The habit
You already know where your hand goes. Illustrator's Properties panel is the thing you selected. Swatches is the colors you refuse to re-mix. The Libraries panel, or a CC library, is the logo and the approved images. Those are three places, and the libraries one wants a login. Photoshop splits the same jobs across Properties, Swatches, and whatever library or asset panel the current version is pushing. Affinity Publisher puts the resource on a studio tab and the selection on another, and people who live there like that the page and the brand sit in one application. The people who do not live there keep Designer, Photo, and Publisher open because the habit was three apps.
The job in the chair is smaller than a suite. You have an object selected. You need its fill, its type, its position. You need the brand red, not a red you sample by eye. You need the logo, the pattern, the font role, dropped on this artboard. You want those three without a panel safari and without a second install.
The sidebar has to stay a sidebar. A floating pile of palettes from 2004 covers the poster. A tab in the right column does not. When the window is short, the panel has to scroll. The actions at the bottom still have to be reachable. Compact height is a real desk, a laptop, a tiled window. The chrome does not get to assume a 4K monitor.
The constraint
One binary. Design, Layout, Pixel, Photo, and Motion are personas, not applications. The right column has to serve the document you have open in that one process. Inspect reads the selection. Palettes apply color onto it. Brand places artwork into it. If those lived in three windows, you would be back to three apps and a clipboard between them.
The document is one .oma. The brand is not required to live inside that JSON. Colors, font roles, and asset files sit beside the work as project files, so a second document in the same folder sees the same bank. The sidebar is the door to both: the selection in this file, and the kit next to it. A cloud library would put an account between those. There is no account in this column. Personal palettes are the colors you want across your work. Project palettes and the brand bank are the folder. The tabs have to make that split obvious, or you will edit a swatch and not know whether you changed this job or every job.
Undo for the artwork stays the document undo. Palette saves and brand-kit saves are their own save state. The tabs have to show that separation in how they behave, not in a lecture. You can place a logo and Ctrl+Z the place. You do not Ctrl+Z the existence of the file in the bank. Different gestures, different tabs, one column.
Photo can double-click a brand asset and land it in Design. The Brand tab is not trapped inside one persona. The selection you inspect might be a vector in Design or type on a layout frame. The column stays put when you switch personas, because the kit did not change when the tool did.
What landed
The right sidebar has three tabs.
Inspect is the selected artwork. Fill, stroke, type, the properties of the thing you clicked. This is the panel you live in while you draw. Select a rectangle and Inspect is that rectangle. Select type and Inspect is that type. The Shortcut HUD at the bottom of the window still tells you the tool. Inspect tells you the object.
Palettes is reusable color. Personal for colors you want across your work. Project for colors stored with the current folder. You build a named palette, filter it, add the current color or the selection's fill and stroke, type a hex, and apply to Fill or Stroke by clicking a swatch. The palette has its own Save. That save is not the artwork save.
Brand is logos, images, fonts, and other assets. Load a bank, create one, add files, filter the tiles, drag one onto the canvas. Typography lives here too: font files copied into the project, roles like Heading and Body, Apply on the selected text or the next text you create. The bank is a folder of real files. The tab is the browser for that folder.
Three tabs, one column. You do not dock and undock a swarm. You do not open a separate brand application to grab a leaf logo and a green. Affinity Publisher is the muscle memory this matches: the resource and the selection in one piece of chrome, and you are not keeping three apps alive to get it. The difference in this studio is that Design, the page, the photo, and the motion are already the same binary. The column does not have to call another process.
The Brand panel scrolls when the window is short, so the actions stay reachable. Long names do not shove Save off the bottom of a laptop screen. You scroll the panel. The canvas stays where it was.
Welcome already knows what a project is. Projects → recent finds directories that contain a brand bank. Edit brand… opens the current project's brand editor. + Project opens that editor from the welcome screen. The right tabs are the same kit once a document is open. You do not learn two banks.
In the hand
Open a document. Look at the right edge. Click Inspect. Select an object. The column shows that object. Change a value you would have changed in any properties panel. Ctrl+Z returns the object. That was a document edit.
Click Palettes. Choose Personal or Project. If the project side is empty, you are about to make the job's colors, or you point the folder button at a directory that already has them. The palette editor that used to be tucked away is this tab. Add a color, click a swatch with Fill armed, and the selection takes it.
Click Brand. If the document knows a project folder, the tiles for that bank are the ones you see. Filter to a logo. Drag it onto the artboard. Ctrl+Z removes the placement. The file in the bank is still in the bank. You placed a copy.
Inspect · Palettes · Brand
Switch to Motion, or to Design again. The tabs are still the tabs. Select a keyframed shape, click Inspect, and you are looking at the selected artwork. The timeline did not steal the column.
On a short window, scroll the Brand tab until Add and the rest of the actions are in reach. You do not undock the panel to find them.
When you are on the welcome screen and the job is the kit itself, Edit brand… or + Project opens the brand editor directly. Then open a document from that project and the Brand tab is the same cupboard.
The edge
The column refuses to be three applications. Inspect, Palettes, and Brand are tabs in the sidebar of the one studio. A palette save refuses to pretend it is an artwork save. A placed logo refuses to move the original file in the bank. You placed a copy. Ctrl+Z undoes the copy on the canvas.
The tabs refuse a login. Personal colors, project colors, and the brand folder open because they are on disk, not because a library account answered.
Click Inspect for the selection, Palettes for the color, Brand for the file. The column is the whole trip.
The thread
Part 89 of 144 in the Omadesign 0.5.8 feature thread.