Making a great template

They all need to have Author, Date, Headline - via the corresponding text elements (author, date, h1 - respectively). This way - search engines know what's what.

Covers

It's ok to add extras (such an article summary) - but avoid making covers too cluttered.  

For a minute - forget everything you know about the fact that you’re creating stories. You are now creating a super stylish album / book cover that needs to stand out on a shelf.

 

PS: People do judge everything by the cover

Covers

Feeling inspired?

Great. Now step back. It's more complicated than that.

(but I'm glad you're inspired;)

  1. Avoid using complicated or custom illustration that can't be reproduced by the average user.
  2. Don't add any key messages as SVG / PNG - make everything editable via text elements
  3. Don't use more than 3-4 fonts in a template
  4. Templates needs to inspire users to build great things - but there will be repetition across kits (same assets presented differently).
  5. Use straight-from-Getty assets as much as possible - without that many edits
  6. Look DEEP into getty - people usually don't go beyond the 1st screen (you can use gettyimages.com and then put in the image ID)
  7. Always use real text and headlines - preferably not controversial (killings, disasters, trump, etc)
  8. Use a name generator for Authors : https://www.name-generator.org.uk/quick/​

 

That's the covers part. Now to the content scenes...

  1. Cover all major content / layout types
  2. Cover everything from long text (no more than 2 paragraphs) to quick headlines (i.e. How so? How's that)
  3. Use one or multiple images / videos.
  4. Use nice clean text to borrow paragraphs- look into examples in the Google Sheets
  5. Don't use any photos from these sites!
  6. But do try to unnderstand the vibe... and why they work :)
  7. Stories need to have their own rhythm to keep users tapping - go from white to black and video to image... you get the point. That's why a good kit has everything.

Photos / Videos placement

Unless you're making a collage of photos / videos - always use FILL as background to avoid having white stripes on the sides

Fonts

Use sexxy, smart, cool fonts.

https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/best-font-combinations-typeface-pairings-guide/

https://www.pagecloud.com/blog/best-google-fonts-pairings

Thin fonts are nice - but bold is usually better. Not a general rule... you get the idea.

Colours

Come up with vibrant or soft combinations and use the consistently throughout your kit. I prefer a nice #f8f8f8 vs. #ffffff for example - look for such soft touches.

https://color.adobe.com/create

Like this.

Testing

Use device previews + browser bar to make sure your template looks great on all devices. Please remove text / lower font sizes if you see issues (i.e. on iphone5)

Consistency

Use your design concepts consistently throughout the kit. If you have more ideas - you can always apply them on the next kit.

Photo licensing

Don't forget to always license photos / videos

Examples

The existing 2 kits are good examples to look at - but I know we can do a lot better

Thank you!