Setting Up BYO Branding
Open School Settings → BYO Branding , choose your main colour, upload up to four versions of your logo, and switch Use school branding on. Your colour and logo then appear in your dashboard, the Family Hub and your email
Before You Start
- You need to be a school admin.
- To see your branding live, your school needs an active trial or the BYO Branding add-on — see Availability, trial and pricing. You can prepare everything below without it; it just won't show to you or your families until it's active.
- Have your logo files ready. Logos can be PNG or JPEG, up to 5MB. A transparent-background PNG looks best.
Step 1: Turn BYO Branding On
Open School Settings from the sidebar and choose the BYO Branding tab. If branding isn't on yet, you'll see a short explanation, sample studios, and a switch labelled Turn on BYO Branding. Switch it on — it saves straight away.
Step 2: Choose Your Main Colour
Under School branding, set your Primary brand colour using the colour picker, or type a hex code in the format #RRGGBB. Then choose Save branding.
Octavia sets these automatically:
- Text colour on your colour is chosen automatically — white or black, whichever is easier to read.
- Hover and selected shades in the sidebar are created from your colour automatically.
- Page header banners use a deeper shade of your colour, fading to your exact colour. If your colour is very light, the banner is darkened as needed so its white text stays readable — so on a pale colour, banners can look noticeably deeper than the sidebar.
The Sidebar preview beside the colour settings shows your sidebar with your colour and logo, and whether branding is currently on or off.
Step 3: Upload Your Logos
Under Logo management there are four slots. Each one is used in a different place, so the logo is always readable on its background.
| Logo | Used for |
|---|---|
| Logo for light backgrounds | Invoices, emails and white surfaces. This is the same logo as in School settings. |
| Logo for coloured backgrounds | The sidebar and the Family Hub header when your colour needs light text. Typically a white or light version of your logo. |
| Square logo for light backgrounds | The collapsed sidebar when your colour is light, and the collapsed sidebar on the Family Hub home page, where a compact, roughly square mark reads better than a wide logo. |
| Square logo for coloured backgrounds | The collapsed sidebar and the collapsed Family Hub sidebar when your colour needs light text. Typically a white or light, icon-only version of your logo. |
Use the upload control on each to add, replace or remove a logo.
Which logo the sidebar uses depends on your colour. If your colour is dark (so text on it is white), the sidebar uses your coloured-background logo. If your colour is light (so text is black), it uses your light-background logo instead. If the right logo for your colour is missing, Octavia shows your school name as text — it never swaps in a logo that would be hard to read.
The collapsed sidebar follows the same rule with your square logos: a dark colour uses the square coloured-background logo, and a light colour uses the square light-background logo. If the right square logo is missing, the collapsed sidebar shows the matching wide logo instead, and if that is missing too, the Family Hub shows your school's first letter. It never swaps in the other square logo, which could be hard to read on your colour.
A square logo works best as a transparent-background PNG with just your icon or symbol, without the school name, so it stays clear at small sizes.
Step 4: Check How It Looks
Look at your dashboard, then at your Family Hub, ideally signed in as a test family. Open an email preview from one of the send screens — they preview your branding before you send.
Turning Branding Off
To go back to Octavia's look, switch Use school branding off. It saves immediately and keeps all your colour and logo settings, so you can turn it back on any time. Families who already have the Hub open may see the change a little later than you do — a refresh brings it up to date.
Troubleshooting
I can't see the BYO Branding tab. Only school admins can see it. Ask an admin to set it up or change your role.
My colour is saved but nothing changed. Check that the Use school branding switch is on, and that your school has an active trial or BYO Branding add-on. Without one, settings are kept but not shown.
The sidebar shows my school name instead of a logo. The logo needed for your colour is missing. A dark colour needs the coloured-background logo; a light colour needs the light-background logo.
An old email no longer shows my logo. Logos in emails are loaded live, so they stop appearing if branding is switched off or lapses. See What is BYO Branding?.
I updated my logo but emails show the old one. Some email apps cache images. Newly sent emails pick up the new logo; older ones may show the previous version for a while.
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