Your templates need to look great to nail that first impression. But there's more to it. A template's ease of customization often decides whether it will be purchased or scrapped. If the template has an unnecessary number of graphic items that overlap with one another, pointless, repetitive text, or just an empty, (even if it's eye-catching) background, it may result with the customer hitting the back button.
In this article, we will give you tips to create high quality templates that are easy to customize.
1) Manage your layers
A design with a large quantity of graphic items can look good, or cluttered, depending on placement. Cluttering can cause your design to look shabby as well as cause layers to overlap. You may not be able to select some items as another layer overlaps it. This can cause confusion and frustration for anyone trying to edit your template.
To avoid this problem, try changing placement of graphic items to create enough space for each. If the clutter persists, keep items that are necessary, and remove others that your design can do without. Here's a few examples of templates with many graphic items that maintain quality and are easy to customize due to good placement.
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Check out this video tutorial to learn more about using layers.
2) Use realistic placeholders
A template should be functional and relevant to your target audience. There are plenty of ways to create realism in your template, which we will discuss here.
Imagery
The images, even clipart you choose to use carry their own weight, and can make all the difference between a good template and a bad template. Make sure to choose images and clipart that work with the theme. Imagery for a dry cleaner's advertisement will be distinctly different from a school admission flyer.
Layout
Every business has it's own aesthetic, and it's crucial to keep that in mind when designing your template. For examples, Lawn care flyers tend to use the color green in some form, real estate flyers use large photos of rooms/houses, and a concert flyer may use bright colors such as red, or darker colors, like brown and black.
Before designing your template, try to learn how others approach that theme. If you're new to designing, this is especially useful so you can discover your art style in the process. Browse the following sites for inspiration:
Meaningful text
You may come across a template with a text block that starts with 'Lipsum lorem...'. This is typical placeholder text that can be used in most templates. Placeholder text that is meaningless often becomes a dealbreaker for many customers, as its use is often equated with laziness. Sometimes it even effects your template's look, especially if multiple instances of identical placeholder text has been used.
Of course there are plenty of circumstances where adding Lipsum lorem text works out.
- It should be a single body of text, but with a header that is relevant to the design.
- Lipsum lorem text should not be the center of attention, and should have a secondary role.
Below are some examples of good placeholder text usage.
Any text that would normally be absent on a functioning flyer/video/banner is a bad example of placeholder text. For example, a perfectly good menu can be ruined by adding 'menu item 1', 'menu item 2' and so on as placeholder text.
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Ideally, your template should contain text similar to a real advertisement typical to that theme. Make up company names, list real menu items and point out benefits for a service as if you're making a real advertisement.
3) Good background use
Backgrounds can be as simple as a single color, or something intricate, such as a pattern, or a photo, which depends on the direction you're willing to take. However, a background should exactly be that, a background.
Uploading a full design as a background will have the text items and graphics in the design, but will prove of no use to your customer. Text and graphic items, that have not been added via the 'text' or 'photo' options in the editor cannot be edited by customers, as they are part of the background.
This is a serious quality issue, so templates found with this problem will be promptly removed by our quality control staff.
Visit the Design Resources section for more insights on creating templates that sell.