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GenieInABottle
Participant
February 7, 2025
Question

What's the different use for "brands" and "libraries"?

  • February 7, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 981 views

I've been trying to use Express for my company's social media/ads stuff, but I can't understand what's the main difference (and i've read the help pages) between when to use libraries and when to use brands.

What's the best workflow?

Months ago I had uploaded logo/colors/fonts as 'brand', and created some templates for ads. 

When i exported the files the logo was all pixelated and i gave up and went to another platform.

Now i went back to them, uploaded new svg files in the brand, for the logos. Go back to the templates i had, and i was trying to use 'replace' to change the logo to the new files. Nothing. Every time i tried to go to my stuff, brand, and select the logo, it would not replace and instead place a new instance on the ad. 

Eventually i 'transformed' the brand into a library, and now it seems that i can change the logo with a new one. 

So what's even the point of the 'brand' section?? 

We are about to launch a new logo, so i want to start from scratch, but i'm not really sure how to approach this. How does this software works??

thanks

 

1 reply

David__B
Adobe Employee
David__B
Adobe Employee
February 7, 2025

Hi @GenieInABottle

Sorry to hear about your frustration with Express. I'll try to address your questions. Brands are unique to Adobe Express and are meant to be just a place to store your branding for a business; libraries are more general storage of assets and are available in many Adobe programs, not just Express. Brands can be saved as a library, but there are some features in Express unique to brands that are not available for libraries, such as the "Apply Brand" command. If you're using brand-type assets, then either would work, but if you're using other Adobe apps besides Express, then libraries might be a better option. I would actually recommend trying both options (like you've done) just to get familiar with how both work.


Hope that helps,
Dave

T
thbrandt_su
Participant
April 16, 2025

We have be wrestling with this issue as well.
Where we have landed in part, like David mentioned - Brands are used for Express templates and users and Libraries are for sharing things to be used in other Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign.
An example use is our design teams have had shared libraries for organization Logos and Icons when working in Creative Cloud apps. For the icons, they are uploaded as SVG/vector files which allows them to drop in into a design as native line art and adjust colors in the app's color palette. Being trained designers, they better understand the proper use of the organization's brand and which colors to use and when.
As we have moved into Express, we are replicating these Libraries to Brands. Our users in Express, do not have the full CC suite and are not trained designers. These need guardrails inside of templates. Brands allow us to control which colors and assets get used.

Back to the icon example, in Express when these assets are added in an Express file, the colors are not selectable/changeable like they are in the CC apps. In Express Brands, we have icon assets grouped into 3 select colors which is a great guardrail.

Hope that helps with a more practical example.

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