In short
Every Connection in the App is drawn as a card. A Brand supplies artwork for its card; you can do the same for yours from three answers — a name, a photo, and a mark or a color — under Settings → Account → How you appear, or from the icon on the Connections bar. What you see on that screen is the card itself, not a picture of it, and it goes live to everyone you are connected with the moment you save.
The part people get backwards is what the name does. The name you set here is not a private label for your own use; it is how you are listed on every Connection, and it takes effect on all of them at once, whether or not you have shared anything else with that person. A photo, on the other hand, is only ever the background of your card — it is not a profile photo that travels anywhere else.
Three answers, not a builder
The screen asks three things and shows the result above them as you answer. There is no template picker and no separate preview mode: the card at the top of the screen is a real Connection card with your choices painted into it, so what you approve is what is published.
| Answer | What it becomes | Required |
|---|---|---|
| Your name | How you are listed on every Connection | Yes |
| Your photo | The background of your card, cropped as you position it | No — your color shows instead |
| Your mark | The small square on the card; your initial if you pick none | No |
| Your color | Behind and around the photo; the whole card without one | Picked for you until you change it |
The name, and where it goes
The name field is labeled name or nickname, and either is fine. What matters is its reach: it is the name every Connection shows for you from the moment you save, replacing whatever they were seeing before. That is true on Connections where you have shared nothing else and on Connections where you have shared everything — the name set here is a publication, not a disclosure, so it is not governed by the per-Connection sharing controls described in Consent, and what each side can see. Someone who has given you their own nickname for you keeps that.
Until you set one, people see the name your account already carries, and Connections made before this feature existed show the name they captured at the time. Setting a name here is what brings all of them up to date, and changing it later updates them again.
The photo, and the crop
The photo is optional. Choose one and it appears in the card at the top of the screen; drag to reposition, pinch to zoom. The crop window and the card are the same shape, so there is no second framing step and nothing is cut off later that you could see in the preview.
The zoom is deliberately generous in both directions. Zoom in and the card crops into the photo. Zoom out past the point where the photo fills the frame and your color shows around it — a small photo sitting in a field of color is a composition, not a mistake, and the editor does not prevent it. The one rule is that the middle of the photo has to stay inside the frame, so you cannot drag it somewhere you cannot drag it back from.
Very large files are not refused. The App reduces the photo on the way out and the platform reduces it again if it needs to, without changing the framing you chose. Once saved, the original is kept so you can come back and re-crop the same photo rather than starting from a fresh one; Remove takes the photo off the card and leaves your color.
The mark and the color
The mark is the small square in the band at the top-left of the card. You can pick one from a library of thirty platform-drawn glyphs; leave it and your initial is used. A chosen mark is not an upload — it is a reference to a glyph the platform already holds — which is part of why your card can go live with no review.
The color is the ground of the card. Without a photo it is the whole card; with one it fills everything the photo does not reach. Change it after saving a photo and the card is redrawn with the new color behind the same photo when you save again. A person who never opens this screen still has a color: it is derived from their identity, the same rule the App uses for anyone who has not chosen.
Saving, and what the other side sees
Save publishes. There is no review queue for a personal card and the Save button is never disabled. Two kinds of check run as you save. Structural ones refuse — a file that is not an image, a photo the platform cannot read — and tell you which. The legibility check is advice: if your name would be hard to read against the top of the photo, the confirmation says Your card is live and follows it with what to change, and the card is live anyway.
From the other side, your card looks exactly like a Brand’s card — same shape, same band, same bar — on their Connections list and on the detail screen when they open you, where the top of your card becomes the cover. Nothing about your card reveals which parts you chose and which the platform supplied.
What the platform draws, and why you cannot
Three things on the card are never yours to supply: the name in the band, the trust badge, and the bar along the bottom. They are drawn by the platform on top of whatever you send. That is what stops anyone compositing a false trust badge into their own artwork, and it is why the photo is a background and not a poster — you are choosing what sits behind the identity, not designing the identity itself. The same rule applies to Brands, whose cards are reviewed before they go live precisely because their artwork is an upload; see Branding your Connection card if you run a site.
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| A Connection still shows my old name | They gave you a nickname of their own, which wins on their side | Nothing to fix — it is their label for you |
| “Your card is live” followed by a warning about the name | The top of the photo is bright, so the white name reads poorly | Drag the photo so something darker sits across the top, or zoom so your color shows there |
| The photo will not move | You are dragging its middle outside the frame | Move it less far; overhang at the edges is allowed, a photo entirely outside is not |
| My color changed but the card looks the same | The photo covers the whole card at this zoom | Zoom out to let the color show, or remove the photo |
| “Your original photo could not be fetched” | The card was saved from an older version of the App that kept no original | Choose the photo again; from then on re-cropping works |
| Save says the photo could not be prepared | The file could not be read as an image | Choose a JPEG or PNG |