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6 minutes read

Design templates offer a wealth of benefits: They reduce the time it takes to create and publish creative assets, drive consistent branding throughout your visuals, and help you scale your creative output to maintain a reliable, high-quality level of production across projects.

However, not all branded templates are created equal. If you make mistakes during template creation, you risk not only forgoing the benefits of having them but also downright harming your business.

So, when creating branded design templates—whether for advertisements or social media posts—we suggest following a set of professional design template best practices.

These seven design template best practices include:

  1. Work with 100% zoom settings
  2. Differentiate between pixel density and output size
  3. Capture a relevant design template thumbnail
  4. Regularly update templates
  5. Keep non-designers in mind
  6. Leverage creative automation
  7. Adapt design templates for different screen settings

1. Work with 100% zoom settings

The first design template best practice we’ll cover is to always create custom templates at 100% zoom settings. As you build out the foundation of your template, this setting allows you to visualize your template in a way that represents the final result, reflecting the actual size and proportions of all elements. Not only does this provide a more precise preview of the final design, but it also helps you spot issues early on, such as readability struggles. 

As Kate Ross, marketing specialist at Irresistible Me, remarks,

Designing at 100% zoom helps you see exactly what your audience will see. It’s like looking at your content through their eyes—it ensures the spacing, text size, and overall layout feel just right. Plus, it helps avoid surprises when the design goes live and looks different than you expected.

Only when you’ve got your design template’s base layout polished do we recommend playing around with zoom adjustments, which you can use to make detailed refinements or preview how design templates look on various platforms.

2. Differentiate between pixel density and output size

When working on design templates, you must not only understand the difference between pixel density and output size but also how they work together. 

Pixel density is measured in pixels per inch (PPI) and determines how sharp an image appears across devices. The higher the pixel density, the more pixels are packed into a smaller picture to create a crisp look. 

Output size refers to the physical dimensions of a design, either displayed or printed. It’s the actual size of the asset, measured in inches, centimeters, or any other unit of length. For example, a design output could be six inches by four inches for a printed flyer template or 1920×1080 pixels for digital display assets.

To achieve the best quality for your design templates, match pixel density with the intended output size. Otherwise, you may end up with a blurry design template, the result being akin to stretching a low-resolution image to fit a billboard. 

As a baseline, opt for a resolution of 300 PPI for printed materials and 72 PPI for digital design templates. However, be flexible regarding the latter, which may need adjustment for higher-resolution screens.

Understanding pixel density is essential for designing for specific platforms so you know exactly how to communicate measurements—for example, communicating measurements for Android is completely different than for the web or iOS.

— Tim Sullivan, Systems Designer at Meta

3. Capture a relevant design template thumbnail

Despite thumbnails typically being an afterthought in the context of design templates, they’re more important than you may think. This is especially true if you plan on publishing your templates in a comprehensive library.

The thumbnail serves as a quick preview of the design template’s style and purpose, offering a glimpse into features such as typography, imagery, and layout. So if the thumbnail isn’t accurate or clear enough, it may deter users from using it, perhaps mistaking its purpose or finding it unsuitable for their project, even if it may be the right fit.

As Josh Loveridge, founder of Loveridge Digital, puts it,

Thumbnails have the potential to give either a good or bad first impression during that first 5 seconds on viewing.

If your design platform allows you to edit the design template manually, take advantage of this feature. Spend some extra time making your design template’s thumbnail pop without cluttering it to ensure the right users can engage with it and use it promptly.

4. Regularly update templates

Goodfirms found that 38.5% of designers believe outdated designs cause visitors to leave a website. So, you can only imagine what users would think of a company website riddled with outdated designs. 

This is why you shouldn’t think of design templates as one-off projects that, once completed, don’t need revisiting. Instead, they demand ongoing updates to stay usable due to changes in design trends, digital platform requirements, and evolving brand guidelines.

Therefore, you should treat templates as living assets that must adapt over time—even more so if you’re operating in fast-moving industries or competitive markets, where norms and expectations can change quickly. Neglecting these updates can leave you with an entire library of outdated, unappealing, and unusable templates that no longer serve the needs of your company or audience. 

One of the first things I tell people when they want to start a template shop…keep up to date, because if you miss one of these [updates], your whole shop will be redundant in a matter of seconds.

— Paige Brunton, website designer

To keep templates effective, schedule periodic reviews into your design template creative workflow. Whether quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, critically assessing design templates to ensure they’re compatible with existing design trends, adherent to platform specifications, and in alignment with your brand is what keeps them fresh. 

5. Keep non-designers in mind

Companies struggle to bridge the gap between the growing demand for visuals and dwindling marketing resources. Yet, one method that’s proved to be particularly effective is getting non-designers involved with the design process. This is a sure-fire way to make the most of your existing resources.

Amy Strickland, Principal of Cella’s Marketing Operations Consulting Practice, says,

In today’s marketing landscape, versatility, agility, and speed are paramount. Initiatives require input, execution, and buy-in from countless roles across the organization—from creative to analytics, operations to IT, and beyond. Rigid boundaries between these roles and a lack of shared context stifle innovation and create friction.

Therefore, designers should keep in mind who their end users are—both in terms of who’ll end up editing these and the final audience who’ll view the edited templates. 

If non-designers are going to be involved, designers should take note of their potential lack of design experience and knowledge. They should aim to make these templates easy to use while incorporating limits or safeguards to protect the brand’s identity.

Achieving this means locking down branded elements like logos, fonts, and colors while leaving editable placeholder CTAs or product images so they can be easily swapped.

6. Leverage creative automation tools

Creative automation tools act as an end-to-end solution for all things design templates. But their capabilities span beyond that. Think of them as your one-stop shop for speeding up and scaling asset creation while simultaneously reducing repetitive tasks and driving personalization in line with brand guidelines. 

When it comes to tools for design templates, they can help you:

  • Set up Brand Kits with brand components such as logo, typography, media assets, and your brand’s tone of voice
  • Create design templates powered by your Brand Kits
  • Automate the creation of design template variations suited for different platforms
  • Lock layers and brand elements in your templates
  • Allow non-designers to edit design templates in a simplified editor within the pre-defined editing boundaries set by designers
  • Drive collaboration between designers and non-designers, including leaving comments and requesting feedback

“The ability to automate parts of the design process allows us to save time while maintaining creative control,” says Elad Maoz, CMO of Gifted.co. “For example, we can quickly create personalized designs for customers using templates, adjusting fonts, colors, or images automatically based on their preferences. This lets us scale without losing the personal touch.”

7. Adapt design templates for different screen settings

Device users are looking to make their digital experience their own, which means they tend to fiddle with different device display settings, such as light and dark mode. With this in mind, you should make sure design templates are legible and visually appealing despite users’ settings. This may involve creating separate templates for the different modes or ensuring your template adapts well to all settings.

To do so, focus on creating a stark enough contrast between backgrounds suitable for both modes, with pastel backgrounds coupled with dark text for light mode and black or gray backdrops against light text for dark mode. 

Users interact with content across countless devices and settings, and a template that performs beautifully in light mode but fails in dark mode risks alienating a portion of your audience.

— Dawson Whitfield, CEO and co-founder of Looka

You should also take note of visual elements, using shapes and patterns to differentiate between sections in your design template. These can help you clarify sections within your design templates, even if color perception is impacted. 

Lastly, see how your design looks when people engage with its interactive elements, focusing on elements such as buttons or links and their respective shadows or hover effects. To make these more overt across device settings, consider adding subtle animations

Once you’re done, remember to test your templates using different device settings to ensure they look as you intend them to.

Ready, set, design

Design trends come and go, and platform specifications can change overnight. Still, using the seven template best practices above, you ensure extra care and attention toward your design templates in terms of both usability and looks, allowing you to ride the waves of change with design templates that stand the test of time. 

Derya Yildirim
B2B SaaS writer with 5+ years of experience crafting user-driven, actionable, and fluff-free content.

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