In this tutorial, Ross Zeiger demonstrates Descript’s newly added gradient tool, showing how to replace solid backgrounds, shapes, and text with customizable gradients. He walks through accessing the background settings on a scene, selecting the Gradient tab, and choosing from preset color pairs. Zeiger explains the four style modes—vertical, horizontal, center, and corner—and then dives into advanced controls, where users can input exact hex codes, adjust the intensity (position) of each color stop, add additional stops, and delete them. The tutorial continues by applying the same gradient workflow to vector shapes via the Elements panel, using the Fill option, and to text layers by selecting the text object’s color wheel. Throughout, Zeiger provides live examples, switching between preset gradients (e.g., Blue‑Emerald, Yellow‑Orange) and custom configurations, illustrating how each setting affects the visual outcome. The video’s purpose is to empower creators to make their videos more visually engaging by leveraging the gradient tool across all design elements.
Chapters
Look at the difference between this background and this background, this shape on the left and this shape on the right, and this title on top and this title on bottom. The difference is one is solid and one has a gradient applied. Stop using boring solid backgrounds. Descript has a gradient tool and it works in all three of these places. So let me show you how to do it. So first of all, Descript always starts blank scenes with a black solid background. If you want to change it down below the scene, and you have to have the scene selected, by the way, the scene bar up here, you'll see this background button directly below your viewing window. You click on this little black circle next to the background button and you get these default brand colors if you've set them. But what we want to do is click on this color wheel right there. And that pulls up this swatch. And this, up until now, Descript has always had this exact same functionality where you can choose a solid color. For example, I could go to red or I could come down here and change this to say green. I could set a hex code, et cetera. Now, as of a few days ago. There's a tab up here that says Gradient. If you click on that, then you can see a bunch of different presets. So for example, here's one that says, when I hover over it, little black box says Blue to Emerald. I click on that and it changes to an emerald to blue gradient. Or I could click on yellow to orange like that. And so you can choose these presets or you can customize these to be your own. Okay. Down below there is a style section, and this one says vertical where the split between the gradient is vertical. So it starts with yellow on top and orange on bottom. Or if we do horizontal, the split is in the horizontal middle. If I go to center, the yellow is in the middle and the orange is on the outside. If I go to corner, the yellow's in the top left corner and the orange surrounds it. And moving on, I can click on advanced controls and these options, you can actually scroll down in here. It's kind of hard to, hard to work with, but you can scroll down. There is my first color, which is represented with this yellow dot. That is the hex code that corresponds to that exact shade of yellow. So if you have a certain brand color, you could put in the exact hex code for it, and then you could choose where it starts. This is gonna be the intensity of the gradient. So if I change that to 10%, for example, you can see that little dot just slid a little bit to the right. And if you notice here, my yellow became a little bit more prominent and the orange became a little less prominent. If I type that to 50, now the yellow takes up a significant amount of the space. Mm-hmm. And the orange is quite subtle. And you can even add more stops. So I can click on this little button right here and I now have 3 rows in here. I have my yellow, I have an orange in the middle, and I have a— my original orange on the far right. So what I could do is I could click on that little orange dot and I could change this to black, for example. And now it looks like this. And so you can get super granular with how this all looks by adding in more stops, as they're called, changing the colors and changing the intensity and position of those colors. So with this black, I can come over to the right and if I wanna get rid of it, I can click on that little trash can and now I'm back to my original two colors. Okay, everything I just showed you with these color selection options are going to apply to adding gradients to shapes and to text. So next, let's talk about the shapes. So I'm gonna go to my next scene here, and I have two different types of shapes here. To add shapes, you go to Elements and then you click on one of these and that drops it in. But if I already have it in here, as I do, you click on this square, for example, and then this menu pops up over it. Click on the one that says fill. Fill. And then once again, we have this little dropdown. And if you've set presets, then you'll have colors there. Mine are black, white, and red. But for the sake of our gradients, click on the color wheel, click on the tab that says gradient. And as I mentioned, we have the exact same options that we had before. And you can move this box, by the way. I'm just gonna move that outta the way so you can see better. And this time I'm gonna pick Emerald to Forest. So I click on that. Mm-hmm. And there it is on my shape. I'm gonna click corner and now it looks nice like that. Same thing with the star. Doesn't matter what shape you have, whether it's a star, a circle, a line, or anything else. The, the principles are the same. You click on it, fill, color wheel, gradient, and select your color. And I'm gonna select horizontal this time. And now it looks nice and pretty like that. And then for title, when you have text applied, you click on that text layer. Right above it, there's a little white dot. It's hard to see cuz it's white on white by default, but you click on that. Once again, the color wheel gradient, and this time let's do orange to red again. And there we go.
