Palettes Module
The palette module is the home for everything color related within Backbone. Here, we’ll see we are viewing the all swatches section, where we can find every color that is added from anywhere within the app. We can either add them by creating a new swatch then inputting our own information, or by adding a color from a built-in color book swatch - which we’ll discuss in a moment.
Below this, in the left-hand menu, there is the palettes section. This contains colors that you add into the all swatches section, and then further sorted into an individual palette.
Then below this area, we have our Color Books section that I mentioned a moment ago. These are premade collections of colors we provide to you through our partnership with Pantone. These do not live in the all swatches section or any of your palettes until you manually add them.
Think of the entire palette module as your favorite streaming platform.
Imagine the all swatches section is your liked songs library - where you can even add your own music (or color swatch) that you created.
The Palette section is like your playlists that you put together from your liked songs.
Then the Color Books section is kind of like the premade playlists, based on season, that we put together for you to add to your library if you wish.
Just remember that a color can live in all 3 of these places if you use any of the swatches provided from our Pantone Color Library. If you opt to create your own color swatches, they will live within your All Swatches and any subsequent Palettes you add them to. Everything else we’re about to discuss pulls their colors from this area.
Components & Variants
Let’s move forward into Components and how they utilize colors.
If we enter a component summary view, we can see an area for the colorways from our palettes section. To utilize those colors and add them here, we need to do so within the variants tab in the left-hand menu.
Click on the plus icon in the bottom right corner, and you’ll then see an option to add a swatch in the modal that appears. Clicking on this gives us 3 options involving colors
We can create a new color just like we saw earlier in the palette module. Similarly, doing this here will add it to our all swatches section and even a palette we have created if we so choose.
We can import a color from a Pantone Color book that will then also be added to our All swatches and a palette if we want
Or we can search for an existing color to add. Either from the all swatches section or any of the palettes we have created.
Bulk Color Add
Add multiple colors to your component without duplicating to help save time! Click here to learn more about this new feature
After we add a variant here, we’ll see it appear in the table to the right of the variants’ area. Then, if we go back to our component summary view - we can see our component now has colorway chips above the summary details. We’ll be using these variants and variant colorways to build our products and the product colorways.
Product Colorways
Let’s see where else our colors from our palettes appear - if we navigate to one of our products in the product library, you’ll notice a colorway section right when we arrive in the summary view. In order to access those colors from our palette section and add them here to a product you have already created, you’ll need to edit the product.
Click on the pencil icon in the product summary view
Scroll down to view the colorway's section with a familiar drop down
You’ll see the same options from the component variant section, where we can:
Enter a color manually, either creating from scratch or pulling from the Pantone color books
Or search all swatches or one of our palettes
Bulk Color Add
Add multiple colors to your component without duplicating to help save time! Click here to learn more about this feature
Now, what if we want to create a new product with colorways? It’s actually quite simple.
Creating a new product
When we’re creating a new product using the dedicated icon in the global navigation, you’ll see a page that’s almost identical to the one we were just working in. Just scroll down to the colorways section and utilize the exact same dropdown to create a product colorway.
Product Images
Once we’ve created a product with colorways, we can also see our selections in the image's section of a product. Click on images from the left-hand menu, and you’ll see that you have a dedicated image section for each of your colorways. Here you can upload separate illustrations for your colorways which will be used in line sheets and tech packs, which we’ll take a look at shortly.
Bill of Materials
Now let’s head into a BOM to see how all of these selections come together. Enter a product of your choice and then the BOM Section from the left-hand menu.
Here we’re going to see a table for all the components that go into a product - If we added colorways to our product, scroll to the end to see columns where our colorways are headers. This is where we combine the component colorways we selected with our product color way. Click in the cell where the component and product colorway meets to select a new variant and voilà
But - That’s not the only place we’ll see our colors come together - if we make selections in the BOM, they can also appear in our Tech Packs.
Tech Packs
If we begin to create a tech pack for a component, you’ll see here we have the option to include variants and pricing - which looks like this after we generate it. Similarly, we have an option to include colorways in our product tech pack creation modal. They can be displayed in both the BOM and the Product Images section here. Let’s take a look at what that looks like -
Line Sheets
Further, we can view colors for our products through line sheets once they have been assigned at the product level. If your product has images assigned to each colorway, they’ll extrapolate here. Otherwise, the default image will be displayed for all colorway cards, as you see here.
Item View
The last important area you can find colorways is within the Item View. You can create a report and opt to include colorways as a column in the 3rd page of the creation modal by checking its box. Then, when you enter the report, you can ensure the colors you have selected are present. Granted, the view is somewhat limited.
And that just about wraps it up, that is virtually everywhere you’ll find your colors flowing within backbone - just remember it all lives in the palette section and is linked from there!