3 reasons why you should reconsider templates as a freelance designer.
Many designers avoid using templates and prefer to build apps and websites from scratch. Here’s why it’s a missed opportunity.
As part of a team building a professional design platform, I talk to a lot of designers. UI/UX designers, product designers, graphic designers… the roles can be quite different, but there’s one thing that many of them have in common: a strong aversion to templates.
As in, “it’s great for non-designers, but I’m a professional and my work is unique.”
That’s 100% to their credit. And yet, it’s based on a slightly outdated idea that templates, especially when provided by web or app builders, can only be cookie-cutters that will inevitably make your project look generic. Dare I say, basic.
No-code builders are creating design job opportunities.
With the rise of no-code builders, designers are taking the reins of the digital creation process.
Companies of all sizes are now using no-code platforms. Not only for websites but now for customer-facing apps and products too. And while they get to cut development time and cost, they still need professional UI/UX skills to design interfaces that people will engage with.
In other words, while people don’t care how digital products get developed, they care about what they look like. That’s why design freelancers are in such high demand.
Adopting no-code builders and their templates as part of their arsenal is the best way to get the best out of this paradigm shift. The best way to grow your freelance business without feeling overworked or underpaid (which often goes hand in hand.) Here’s why.
Templates are no longer rigid cookie cutters.
It’s no longer 2003, which means we’re free of extreme low-rise jeans and basic WordPress themes.
A new generation of no-code builders has emerged, offering advanced design control and fully customizable templates.
While they still save a lot of assembling time, these templates give you full control over both the format and the content. They’re easy to adapt to your brand and to update, revision after revision. You never find yourself in a situation where you’re running on a theme that is no longer updated by its developer and slowly falling apart.
Project templates vs section templates
Section templates, meaning pre-built page areas and navigation elements that you can mix and match, offer more flexibility than full-page templates.
You get to spend your creative time on central aspects of your page — a hero banner, for instance — while saving time on others. As long as the section templates are professionally designed, they can be customized to merge seamlessly with your personal work.
Section templates can also be leveraged for inspiration when creating your own components. Let’s say you’re working on a new showcase page. It’s tempting to default to what you’ve built in the past, and having access to a wide choice of image galleries could only help you come up with new ideas.
Helping you switch from an absolute to a relative positioning mindset.
When prototyping apps and websites in design tools such as Adobe XD or Figma, designers rely on absolute positioning. They arrange elements on a canvas by giving them fixed position and size settings. Just like if they were drawing on paper.
Unfortunately, absolute positioning is not inherently responsive. You have to manually define breakpoints and re-design for every screen size, which is, as we all know, incredibly painful and time-consuming.
That’s why recent web and app builders rely on relative positioning instead, using flex box properties. With relative positioning, you start by defining your layout in terms of blocks. You then decide how blocks and elements placed inside them should align when the screen size changes, whether they should wrap, resize, turn into scrollable areas, etc.
It requires a change of mindset and can feel confusing at first. “Why can’t I just drop an image here? Why do elements keep getting stacked at the top of the screen?” are common questions from first-time users.
There’s an abundance of tutorials to help you get started, but looking at templates and how they’re built is also a great way to learn.
You can use them to practice and familiarize yourself with the basics of responsive design before starting your project. It will make the transition smoother, and you’re guaranteed to amortize every minute spent on it with an app or website that will be responsive from the get-go.
Let templates be your stepping stone.
Templates are a powerful tool when they’re created by and for designers. Think of them as pre-built components that will save you assembly time while giving you more design options.
They can help you take on new projects without constantly reinventing the wheel. They can also become a source of revenue on their own.
At Designware, our goal is to help designers monetize their work. That’s why we’re working on a content marketplace for you to monetize your templates and components. And in the meantime, you can access our existing library for free.
