As a designer, you are expected to create unique and customizable templates for customers that meet our design guidelines. All designs flagged by the system as highly similar to an existing template will get added to the ‘Rejected Templates’ section.
Here’s what you need to know about the kinds of templates that end up in the ‘Rejected Templates’ section, why they get added to that section, and what you can do to avoid or fix this issue.
What is the ‘Rejected Templates’ section?
The ‘Rejected Templates’ section appears in your My Stuff.
Templates that are highly similar to an existing template will be flagged by the system, temporarily unpublished, and moved to this page.
To avoid such an event from happening, you need to create high-quality, high-effort designs that meet our quality standards, are useful for customers, and are unique and original.
This means creating original designs each time, instead of simply creating copies of your existing designs.
However, if you want to add variations to your existing designs, you need to make sure these are useful variations for the user.
How can you add useful variations to your design?
If you want to create variations of your design, you need to make sure they are distinct from your original template and are genuinely useful for the user.
There are a few ways you can add useful variations to your design.
- If you want to create the same design in different color palettes, make sure each variation is sufficiently different. You can achieve this by tweaking the imagery, elements and text of your design along with the color palette.
- If you want to offer your design for different platforms, only re-size it for canvas sizes whose aspect ratios are very different from the original template. An example of this is re-sizing an Instagram Post size template to a Flyer size template, and adjusting your design accordingly.
Please note that even useful variations, i.e. those outlined above, will not be displayed in the grid of templates in the gallery. They will instead be displayed in the preview dialog of the original template. The system will automatically select your highest-ranking template as the original template to be displayed in the gallery.
Here’s an example of good variations that will be displayed within the preview dialog.
What can you do if your template is unpublished and moved to ‘Rejected Templates’?
Suppose you have failed to create an original design or useful variation, and your design ends up in the ‘Rejected Templates’ section in your My Stuff.
There are two ways to get your designs removed from the ‘Rejected Templates’ section.
- The recommended method is to delete these designs manually, or wait for the system to automatically delete these after set intervals. (The system will automatically detect and delete all flagged templates according to the deadlines mentioned on the page.)
- You can edit the design to make it sufficiently distinct from the original template and ensure it’s a useful variation. The criteria for this is already mentioned above. Once you’ve made these changes, you can re-submit your design for evaluation.
Please note that designs in ‘Rejected Templates’ that are neither fixed nor deleted by the given deadline (mentioned on the page) will be automatically deleted by the system.
How will this process help me?
Unpublishing highly similar copies and moving them to the Rejected Templates page is good for designers for a number of reasons.
- It helps your original designs get more views.
- It will give designers a fair ground to compete on and will encourage everyone to create original, unique designs.
- It will make it easier for the user to pick out a variation of a template they like, within the preview dialog box, due to less clutter.
- This will ensure that users have access to unique, high-quality templates at all times.
If you follow our design guidelines, and make sure you create unique and customizable designs, you will not have to face any issues like the ones highlighted in this article. However, even if you do, you can fix the problem by following the procedure provided.
Moving forward, all new templates submitted will be first evaluated by the system and then published in the gallery. A new template may appear in the gallery within 24 hours.
It is also important to note that this will essentially be a cleanup of the Preview Dialog and no changes will be made to the grid of thumbnails in the gallery itself.
Looking for more tips to improve your templates? See our guide on improving your designs.