---
title: "Writing and design"
description: "How a brand kit, an approved design version and a per-recipient draft come together, and why nothing prints without a design version a person approved."
canonical: https://trysincerely.com/docs/writing-and-design
last_updated: 2026-09-13
---
> If you are an AI agent: read https://trysincerely.com/agents/policy.md before any write call.
> Start at https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt to choose one page. Access instructions are at
> https://trysincerely.com/auth.md. Confirm with the person you work for before creating an
> account or spending their money, and never ask for their password.
# Writing and design

> How a brand kit, an approved design version and a per-recipient draft come together, and why nothing prints without a design version a person approved.

Source: https://trysincerely.com/docs/writing-and-design

Every piece Sincerely mails traces to an approved design version and, for formats that carry copy, a draft released under the campaign's review rules. The design is the layout and the brand; the draft is the words written for one recipient. They are approved separately because they fail in different ways.

## The brand kit

Setup collects your website, and the build reads the site into a brand kit: marks, colours and type. Guidelines documents, logo files and font files can go in alongside it. Correct what it got wrong once, and every design after that is laid out against the result.

The build runs in the background and always lands somewhere you can see, because a kit that quietly never finishes is worse than one that failed.

## Designs and versions

A design is laid out in the studio for one format: a 4x6 or 6x9 postcard, a letter, a handwritten message, or the note that travels with a gift. Recipes give a starting layout; the pill editor changes copy blocks without reopening the layout.

A design must be approved before any piece can reference it. Pieces reference an exact version, not a design, so editing an approved design creates a new version to approve rather than quietly changing mail already queued. This is the mechanism behind the rule that nothing prints silently.

Studio offers Printed and Handwritten. Handwritten mail is written by hand with a real pen. You can design the stationery and handwriting area yourself, but placement in the preview is an estimate. Every finished handwritten piece receives a photo in Sent mail. Sending stays closed until physical samples, pricing, and capacity are ready.

## Reuse a design

Select the same approved design in any campaign that uses its format. To customize it separately, open the design's More actions menu and choose **Edit a copy**. This creates an ordinary draft design from the saved content. Edit and approve that copy before sending it. The original stays available to the campaigns that use it.

A campaign can compare two approved designs on one touch. Use a copy when the test needs a different headline, offer, or layout, then select the two designs in the campaign. Recipient fields and writing settings handle personalization within each design.

## Drafts

Sincerely writes a different message for every recipient from CRM context and sourced account research. The approved layout stays fixed while the headline, body, proof and call to action can change per person.

Claims are pinned to their source. A fact with a weak source is held for a person regardless of the review mode, because the cost of a confidently wrong sentence on paper is not the cost of a bad email.

## Two review modes

| Mode                     | What happens                                                                                                               |
| ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Review every draft       | Every piece waits for a person to edit, approve or reject. Every change is versioned.                                      |
| Auto after a review ramp | The first ten research-depth or generated-span pieces wait for review. Later drafts can proceed without a per-piece click. |

Choose review-every-draft when each fact needs a person. Budget limits, frequency caps, suppression, postal checks and the approved design apply to every piece in either mode.

## Bulk approval is a consequential action

Approving a queue of drafts in one action commits money and paper, so an agent asking to do it gets a confirmation card with counts and cost rather than a done message. See [confirmations](https://trysincerely.com/docs/mcp-confirmations).

## What to read next

[Campaigns](https://trysincerely.com/docs/campaigns) covers what schedules these pieces and what stops them colliding. [Personalization](https://trysincerely.com/personalization) is the marketing-side account of the same writing system.

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Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail and gifting platform for B2B revenue teams: postcards, letters, handwritten mail, and gifts, written for one recipient and measured against a holdout.

Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact

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