'Common Design Template Pitfalls & How to Fix Them' in bold typography on a clean, visually balanced background
7 minutes read

Design templates can safeguard you in many ways. They can save you time and money, reduce the likelihood of creative fatigue, and make consistency a key marker across marketing touchpoints. But these benefits aren’t always a given. Merely using design templates doesn’t guarantee they’re beneficial to your business. 

If you source, create, or apply design templates poorly, you may wake up with a slew of negative consequences, ranging from minor readability issues to mistakes that cost you thousands of dollars.

To avoid such undesirable outcomes, you must be conscientious when using design templates, avoiding some often encountered design template mistakes.

Here’s a list of 14 common design template mistakes you should avoid:

  1. Choosing templates with limited licensing coverage for commercial use
  2. Opting for templates with restricted layer adjustments
  3. Ignoring the platform compatibility needed to edit templates
  4. Selecting outdated design templates
  5. Failing to customize templates to fit your brand
  6. Using very popular templates
  7. Overlooking design trends in target markets
  8. Disregarding fundamental design principles
  9. Underestimating the impact of typography choices
  10. Overloading designs with too many elements
  11. Settling for low-quality images
  12. Mismanaging the organization of templates
  13. Skipping essential quality control checks
  14. Depending solely on templates for your designs

Below, we’ll examine each design template mistake individually, discussing why they’re mistakes and how to avoid them. 

Design template mistake #1: Choosing templates with limited licensing coverage for commercial use

Just because a design template is readily available online doesn’t mean it can be used for commercial purposes. You should always double-check design templates’ licenses for good measure.

If you skip the fine print, you may waste time and money on an unusable design template. You may also face legal repercussions and potentially a tarnished reputation. So save yourself the hassle and check the license and usage sections before settling on a design template.

Design template mistake #2: Opting for templates with restricted layer adjustments

Imagine sifting through hundreds of design templates, finally choosing one, and just as you’re about to start customizing it, realize that it comes with mostly locked layers that trap you into a rigid design unfit for your brand and purpose. Frustration might not even begin to cover it.

To avoid this, check the description or reviews of each design template. Look for terms like “fully customizable” or “editable PSD/AI files” to confirm they are freely editable before wrapping up your search. 

Design template mistake #3: Ignoring the platform compatibility needed to edit templates

Choosing the perfect design template is only half the battle—you also need to ensure it’s compatible with the platform you’ll be using to edit it. If your template doesn’t work with your editing software, you could face limitations in customization, loss of design elements, or even the inability to open the file altogether. 

For example, if you find a template in a PSD format and plan to use Canva to edit it, you’re out of luck—Canva doesn’t support that file format. On the other hand, platforms like Creatopy fully support PSD files. You can easily use Creatopy to edit templates in PSD format without any issues. So make sure you can create a two-way flow of information between your design template and editing software before diving in.

Design template mistake #4: Selecting outdated design templates

Outdated design templates can make your audience believe you’re out of touch and unable to keep up with the market. And with 94% of first impressions being design-based, using a template that looks like it’s stuck in 2010 can heavily impact how your brand is perceived.

If you want to play it safe, stick to timeless designs that focus on simplicity, cleanliness, and minimalism. If, however, you’re opting for the trendy approach, make sure you check out what’s popular on design platforms like Behance or Dribbble to get a better idea of what types of designs are currently in style.

Design template mistake #5: Failing to customize templates to fit your brand

If you’re slapping your logo on a pre-made design template and calling it a day without considering elements like color palettes or typography, you’re doing it all wrong. This approach could weaken your brand identity, causing you to miss out on the potential 20% revenue boost that comes with consistent branding.

To avoid this, think of design templates as a starting point, not the final destination. They’re just the foundation to build on, so take the time to make the template your own by cohesively embedding your branded elements.

Design template mistake #6: Using very popular templates

Resorting to popular design templates can feel like a safe choice. At the end of the day, they’re widely used for a reason, right?

Well, that’s precisely the problem—everyone’s using them. And if you start using them as well, your designs will end up as yet another branded iteration of that same design template. Unless you customize them enough, you’ll end up being a drop in the ocean of sameness. In this case, opting for a lesser-known design template can pay off, especially since 91% of consumers, understandably, prefer brands that feel unique

To evaluate the popularity of design templates, consider whether you’ve seen a similar look in your competitors’ assets. Additionally, check out download numbers in design template libraries if possible. These should give you a better idea of how widely used some design templates are.

Design template mistake #7: Overlooking design trends in target markets

Different industries and markets have varying preferences. The design approach that may hit the mark for one market may completely backfire for another.

For example, as healthcare marketing materials focus on trust and professionalism, soft colors and organized layouts dominate. This starkly contrasts those of high fashion brands, which typically thrive on bold, often avant-garde designs. 

Both styles work great in their own lanes, but swapping them around becomes a disaster. Just imagine the impact of applying a high-fashion design approach—bold patterns, neon colors, and edgy typography—to healthcare advertisements

To avoid this, don’t just skim general design trends—dive into industry-specific examples. Platforms like Dribbble and Behance make this easy. They allow you to browse through designs using filters or categories like ‘healthcare’ or ‘fashion’ to get a better idea of what works best for your target market.

Design template mistake #8: Disregarding fundamental design principles

While thinking outside the box can help you keep your brand unique, reinventing the wheel isn’t always a good thing, especially when it comes to design fundamentals. These age-old principles and practices have stood the test of time for good reason. So it’s best to stick to common knowledge regarding visual balance, alignment, and contrast when editing your design template. If you ignore them, you risk driving customers away. After all, 52% of them say they won’t return to a business with poor branding and design.

If you need a a quick refresher on design fundamentals, check out Creatopy’s guide on the elements and principles of design.

Design template mistake #9: Underestimating the impact of typography choices

The typography you use as part of your design template evokes a message that extends past the words themselves. After all, an image speaks a thousand words, even when that image is made up of text.

A study conducted by Wichita State University tested different fonts and found that typography had an effect beyond readability. For instance, monospaced fonts were perceived as dull and unimaginative, serif fonts inspired a sense of maturity and practicality, and script fonts were associated with humor and creativity.

So, when working on your design templates, don’t overlook or underestimate the impact of typography. And if your brand guidelines don’t include typography rules, choose fonts and sizes that reflect your brand’s personality while prioritizing readability and text hierarchy. 

Design template mistake #10: Overloading designs with too many elements

Less is more, and design templates are no exception. Clutter kills clarity and can make your brand look messy while distracting from your core message. In fact, 54% of marketing experts identify clutter as the primary blocker to a positive user experience. So, to avoid cluttering both your designs and your users’ minds, critically examine your design and evaluate whether each element serves a clear purpose. If it doesn’t, remove it.

Design template mistake #11: Settling for low-quality images

It might be tempting to populate your designs with what’s directly accessible. Unfortunately, that tends to be low-quality images—be that in resolution, relevance, or overall visual appeal. And while they may be convenient, they definitely shouldn’t be your go-to. 

Spending extra time or money sourcing or creating high-quality visuals can greatly benefit your business and potentially help you generate more sales. A Cornell study highlighted that products with higher-quality marketing images were more likely to drive sales than those using stock images, primarily due to their impact on trust.

Design template mistake #12: Mismanaging the organization of templates

After you’ve found or created the perfect design template, don’t save it in a random file or an unorganized folder. Chances are, you won’t be able to find it again. And if you do, the time spent hunting for it adds unnecessary frustration and wastes valuable resources.

This disorganization can get expensive, particularly when several people search for the same misplaced template. Research shows that companies spend $120 looking for misfiled documents and $220 recreating lost ones due to the added labor. 

Avoid these costs by establishing a clear and consistent system for organizing your design templates. You can either use cloud-based tools like Google Drive or multi-functional design platforms like Creatopy. Creatopy lets you create custom, on-brand templates and later store and manage them directly in-app. 

Design template mistake #13: Skipping essential quality control checks

You’ve probably been in a situation where you’ve worked on a project for so long that you no longer notice errors. This can happen to even the most experienced designers, who may lose sight of odd phrasings or poor image placements if they’ve been working on a design long enough. 

This is why it is so important to double-check your templates and, ideally, involve others in the process. Otherwise, you risk ending up like Alitalia, which mistakenly listed business-class flights from Toronto to Cyprus for $33 instead of the intended $3,900—an error that cost them almost two million dollars in 2006. 

To pre-emptively avoid errors, create a checklist outlining the design template elements that must be reviewed for quality control, such as copy, image alignment, color consistency, and proper branding. This checklist should be a part of your creative workflow and revisited every time a template is finalized.

Design template mistake #14: Depending solely on templates for your designs

Design templates can be handy tools when inspiration and creativity are lacking—the key emphasis being that they’re tools, not crutches. Over-relying on them can slowly chip away at your creativity and stop you from exercising your creative muscle, which may lead to you depending on design templates to get work done. 

Therefore, it’s best to use design templates as a starting point and then double down on customization to create something unique and memorable. Similarly, challenge yourself to think outside the box on most days. Dedicate time to creating designs without the help of templates to engage your creative wits and experiment with new styles and techniques.

Conclusion

Design templates are a great way to speed up the production of creative assets while maintaining brand consistency. However, their effectiveness entirely hinges on how you use them. By avoiding the 14 mistakes discussed above, you can reap their benefits without experiencing any cons. Using them should therefore be a careful balancing act between standardization and creativity. That’s where the sweet spot comes in.

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

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