Creating Assets for your Slate Account
Your Slate account will consist of three different types of assets: Fonts, graphics and filters. Let’s quickly describe each one.
Fonts: These will be .ttf files. These will be the fonts accessible in your mobile app.
Graphics: These will act much like “stickers” in any sort of social media app. They can be .png or .gif (new!) files that can be moved around and scaled up and down in your mobile app.
Filters: Filters are static or video overlays. They can be applied on top of content in your Slate mobile app and can be created in any of the four dimensions supported in Slate (9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9). They cannot be moved or scaled up and down in the app.
Now let’s talk about the specifications for creating each of these assets.
Fonts
Fonts is very straightforward. To prepare your fonts files for Slate, all you need to do is make sure they are .ttf files. Tip: if it’s a .otf file, you can just change the extension in your finder to .ttf before uploading to your Slate web portal.
Graphics and Gifs
Graphics are great for things like logos, player stickers, sponsor logos, call to action stickers (like ‘Swipe up’ and ‘Sound on’), or blank brand elements like boxes or paint strokes to add text or IG elements on top of later.
The assets in your graphics drawer can be static .png files or animated .gif files. You should keep your graphics under 1920px wide in any direction and the final file needs to be under 10mb to upload to your Slate web portal.
Tip: Export your graphics without extra transparent padding around the asset. This extra padding will make aligning graphics in the mobile app difficult.
Filters
Filters are the quickest and easiest way to add branding to any post and be sure it is consistent. They are great for watermarks, borders, broadcast bumpers (filters that leave a landscape space in the middle of a vertical layout), sponsor overlays, ‘cam’ style filters or really any creative way to enhance your content with your brand you can think of! Filters can be static or animated with .mov overlays.
Static filters should be exported as .png files (Jpeg, .jpg, .psd or any other formats will not upload to your Slate web portal). Png filters should be no larger than 1920px in any one dimension and should be under 8mb. They can be created in any of the four supported ratios (9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9).
We recommend the following dimensions for each ratio:
9:16 = 1080 x 1920
1:1 = 1500 x 1500
4:5 = 1200 x 1500
16:9 = 1920 x 1080
Animated filters can be created as .mov files. Refer to the animated filters article for more info on creating this type of asset.
TIP: Create filters to use for multi-media layouts.
Backgrounds
Backgrounds are a great way to have preset images or videos in your Slate account to add text, stickers or even other images on top of to quickly create on-brand content.
Backgrounds can either images or videos. They can be uploaded as .pngs, .jpgs, .movs or .mp4s. They should be under 10mb in size and no larger than 1920px in any one direction. Background images can be uploaded at any dimension (under the 1920 max) and then you will have the ability to crop that image to fit each of the 4 dimensions.
PSD Templates
A template in Slate is essentially a PSD that your team can upload to your web dashboard and then edit from the mobile app. You upload the PSD into the Slate web portal, then your team of creators can access that template and edit text layers within the Slate mobile app, with all elements locked into place. This is great for things like quote graphics, stat lines, and anything else you want to create as a text-based template to make it easy for creators to just edit the words and not change where the text shows up.
Templates need to be .PSD files and can be either 9:16, 4:5, 1:1, or 16:9. They shouldn’t be bigger than 1920px wide or tall. Please review the How to Create Slate Templates article for more details on how to set up your PSDs correctly. You also can email your PSDs directly to support@slateteams.com for help uploading.
NOTE: Templates feature is only available on “Unlimited” plans and above.
