Creating a Title Template

If you’re just getting started with Edelweiss Designer, one of the first and most important steps will be to create the Templates you’ll later use for your Documents. A template serves as the preset format your selected titles will be run through when you create a Document.

Building a Template:

On the main Templates page, you’ll first set a Working Title (the “example” title that will display as you build your template).

In the resulting window, search for a title and click to select it.

Note that a working title can be pinned for easy access.

Now that you’ve set your Working Title, select either Create New

…or choose from the list of available Common Templates. Learn more about using Common Templates here.

If building your own template, fill out the fields shown below, which will display after you’ve selected Create New.

 

  • Name: Name your template!
  • Size: Letter or A4
  • Orientation: Portrait or Landscape
  • Spread: Single Page or Multiple Page Spread
  • Titles Across: How many titles should display horizontally on each page of the template?
  • Titles Down: How many titles should display vertically on each page of the template?
  • Folder: Place your template in an existing folder or create a new one

 

Once these are complete, click Save.

Your newly-created template will drop into the folder in which you’ve placed it — locate it & click on either the name of the template or the Edit/Manage icon to begin working on it.

Your initial view of a template will look something like this. Here, you can change the name of the template, create a copy of it, delete it, change the Working Title, and most importantly, begin styling the page and adding design blocks and content blocks, which we’ll explore in detail below.

To begin designing your template, start by clicking Add Empty Design Block (or Add Saved Snippet — learn more here) to insert your first Design Block.

You’ll then be prompted to add your first Content Block and can add elements from the Available Elements window.

Begin selecting elements that you’d like to include in the Design Block here — Design Blocks can be made up of more than one Content Block. For example, Title, Subtitle, and Author may all be contained in one Design Block.

Note that when adding Design Blocks, you’ll have the ability to either position and size the block(s) before or after adding content blocks and may do so by dragging and dropping or by setting the position and size manually.

In the same Design Block, content can also be added across. 

To add a new Design Block (a completely new ‘container’ in your template), select Back to Template Home and click Add Empty.

In a new Design Block, we’ll add the jacket cover and drag and drop to reposition and resize it. You may need to reposition other content in your template and can do that at any time. In an additional Design Block, we’ll include the descriptive summary. Watch the process below.

As you work, don’t forget to Save. Also note the Preview button, which will temporarily take you out of Edit mode and display a preview of your finished product.

With a bit of content to work with, it’s time to add Styling.

Styling a Template:

There are a few methods of styling a template. The first is to apply a style to the entire page:

The second is to click into a Design Block and apply a style to just that area.

*Note that it is possible to select multiple styles from the Available Styles window, as shown above. Simply continue selecting the styles you’d like to apply and they will populate in the Styles in Use area.

Lastly, it is also possible to apply styles to individual content blocks, for example, just the title.

Continue editing and styling as needed.

Tips:

1. There are two ways to select and begin working on a Design Block — either select from the Design Blocks section (right) or directly from the Edit/Preview window (left).

2. To remove a style from a Design Block or an individual Content Block, locate the block and click, for example, (1 style) or (2 styles) and select the ‘x’ to remove that style.

To remove a style from an entire template, make sure you’re viewing the template overview window. In the Template Styles section, select the ‘x’ associated with the style you’d like to remove.

Find more tips on creating templates here.