Creating designs

Write a brief, compare up to three drafts, keep the ones you like, and ask for changes afterwards: a walkthrough of Template Studio.

Open Designs in the admin, go to the folder the new designs should land in, click Create New Design and choose Template Studio. The panel opens beside your designs. This link opens it straight away, with new designs going to your root folder.

1. Write the brief

Pick how to start:

Describe it

Say what you need in your own words: the product, its size if you know it, the occasion, and the wording. “A 5 × 7 invitation for a bakery opening on 12 November, warm and rustic, with a wheat motif.” Dates, names and wording become sample text your customers replace.

Product link

Paste the address of a product page in your store and click Read page. Template Studio reads the product, its size and its purpose, then designs for it. Add anything else in the optional note.

Pick a product

Choose a product and size, then optionally an occasion or theme, colours, and one or more styles (bold, playful, elegant, minimal, retro, rustic, festive).

Choose how many variations you want, from one to three. Each one is a clearly different direction: its own layout, palette, fonts and graphics. Then click Create.

Name the product and the size when you can, and say who it is for. “A roll-up banner for a software company at a trade show” gives a sharper result than “a banner”.

2. Compare the drafts

Each variation appears as a card while it is drafted, which takes about a minute. A finished card shows the draft (click it to turn the pages of a two-sided or folded product), the direction’s name, palette and a short summary.

For each draft you can:

• View it larger.
• Try again. With the note box empty you get a fresh take on the same direction. With a note (“bigger date, add the logo”) it redraws this draft with your change and keeps the rest.
• Keep this. See the next step.

Drafts are free, so try again as often as you like.

Good to know

If you asked for something Template Studio cannot do as asked, it tells you, in a Good to know note at the top of the panel or on the draft. For example: “Söhne is not available, so the Modern sans pairing (Outfit) is used, the closest match.” or “Foil is not available as a print finish, so the logo is printed in gold ink.”

3. Keep the ones you like

Click Keep this. Anything in the note box is applied while it is finished. The finishing pass takes one to two minutes: it sets up every customer field and lock, tidies spacing and alignment, and saves the design into the folder you opened the panel from.

Under the button you can see what keeping costs: free while your store has free designs left, then $0.25. See Pricing.

4. After keeping

A kept design is an ordinary Print.App design. From its card you can:

• Open in editor to adjust anything yourself.
• View it, or Download PDF to check the print file.
• Request a change. Describe it (“make the date bigger and the title gold”) and click Apply change. The saved design is updated in place in about a minute. Each kept design includes three changes; after that, edit it yourself in the editor.

When it is ready, assign it to a product like any other design (see Platform features for where your platform does this).

Working in the background

Minimise the panel and keep working: a small Template Studio pill at the bottom right shows the progress and brings the panel back. When you have kept what you need, click Done. Start new begins another brief; any drafts you have not kept are cleared from the panel.