Design Templates The Good The Bad And The Practical
5 minutes read

The demand for visual content is rising. You now need more marketing, sales, and advertising material to stay relevant than ever before. And the increasing design requirements don’t make it easy either. Companies are now expected to churn out content at an unprecedented speed while simultaneously personalizing it and maintaining brand consistency, adding yet another layer of complexity to design workflows.

But meeting the demand for visual assets doesn’t have to mean scaling your design team’s headcount—design templates might just be the missing piece helping you bridge the gap.

Yet, we recognize that design templates have a bad rap, and you may be on the fence about using them. To highlight the good and bad of design templates, we’ll give you a non-biased look into them, outlining the pros and cons of using templates for design thinking to help you determine if they’re a fit for your creative projects. 

Pros of using design templates

To begin our discussion on the pros and cons of templates, we’ll highlight the key advantages of using design templates, which includes:

  • Speeding up creation
  • Lowering design costs
  • Keeping designs consistent
  • Scaling your creative output
  • Delivering high-quality designs every time
  • Getting reliable design outcomes
  • Easing the burden of creative decisions

Speeding up creation

If you find yourself wondering, “What is one benefit of using a template?” we can confidently claim speed to be one, no hesitation. 

Think of design templates as the outlines in a coloring book that give structure to your creativity. Instead of having to rack your brain for ideas for your design’s overall creative direction, you can focus solely on the content—the message you’re trying to send to your audience. Therefore, design templates save you the time you might’ve otherwise spent trying to develop and trial out different layouts to your design. 

Lowering design costs

Without design templates, you must start from a blank canvas, typically involving design mock-ups, feedback cycles, and ongoing iterations until you get it right. To do this, you may need to hire freelance designers or ensure in-house ones can dedicate significant time to contribute to the design process—and both options entail costs. After all, time is money. 

Using design templates, however, you can cut the time spent on net new designs, shifting the focus away from creating and toward editing, which involves less time and, therefore, fewer costs.

Keeping designs consistent

You shouldn’t think of design templates as a one-and-done approach to individual projects. Some can be reused consistently. For example, you can repeatedly use a specific design template if you’re batch-creating designs with largely the same overarching elements but minor individual tweaks, such as ad campaigns for social media. In this case, each ad in the ad set might be sized differently to suit the channel or platform you’re creating it for. However, the colors and layout would remain consistent. Not only would this save you a ton of time, but it’d also ensure you’re delivering a consistent, unified message across all touchpoints.

Scaling your creative output

Design templates can lower the barriers to entry for design work, allowing both designers and non-designers to contribute to visual assets. 

If you’re using off-the-shelf design templates, most of the design groundwork is already covered. Designers can further edit these templates to ensure they’re brand-consistent, using branded logos, color palettes, and visuals. Once done, they can pass the edited templates to non-designers, who can tweak the ad copy or images to fit their narrative. Similarly, designers can create custom, branded design templates from the jump and later distribute these to non-designers for editing. 

Whether you use off-the-shelf or bespoke templates, design templates can help you significantly ramp up production without having to hire more designers to sustain production.

Delivering high-quality designs every time

Design templates are typically created by designers with extensive knowledge and experience of color theory, visual design principles, and the latest design trends. Some even specialize in creating templates for particular channels or industries, meaning their templates are ready-made with specific audiences in mind. Therefore, templates have a foundation of professionalism, so your designs likely meet the qualitative standards for your chosen purpose. The only thing you need to do is tweak it to fit your unique use case. 

Getting reliable design outcomes

Templates remove the uncertainty of starting something from scratch, meaning you don’t have to sit and ponder on the different layout possibilities. Design templates already have these covered. Your main task is to sift through template libraries to find something you like the look of, as each template gives you a preview of your final design from the onset.

Easing the burden of creative decisions

If you’re designing something new, you may question every move, such as spacing, formatting, or coloring. And with each design decision carrying so much weight, creative fatigue can set in quickly.

Using design templates can take a huge mental load off your shoulders. They cut through all the noise of figuring out the perfect layout or placements for elements, providing you with a structure that’s already been vetted by professional designers. Instead of being stuck in a loop of second-guessing, you can trust that the foundational choices—visual hierarchy, color selection, balance, typography—are already solid, which can be a huge relief if you have many designs to create.

Cons of using design templates

Despite all of their benefits, design templates have their drawbacks, including:

  • Failing to stand out
  • Struggling with limited customization options 
  • Relying on outdated visuals
  • Stifling creativity

Failing to stand out

Generic design templates, by default, aren’t made with your brand in mind. They’re mass-produced, often opting for a more basic look that many companies can work with. So, if you’re not spending time customizing these to reflect your brand, your visual assets may blend into the crowd rather than stand out. 

You must also consider that you’re not the only one with access to these templates. The same design template could also be used by other businesses—even competitors—which can blur the lines between you and them, leading to a diluted visual identity.

Struggling with limited customization options

Customization is key to making design templates represent your brand—but not all templates allow minute refinements. Some templates come with locked-in layouts, so you’ll feel stifled when adjusting specific components, be they resizing elements, reformatting them for different platforms, or shifting the design around. As a result, design templates can become less of a launchpad for creativity and more of a constraint. Instead of bringing your vision to life to fit your brand, you’re forced to adjust your ideas to fit what the template allows. 

Relying on outdated visuals

Not all template libraries are up to date with recent design trends. Some are stuck with templates that scream, “I was designed 10 years ago.” Even design templates that seemed modern last year may seem a little dated now. So, if you’re not careful in your template choice, you may end up with visual assets that feel less current, which may deter your audience from engaging. 

Stifling creativity

Design templates are comfortable. They can help you get designs up and running in no time, becoming a crutch for busy times. But their ease can impact you negatively—especially if you become increasingly reliant on them. They may box you in and discourage you from thinking outside the box, slowly chipping away at your creativity, which can limit your growth as a designer or content creator.

Make the most of design templates

Now that you know the pros and cons of design templates, you can make a more informed decision. 

If you decide to use design templates, the trick to reaping all the benefits of using design templates without experiencing any major disadvantages is making customizability a priority—especially if you’re using off-the-shelf design templates. Use your brand as a guiding light, focusing on baking in branded color palettes, fonts, and imagery to make the template truly represent your brand.

Better yet, if your resources allow it, create your own brand-specific reusable design templates. Custom design templates keep all your creative assets unique, fresh, and on-brand while encouraging you to put your creative thinking cap to good use.

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

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