Design maker guide

Quick start

1. Pick a template. Use the search box or the Social media, Print and Video filters, or start from a blank canvas in any size.
2. Tap anything to change it. Double-tap text to type over it, or double-tap a photo frame to add your own picture.
3. Restyle in one tap. With nothing selected, choose a colour palette and a font pairing. The whole design updates and the layout stays tidy.
4. Download a PNG or JPG for sharing, or a PDF for printing.

Templates and sizes

Templates cover Instagram posts, portrait posts, carousels and Stories, Facebook and LinkedIn images, LinkedIn banners, Pinterest pins, podcast covers, YouTube thumbnails, A4 and A5 posters and flyers, 5×7 inch cards, business cards, name badges, place cards, event tickets, certificates and menus. Seasonal templates sit at the front.

Templates and tips by type: Instagram post maker · Instagram Story maker · Animated post and video maker · YouTube thumbnail maker · Facebook and LinkedIn post maker · Podcast cover art maker · Poster maker · Flyer maker · Invitation maker · Christmas card maker · Business card maker · Certificate maker · Event ticket maker · Menu maker.

Choose Blank canvas for an empty page in any of those sizes, or type your own size in pixels (up to 4000).

Already made a post and need a Story too? With nothing selected, use Resize design. Everything is rearranged to fit the new shape. Check the result and nudge anything that moved, or use undo to go back.

Moving, sizing and selecting

• Move anything by dragging it. Pink guides show when it lines up with the page centre, the page edges or other items.
• Resize with the round handles. The corner handle keeps the shape in proportion; on text it changes the size of the lettering.
• Rotate with the handle above the selection. It clicks into place at 45°; hold Shift to step by 15°.
• Select several by dragging a box around them, or Shift-click. You can then move them together, line them up, space them evenly, or recolour them all at once.
• Group items you want to keep together (Ctrl+G). Clicking one item then selects the whole group; Alt-click picks a single item inside it.
• Lock anything you don't want to move by accident, such as a background photo.
• Layers lists everything on the page, top first. Use it to pick something hidden under something else, or to hide an item.
• Copy style and Paste style copy colours, lettering, effects or photo filters from one item to others.

Zoom with the buttons at the bottom right, Ctrl and the scroll wheel, or the + and − keys. When zoomed in, drag an empty part of the page to move around.

Bulk create from a list

Make a whole set from one design: name badges, place cards, certificates, tickets or personalised invitations. Each row of your list becomes a page.

1. Add fields. In any text (or QR code), put a field name in curly brackets, such as {Name}, {Table} or {Date}. The Name badges and Place cards templates already have them.
2. Choose Bulk create from a list (with nothing selected, under Pages).
3. Paste your list. Copy the rows straight from a spreadsheet, with the column names in the first row. With a single field, just put one value on each line.
4. Create pages. The preview shows how many pages you'll get and what goes in the first one. Undo turns them back into the template.

Up to 200 rows at a time. Download them as a multi-page PDF, a ZIP of pictures, or a print sheet.

Text

Select text to change the words, font, size, alignment and colour. A few things worth knowing:

• Heading and Body fonts follow the font pairing you choose for the whole design. Pick a specific font instead if you want one that doesn't change.
• Shrink to fit keeps text inside its box: longer words make the lettering smaller rather than spilling over. Turn it off to set an exact size.
• Effects: Shadow, Lift, Glow, Neon and Echo, each with a strength slider.
• Curve bends a line of text into an arch (above zero) or a smile (below zero).
• Highlight puts a coloured band behind each line, and Outline draws a border around the letters, which helps on busy photos.
• Box behind text puts one coloured panel behind the whole block, with sliders for padding and rounding. It's a quick way to make a label, a badge or a caption that reads clearly on a photo.
• Text can also use a gradient between two colours.

Your own fonts

Under Fonts (with nothing selected), choose Add your own font, or pick Add your own font… from the font list of any text. Choose a TTF, OTF, WOFF or WOFF2 file, such as your brand's font. It's kept in this browser for all your designs, and travels inside project files you save, so it works on another device too. Only use fonts you're licensed to use.

Colours, fonts and backgrounds

Every template uses a palette of six colours: background, text, main, accent, soft and on-main. Items take their colour from the palette, so choosing another palette restyles everything without breaking the design. Fine-tune any of the six colours with the swatches under the palettes, and Save to my palettes to reuse your own colours in other designs, like a simple brand kit.

The page background can be a plain colour, a gradient, or have a pattern on top (dots, grid, stripes, waves, confetti and more), with its own colour, strength and size.

Colours from a photo (under the palettes, or Use its colours on a selected photo) picks out the main colours of a picture and offers a light and a dark palette made from them. Both are adjusted so text stays readable. If the design has no photo yet, you'll be asked to choose one.

Photos and your logo

• Add a photo by double-tapping a photo frame, dragging a picture onto the design, pasting one, or using Add › Photo.
• Crop: double-tap a photo (or press Crop) and drag the picture to choose what shows in the frame. Scroll or use the slider to zoom.
• Frame shape: square, rounded, circle, arch, blob, star, heart, hexagon, diamond or triangle.
• Phone and Browser frames show a screenshot inside a phone or a browser window, for app launches, new websites and online shops. Choose the phone's colour, and add a drop shadow to lift it off the page. The App promo template starts with one.
• Filters (B&W, Vivid, Warm, Fade, Vintage, Noir) and sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth and blur. Darken helps text stand out on a photo.
• Remove background keeps the main subject of a photo (a person, a pet, a product) and makes the rest see-through, so the design shows behind it. Once it's done, add an Outline for a sticker look, and the drop shadow follows the subject's shape. Restore background puts the original back at any time. The first time, it downloads a 44 MB model that your browser then keeps; after that it takes a few seconds, or longer on an older phone. It runs on your device, so the photo isn't uploaded. For fine touch-ups with a brush, use the image editor and bring the result back in as a PNG.
• Colour tint washes a photo in one of your colours. Choose Duotone for a two-colour look.
• Use as background stretches a photo to fill the page and sends it to the back.
• Photo grids add 2, 3 or 4 frames in a neat layout, grouped together.
• My logo: add your logo once and it's kept on this device, ready to drop into any design. A PNG with a transparent background works best.

Shapes, icons and QR codes

Add rectangles, circles, lines, triangles, stars, bursts, hearts, arrows, speech bubbles, arches and blobs, and change any shape into another later. Shapes can have a gradient fill, a border and a drop shadow.

Icons cover the everyday details on flyers and cards: phone, email, location, website, date, time, tickets, music, food, coffee and more. Change their colour and line thickness, or fill them in.

Emoji are under Add, below the icons. Each one is added as text, so you can resize, rotate and animate it like any other words. Emoji look a little different on Apple, Windows and Android devices.

A QR code holds the link or text you type, so it never expires and nobody can track who scans it. Keep a dark code on a light background, and test the printed code with your phone before printing lots.

Drawing

Choose Draw under Add, then draw on the design with your mouse, finger or pen. Switch between Pen and Highlighter, pick a colour and thickness at the top, and press Done. Everything you drew in that go becomes one drawing you can move, resize, rotate, recolour or delete. Use undo to take back the last stroke.

Pages and carousels

Use the strip under the design to add, pick and reorder pages, or the Pages section on the right to duplicate, move and delete them. Colours, fonts and the page size are shared by every page, and you can copy and paste items between pages.

Pages are made for Instagram carousels (download them all as numbered pictures in one ZIP) and for multi-page PDFs such as menus, booklets or a set of tickets.

Animation and video

With nothing selected, choose an Animation to bring each item onto the page one after another: Fade, Rise, Pop, Slide, Wipe, or Mixed, which picks a suitable one for headings, photos and shapes. Large backgrounds stay put. Set the speed and how long each page lasts, and press Preview to watch it.

Any item can have its own animation instead (under Animation, near the bottom of its settings), so you can animate just a heading or a sticker on an otherwise still design.

Download › Video records the animation, one page after another. Most browsers make an MP4, ready for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Stories. Some versions of Firefox make a WebM instead; the file converter turns that into MP4. Keep the tab open while it records. The Animated launch story template is a good place to start.

Pictures and PDFs always show the finished design.

Downloading and printing

• PNG is best for social media and sharp text. A design with no background downloads with a transparent background.
• JPG makes a smaller file, good for photo-heavy designs.
• PDF is best for printing. Print sizes come out at their real size in millimetres.
• High resolution doubles the pixels. It's on automatically for print sizes, giving 300 dpi.
• All pages appears when a design has more than one page. PNG and JPG pages come as a ZIP; a PDF gets one page each.
• Bleed and crop marks: for a print shop, tick PDF with 3mm bleed and crop marks. Backgrounds and photos that touch the edge are carried past the cut line, and marks show where to trim. Leave it off for printing at home.
• Copy image puts the current page on your clipboard, ready to paste into an email, document or chat.
• Share appears in browsers that can share files, which includes most phones and tablets, and sends the design straight to apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp or Messages. Carousels share every page at once.

Print sheet puts several copies of a small design (business cards, badges, place cards, tickets) on A4 or Letter paper with crop marks, ready to print at home and cut out. Choose the paper and the space between, and whether to print each page once (handy after a bulk create) or fill the sheet with one design. Print at 100% (actual size), not "fit to page".

Check design (with nothing selected, or at the top of the Download menu when something needs a look) lists things that may not come out as you expect: text that's hard to read against its background, text too small to read or too close to the trim edge, photos too small to print sharply, QR codes too small or too pale to scan, empty photo frames, {fields} that haven't been filled in, and text under the buttons apps show at the top and bottom of Stories. Show takes you to each item. They're suggestions, so download anyway if you're happy with it.

Turn on Show margins (with nothing selected) to see a safe area and centre lines while you work. They never appear in downloads. Keep important text inside the margin, particularly for print and for Stories, where apps cover the top and bottom.

Saving your work

Every design is kept in this browser as you work, and appears under Your designs at the top of the template gallery. Open one to carry on, or use Rename, Copy and Delete. Give a design a name by typing it at the top of the panel on the right (with nothing selected).

To keep a design safe or move it to another device, use Download › Save editable project. It saves a file (ending .jfdi.json) with everything, including your photos and any fonts of your own. Open it again with Open a project file.

Clearing your browser's site data, using a private window, or (in Safari) not visiting for 7 days removes saved designs, palettes, fonts and logo, so save a project file for anything you want to keep.

Keyboard shortcuts

• Ctrl+Z undo, Ctrl+Shift+Z redo (Cmd on a Mac).
• Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V copy and paste (works across pages), Ctrl+D duplicate, Delete remove.
• Ctrl+A select everything, Ctrl+G group, Ctrl+Shift+G ungroup.
• Ctrl+Alt+C and Ctrl+Alt+V copy and paste style.
• Arrow keys nudge by 1 pixel, or 10 with Shift. [ and ] send back or bring forward.
• Page Up and Page Down switch pages. +, − and 0 zoom in, out and to fit.
• Enter edits the selected text, Esc deselects.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. Photos, logos and text are never uploaded, including when you remove a background. The lettering used in designs is loaded from Google Fonts, like the rest of the site's lettering; see the privacy page.

Common questions

Can I use what I make commercially?

Yes. Designs you make are yours, including for your business. The fonts are open-licence fonts that can be used commercially.

Is anything made by AI?

No. The templates are designed by hand, and your own words and photos are placed exactly as you set them.

My photo from an iPhone won't load.

HEIC photos open in Safari but not in every browser. Convert it with the image editor first, or export it as JPG from your Photos app.

The fonts look plain or wrong.

The lettering loads from Google Fonts the first time you use the tool. If you're offline, or a browser extension blocks Google Fonts, designs fall back to your device's standard fonts until it can load.

Why does my printed PDF have a white edge?

Most home printers can't print right to the edge of the paper. For edge-to-edge colour, use a print shop and tick the bleed and crop marks option.

Why didn't my video download?

Videos are recorded by the browser itself. Recent versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox can all do it; older browsers can't, and the Video option then explains that. Recording plays the animation in real time, so a 3-page design at 5 seconds a page takes 15 seconds.

How do I make a comedy night poster?

Try the comedy flyer maker, which is built for line-ups of 1 to 10 acts with photos.