Imagine a novice baker making cookies with a pre-made mix. The instructions offer a few possible ingredient swaps, like margarine for butter.
Our baker, however, decide to go above and beyond — replacing eggs with yogurt, substituting some of the cookie mix with corn flour, and changing the suggested baking times and temperatures.
It's no surprise the cookies doesn’t turn out as promised.
Editable templates are alluring because they promise complete control over the editing process, with infinite possibilities for personalization. Just like the cookies, however, bad things, ugly things can happen when you over-customize beyond what is suggested. A touch of personalization can enhance flavor, but too much can ruin it.
Inconsistency
Templates are typically designed with specific look-and-feels in mind. Ones from Clementine Designs have carefully selected palettes, images, and fonts are used to convey certain styles or evoke certain emotions. When it is modified without a clear understanding of these objectives, there's a risk of diluting the overall aesthetics. The design may end up looking piecemeal — like a Frankenstein template.
Understand your branding
It's essential to have a clear understanding of your brand identity when making modifications. Start with a design that is already as close as possible to what you're looking for to reduce the amount of personalization needed. If your branding is fun and playful, find a template the reflects that right out of the box.
Visual Clutter
You can incorporate five of your favorite fonts, squeeze in an extra image, or simultaneously bold, italicize, and underline certain text — but do you need to?
Cluttering your content with unnecessary embellishments can decrease legibility, overwhelm readers, and distract them from the overall message.
Less is often more — general design guidelines
For most marketing collateral, incorporating two to three fonts is enough. If you are using one of our templates, you can do a one-to-one swap. But beware: character sizes vary widely across different typefaces, which can cause serious shifts to your layout.
- Your main font for your text should be clean and legible. Avoid anything that’s hard to read in paragraph text, like scripts.
- Select a contrasting font for your headers, one that’s visually different from your main text (ex: serifs vs sans serifs).
- If necessary, pick a third font for special text, like call-outs, quotes, or captions.
White space isn't wasted space. It's necessary for guiding reader focus, improving legibility, organizing content, and bringing attention to important information. Aim to incorporate this important design element (yes, empty space is design) into 30-50% of your layout. While this isn't a hard rule, this guideline forces you to actively incorporate it and remove unnecessary content. Everyone appreciates it when you get to the point, right?
Use text formatting and colors sparingly. When everything screams "I'm important," nothing is.
Loss of Efficiency
The whole point of using editable templates is to streamline the design process and save time. When hours are spent tinkering with every detail, it defeats the purpose entirely. In the end, you're no better off than if you had started from scratch.
If a particular customization doesn't serve a goal, leave it out. While a main benefit of using templates is personalization — but just because you can customize something (or everything), does not mean you should.