit three switches:
- Text position: Should the text sit in the middle of the slide or at the bottom?
- Brightness: Match the text to your photo – light text on dark images, dark text on light ones.
- Gradient: Lays a soft gradient under your text so it stays readable on any photo – at the bottom, across the whole slide, or not at all.
At the top of the style area you'll find the slide's fonts – by default the ones from your brand kit. Click one to open the list of all fonts, each set in itself; that way a single slide can get a different heading or body font. The arrow next to it resets it to the brand kit font.
In the Statement and Magazine sets the style area looks a little different – there you set:
- Text colour – white, black, your brand colours or a colour of your own. White by default, black on the quote card.
- Size and outline with sliders: drag them or type a value, and double-click the slider to reset it. As soon as the outline is active, you pick its colour.
- Shadow for better legibility on busy photos, and the font – the one for your headlines or the one for your body text.
- In the Statement set also All lowercase; in the Magazine set the alignment, the position of your logo (top left, bottom or off) and whether the standard or the inverted logo appears, the photo tint with its strength and, for the quote card, the background colour.
You add your logos in the Brand Kit – a standard logo for light surfaces and an inverted one for dark photos. On the closing slide of the Editorial set you can also choose whether your profile picture or your logo sits above the title.
To learn how your brand kit works, see Brand Kit.
Building a carousel
The thumbnail row right below the preview is your entire slide navigation. Click a tile to jump to that slide, and use drag & drop to change the order.
- Add a slide: The coloured + tile at the end of the row creates another page (up to 20 slides per visual – the Instagram carousel maximum). A new slide inherits all settings from the current one (layout, colours, text) – only the background image stays empty so you can drop in a fresh photo right away.
- Delete a slide: A small bin icon sits in the top-right corner of the tile you currently have open. The last slide can't be deleted – a visual always has at least one page.
That's how you build a consistent, cohesive carousel in just a few steps.
Done – what next?
Once you're happy, you have three options in the bar at the bottom:
- Download as JPG: Download this slide or all slides as high-resolution images.
- Save to pool: Store the finished images in one of your media pools to use later.
- Create post: maebe creates a draft with your slides directly – from there it continues as usual through approval and publishing.
Your visual stays saved and can be edited again any time – so you can adjust it later and export it once more.