Themes and branding
Themes control the shared look of a lesson or course: page background, fonts, text colors, accent colors, and logo. To open the Theme panel, open a lesson or course and select Theme in the editor toolbar.
An organization can limit theme editing to Admins. When it does, other authors can still pick a theme but can't change it.
Choose and save a theme
The theme picker lists your organization's custom themes first, then Mindsmith's Presets.
When you change any theme setting, you get a draft, marked with an asterisk. To keep your changes:
Select Save to update the custom theme the draft started from. Every lesson and course using that theme gets the change.
Select Save New to keep the draft as a separate custom theme with its own name.
Lessons inside a course
A course has one theme and one logo. If you pick a theme or change the logo from a lesson inside a course, the change applies to the whole course.
Organization branding
Authors and Admins can open Settings → Branding in Organization Settings to manage branding for the whole organization. Branding is available on paid plans, and it's limited to Admins if your organization restricts theme editing. From there you can:
Create, edit, and delete custom themes
Choose the Default Theme that new lessons and courses start with
Set the organization's default logo. For best results, use an image with a transparent or white background and no margins.
When you delete a custom theme, Mindsmith first shows which lessons and courses use it. Those lessons and courses switch to the default theme.
Page background and text
In the Theme panel you can:
Choose a page background color
Upload, replace, or remove a background image
Set separate overlay colors for titles and content when you use a background image
Choose header and paragraph fonts, weights, and colors
Type exact color values in any color picker
Turn on Auto-color text to pick readable text shades from the page color
When manually selected text and background colors do not meet the editor’s minimum contrast target, Mindsmith shows a contrast warning.
Custom fonts
Open the header or paragraph font selector and choose Custom Font.
Enter a font name.
Upload the Regular file, which is required.
Optionally upload separate Italic and Bold files.
Mindsmith recommends .woff2. .woff, .ttf, and .otf also work.
There's no separate Bold Italic upload. You can still make text bold and italic, but if your brand has its own Bold Italic file, preview that text carefully.
Accent colors
The main accent color styles buttons and other highlighted elements. You can add a secondary accent and more reusable colors, and change or remove them later. Rows and tiles can use these colors from their appearance controls.
Add a logo
Logo branding is available on paid plans.
Select Logo in the Theme panel.
Upload an image or choose one from your organization's Media Library.
Choose a logo style: White Background, Rounded, or None.
The logo belongs to the lesson or course, not to the theme, so switching themes keeps it. A standalone lesson has its own logo. In a course, the logo applies to every lesson (see Lessons inside a course above). New content starts with the organization's default logo from Settings → Branding.
Course header
Courses have additional header controls:
Default layout supports Blend or High Contrast styling and an optional header image.
Portrait and Immersive layouts use their own header composition and support an image with an overlay color.
Depending on how the course was created, the image picker can offer image generation in addition to search and upload.
Row and tile appearance
The theme sets the defaults, but you can change the look of a single row or a supported tile from its appearance controls.
Some organizations also see Advanced Styles in the Theme panel while that feature is in early access. These settings add to the same theme rather than creating a separate style for learners.