Use Creative Assistant

It takes a lot of work to create professional, on-brand designs. Use our Creative Assistant to quickly generate a stylish set of graphics for your marketing content.

In this article, you'll learn how to use the Creative Assistant.

Before you start

• Accounts on a Standard Marketing plan or higher can download Creative Assistant designs for use outside of Mailchimp. Learn more about our plan pricing.
• Some design formats like LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Ads and more require your account to be on a Standard Marketing plan or higher.

How it works

The Creative Assistant collects colors, fonts, images, and logos from your website and landing pages. It uses those elements to fill in your brand kit and then creates multi-channel designs that match.

If you don't have a Mailchimp website or landing page, enter your website address, and manually upload your brand assets. We'll use the colors, fonts, logos, and images to create designs for you.

When you begin a new project, we'll ask you what you want to accomplish with your designs. You'll have the option to Resume Last to pick up where you left off, or Create New Design to move forward with a helpful survey to get you started.

Access Creative Assistant

There’s several ways to access the Creative Assistant. It's available through the Content Studio as well as image content blocks in the classic email builder and landing page builder. It's also available when you add a social post to a regular email or create a Customer Journey email.

In this section, we'll learn how to access the Creative Assistant.

In the content studio

To access Creative Assistant from the Mailchimp dashboard, click Content.

The Creative Assistant will display by default.

In an email or landing page

To access Creative Assistant from the classic email, landing page, or classic automation builder, click or add an Image, Image Card, or Image content block in your layout. Then, click the Creative Assistant button in the editing pane.

From here, you can choose and insert Creative Assistant content into the block.

You can also use Creative Assistant for the optional social post you publish when you send your email. Toggle on the slider for the channel you want to post to, then click Use Creative Assistant.

In a Customer Journey welcome email

The Creative Assistant helps you quickly create a welcome email in the Customer Journey builder. If you choose the Signs up starting point, any email you add to your journey will include a Creative Assistant option that automatically generates a header design.

Edit brand settings

Your brand settings are the logo, fonts, colors, and personality traits that Creative Assistant uses to generate your designs. Manually update or change your brand settings depending on the business, product, or marketing campaign you're working on. After you update those settings, you are ready to generate new designs.

Edit logo

A logo is a great way to help customers quickly identify your business. Include it in your designs to grow brand recognition.

To edit your logo in Creative Assistant, follow these steps.

1. Click the Brand Kit tab.
   

2. Click the Logos preview.
   
   If you haven't added a logo yet, you'll see an Add Logo button.

3. In the Logo menu, click Add Logo to upload additional logos from your computer.
   
   For best results, use a large, full-size version of your logo. Creative Assistant supports JPG, PNG, or SVG file formats.

4. In the logo settings panel, click the Primary Logo checkbox to make an image your default logo in Creative Assistant designs.
   

5. Toggle the sliders to choose what backgrounds can be used with your logo.
   

6. Click Save Changes to return to the Logo menu.
   

7. To update the settings for your existing logos, hover over it and click the Settings icon.
   

8. To remove an existing logo, click the Trash icon.
   

9. Click Save Changes to go back to the Brand Kit menu when you're done.
   

Edit and upload fonts

When Creative Assistant builds brand settings from your website or landing pages, it will identify the fonts you use in your marketing. If those fonts aren't available, it will use the closest match. If you want to use your own fonts, upload them in TTF, OTF, and WOFF formats.

To edit or upload fonts in Creative Assistant, follow these steps.

1. Click the Brand Kit tab.
   

2. Click the Fonts preview.
   

3. Click the Headings and Subheadings/Body Copy drop-downs to scroll and choose your preferred fonts.
   
   You can also type in the name of a font to see if it is available.

4. Click Add Files to upload a TTF, OTF, or WOFF file from your computer.
   

5. Review the Font Preview to see how your selections look together.
   

6. Click Save Changes to go back to the Brand Kit menu when you're done.
   

Edit colors

When Creative Assistant builds brand settings from your website or landing pages, it will collect the colors you use in your marketing.

To edit colors in Creative Assistant, follow these steps.

1. Click the Brand Kit tab.
   

2. Click the Colors preview.
   

3. In the Colors section, click Add Color.
   
   You can do this in either the Primary Color or Secondary Color section of the page.

4. Click a tile and use the color picker to adjust the color.
   
   You can also type in a hex code for the color you want.

5. Hover over the color tile and click the Settings icon.
   

6. In the side panel, toggle Can this be used as a background color? to the checkmark.
   This toggle may already be active.

7. To choose a color for Header text, click the Header color preview and select an available brand color.
   
   You can also set a font color for the Subheading.

8. Toggle the sliders to choose if this color can be used as a background for your logo.
   

9. Click the X icon to close the side panel.
   

10. Click Save Changes when you're done.

Edit brand personality

Creative Assistant will try to assess the personality for your brand, but you can adjust this to suit your preferences. To help you pick a style that matches your vision, the inspirational mood board will display default examples of designs in those styles.

To change your brand personality settings in Creative Assistant, follow these steps.

1. Click the Brand Kit tab.
   

2. Click the Brand Personality preview.
   

3. In the Brand Personality menu, choose a personality trait.
   
   You can review the personality preview images we provide to give you an idea of the designs that will be generated with this selection.

4. Use the sliders to further refine your brand personality.
   

5. When you’re done, click Save Changes.
   

After you’ve edited your brand settings, click Update Designs to see how they look on the Create Designs tab with your updates.

You can also click Reset Brand Data to remove all of your brand's data from Creative Assistant.

Click More Designs to generate additional images.

Remove or replace backgrounds from images

Creative Assistant has a background remover which lets you upload an image and remove or replace the background.

To edit or upload images in Creative Assistant, follow these steps.

1. Click the Background Remover tab.
   
2. Click Add image.
   
3. Select an image from files already uploaded to Mailchimp or click Upload to add an image from your computer.
   
4. Save the image to your computer or to My Files, or select a new background. There are three style options.
   • Stock photos
     Select a stock image from Unsplash image libraries.
   • Color
     Select a color background using the color picker or by entering a hex code for a specific color. Also, select the transparency of the background color.
   • My Files
     Select a background from one of the files uploaded to Mailchimp or upload a new image.
5. Click Download to save the image to your computer or click Save to save the image in Mailchimp.
   

Edit and save designs in the Design Library

If you want to have a little more control over the designs Creative Assistant provides, we offer a number of customization options.

To edit a design in Creative Assistant, follow these steps.

1. Hover over the image you want to work with and click Edit Design.
   
   You can click Select Style to skip the customization options and go straight to image size selections. If you choose to do so, skip to step 10.

2. In the Heading section, customize the Font, Text Color, and Content of the heading.
   If you want to exclude the Heading from your design, toggle the slider off.
   

3. In the Subheading section, customize the Font, Text Color, and Content of the subheading.
   
   If you want to exclude the Subheading from your design, toggle the slider off.
   

4. In the Colors section, choose a color pairing.
   

5. In the Images section, click the Position arrows to adjust the image placement.
   

6. If you want to use a different image, click My Files to choose one from your files in the content studio, click Stock Photos to find a stock photo, or click Upload to upload a new file from your computer.
   
   If you decide to use a stock photo, you'll need to agree to additional terms of use for the image you select. You'll also be able to navigate to the photographer's online portfolio.

7. In the Logo section, adjust the Logo Size, click the Position arrows to adjust the placement, or click the image previews to change the image used.
   
   To upload a new logo, click the plus icon (+). Toggle the slider off to exclude the logo from your design.
   

8. Want to shake it up a little? Click Shuffle Layout to use the same design style, but laid out in a different way.
   

9. Click Select Sizes.
   

10. Check the boxes next to the image sizes you want to use.

11. To see the available options in a category, click the arrow icon next to its name.
    

12. When you're ready, click Save To Design Library.
    
    You can also click Download Selected to save your images to your computer.

13. In the Name Your Designs pop-up, enter your Session Title and click Save.
    

Good work! Any designs you save will be available to view in the Design Library.

Available design sizes

Here is a full list of the available design size options.

Next steps

Now that you've chosen your designs, use them in the different marketing channels available in Mailchimp.

Create a Regular Email
Create a Landing Page
Create a Customer Journey
Create Your Website in Mailchimp