As marketing budgets have decreased, many marketing managers are faced with the dilemma of trying to get more for less. And, even just the same for less. One way to make your budget work is by creating templates for a set of collateral pieces. I have been working with a handful of clients to create custom templates for invites and electronic brochures.  Best of all, the template concept works across platforms – from digital to print alike.

Depending on the template modules, you can reduce design hours by as much as 90% per version.

The first step to creating a template is determining what facets of the piece are static. What will be uniform across each version? For invites, some items to consider that might not change are: agenda, title, location and the description. Once you have decided what will be static, you can proceed with creating a design that will require minimum design time to customize each version.

The key concept for templates is that there are little, if any, exceptions to the rules. Try to make each version fit into the predetermined parameters. Once you make an exception for one version, you’ll find yourself bending the rules more and more; adjusting things here and there.

For larger documents and brochures, you’ll need to go through the same process. Decide what can stay the same. Will the table of contents and/or page structure be the same? Can you re-use some pages across multiple versions?

While in an ideal world, we have time and all the information needed for a project from the get-go, this is often not the case. It does take some forward thinking to design a template program, but this up-front effort is well worth it in the long run. Not only will you be able to leverage the template to create multiple versions, saving time and cost, but you will build a stronger brand identity by creating assets that have a uniform look and feel.