Vertical story cards: each 9:16 frame must read alone—never split a sentence across a cut, and dodge platform chrome masks
`story-card-split` serves Stories or short-video cover sequences where viewers thumb past in seconds. One idea per card; long headlines cannot straddle vertical seams; prices and CTAs must avoid top status chrome and bottom gesture bars. Rounded device corners crop stickers if you paint edge-to-edge. Grid division is step one; beat sheets should label “card N states one claim only.” If audio is locked before pictures, expect costly re-exports when beats and visuals disagree.
`story-card-split`: lay platform safe-area templates first, then decide how many vertical cards one headline needs
- Pull official or measured chrome for status bars, gesture areas, and corner radii, draw non-export red rails on the master, and break copy into “one sentence per card” in a storyboard table—never split the same sentence across a vertical seam. If you also need square feed art, start a separate canvas instead of stretching 9:16.
- Use the grid to center visual mass: faces and hero products in the upper golden band, CTAs clear of bottom-right system icons. After export, flip through static frames on hardware to ensure stickers survive rounded masks.
- If editors will import into a timeline, encode order in filenames and align with a beat sheet; add a `storyboard.pdf` contact sheet inside the ZIP. Bump the bundle version on redesigns so old and new cards never interleave.
Vertical story FAQ: safe zones, per-card density, color continuity, multi-aspect reuse
Ops wants fewer 9:16 cards because the deck feels long—how do we set hard rules between “fewer frames” and “still readable at arm’s length”?
Judge at real viewing distance: primary copy should meet platform minimums with at most three body lines plus one footnote per card. If merging breaks a read test on-device, reject the merge—use motion or voiceover instead of cramming pixels.
Stickers look fine in preview but live posts hide prices under progress bars—template error or wrong canvas height?
Usually missing safe padding: reserve top/bottom percentage insets and park prices above thumb zones. Test iOS and Android hardware, not only browser simulators, because radii and chrome differ.
Seven cards each graded differently feel disjoint by card three—unify where without killing focal accents?
Commit to one primary palette and only move accent blocks between cards instead of recoloring entire frames. Lock skin tones and white balance across the run, allow gentle gradients but ban adjacent cards with huge temperature swings, and keep grain/sharpening consistent.
Still frames were sliced before music locked and beats no longer line up—re-score or re-cut art?
Licensed tracks often win: reorder frames or insert bridge cards to hit beats. If art is the expensive asset, swap BGM instead. Either way, the storyboard must map frame numbers to beat numbers so editors are not guessing.
We need both Story verticals and 1:1 feed crops—can one stretched slice set serve both?
No—recompose squares with tighter crops and larger type; vertical whitespace in 9:16 becomes dead space in 1:1. Share fonts and color grades, but forbid one-click stretch exports that warp faces and reflow copy oddly.