A template is the single most valuable lever for designers and marketers alike. When built well, this one-time investment helps to create an infinite amount of relevant, unique creatives in a matter of minutes. For marketeers working with templates is a great solution to focus on what is important for them: deliver the correct message and forget about creating ads from scratch every time. Designers, on the other hand, will only work once on it making sure the layout works flawless.
This article gathers the most valuable features in Bannerwise that will bring your templates to the next level saving hours of manual work.
General settings
Start with rectangular shapes first
Display ads come in three shapes, rectangles, skyscrapers and leaderboards. You are likely to have multiple of each of these shapes in your set, and we recommend to start with the rectangular ones (300x250, 336x280). This will make it easier for you to translate your concept into skyscraper and leaderboard sizes.
Give names to your elements
When building the first size of your template, give your elements names that will help you and your team recognize the elements when the time to replace them comes. You can do this by double-clicking the specific layer on the stage.
Images
To build templates, use the most “regular” ratio image. Try to not build templates with images that are too square or too rectangle so the chances that all images fit properly is higher. Use images that have dimensions similar to 1000x600, not many display ads are wider than 1000 pixels or higher than 600 pixels. That will avoid the need of cutting and cropping images to make them compatible with the different shapes of display ads.
Placeholders need to be more or less the same size as the canvas. The bigger the placeholder, the more difficult it can be to replace an image.
Scale to fit
Not everyone has the luxury of working with an image library that only contains images with the same dimensions. Building one takes too much time. That’s why you may want to use the scale to fit features for images, so that they always fit perfectly!
Under "Image" tab in the property panel, select "Scale to fit" as image scaling mode:
Text elements
To ensure maximum flexibility when using your template, it helps to use the longest pieces of copy when drafting your template. If you’re using your template for translations, build your templates using the languages that use most words like French or German. That will help you set the correct maximum and minimum font size.
Scale to fit
In some cases, you still may not be completely satisfied with the way your copy fits the text placeholders of your template. To avoid having to adjust each ad size individually, use the "scale to fit" feature to have your copy automatically fit all ad sizes.
You can find this feature under "Text" tab in the property panel on the right. To make sure all copies will fit within the placeholder, write the shortest copy and decide the maximum font size for text elements and write the longest text to set the minimum font size.
Smart text alignment
A good template can fit a variety of copy. To make all variations look equally great, you will not only need to create large enough placeholders for your copy, but also be smart about aligning your text.
If you’re working with an H1 and H2, we recommend to align the H1 center bottom and the H2 center top.
If the H1 and H2 are next to each other, align the H1 middle right and the H2 middle left. This ensures one-size-fits-all text placeholders.
Don’t overlap text elements! Make sure placeholders don’t overlap each other and prevent a text from overlapping another one.
CTA
As well as for text elements, using “autosizing” feature for CTA will make ensure different copies always fit in the CTA as this one will automatically scale and adapt. To set this up properly, use the longest text to add the maximum width and use the shortest text for the minimum width.
Under "Arrange" tab on the property panel on the right, enable "Auto-sizing" and add the maximum and minimum width.
Using padding will let you decide how much space you want between the CTA border and the text.
You can find this settings under "Style" tab on the property panel on the right. Play around and customize your CTA.
That's it! Using the settings mentioned in this article will improve the use of templates with Bannerwise.
We hope the information in this article was useful to achieve your goal. If there is anything else we can help you with and you couldn't find it in our help center, don't hesitate to contact us by chat.