Templates Don't Save You Time. They Save You from a Blank Page.
Did you gasp and clutch at your pearls at that statement?
I’ve bought templates. I’ve created templates. I’ve taught people how to build them, and I genuinely believe every business should have a collection of templates they can rely on.
I struggle with the belief that downloading somebody else’s templates automatically makes your marketing stronger.
It doesn’t. Creating content quickly and communicating effectively aren’t the same thing, yet they’ve become almost interchangeable.
What Templates Were Designed For
When Canva* exploded in popularity, templates solved a genuine problem.
Very few people enjoy opening a blank page. In some instances, especially with my own marketing material, that’s me, 100%.
Templates gave us a place to begin. They demonstrated hierarchy, balance, spacing, colour and layout. They took away that initial feeling of, “I have absolutely no idea where to start.”
That was, and still is, incredibly valuable.
When the Starting Point Became the Goal
Today, I see businesses buying social media template bundles by the hundreds. Instagram templates. Carousel templates. Lead magnet templates. Presentation templates. You only need to open any of your favourite social platforms and see the myriad of templates on sale.
The assumption seems to be that one of those downloads will unlock better marketing. It just doesn’t work that way!
A template was always meant to get you moving. Now I wonder if we’ve started expecting it to carry the entire journey.
The Decisions Still Belong to You
Open almost any template and watch what happens … well, any number of things happen …
- The photograph changes because it doesn’t suit your business.
- The colours change because they don’t match your branding.
- The fonts change because they don’t sound like you.
- The headline changes because you’re solving a different problem.
- The layout shifts because your message needs more room.
- The icons disappear; maybe new ones appear.
By the time you’re finished, you’ve made dozens of decisions. We’re not debating whether any of these decisions were right or wrong.
But after all these changes, it begs the question: what exactly did the template save?
It saved you from staring at a blank page. I’ll give you that. It may even have introduced a layout you hadn’t considered.
Everything after that depended on your judgment.
The Thinking Comes First
A template can’t decide what you’re trying to communicate because the person who designed the template had no insight into your branding.
It can’t decide who you’re speaking to or what matters most to them because the designer did not go through your own due diligence in ascertaining all the intricacies of the audience you’re trying to attract.
It can’t work out whether your audience needs reassurance, confidence, curiosity or clarity before they take the next step. That due diligence I mentioned stands.
Those are human decisions. But they’re also business decisions.
They’re your decisions.
Build Your Own Foundations
This is why I think businesses spend far more time collecting templates than they do building the foundations that make templates genuinely useful.
Imagine spending a week creating six graphics instead of six hundred.
- A social media post.
- A testimonial.
- An educational graphic.
- A promotional graphic.
- A quote.
- A lead magnet cover/layout.
Build them properly.
Work out your typography. Decide how your photography should look. Think about spacing. Create consistency in the way headings appear. Decide how your colours work together instead of simply dropping them onto a page because they’re in your brand guide.
It takes longer … as it should.
These decisions become part of your brand rather than part of today’s graphic.
When Templates Earn Their Keep
Once you’ve done that work, templates become incredibly useful; I’ve seen it. I’ve lost count of the number of times clients opted to create templates for themselves, commenting on how much time they have saved themselves in the long run.
Your templates are built from your own thinking, your own decisions and your own brand.
You finally stop falling down a rabbit hole every time you open Canva to create a specific piece of visual content.
Having that framework, that’s where I know templates earn their keep.
A Final Thought
I haven’t fallen out with templates. They’re still a better place to start than starting from a blank canvas.
I still use them, and I still recommend them. I won’t stop teaching people how to build them.
What has changed is my expectation of them. A template should remember your decisions. It should never be expected to make them.
THAT is why your own branded templates are infinitely better to use than the Canva template you have open on your screen right now.
If you’ve realised that templates aren’t the problem, perhaps it’s time to build a Canva workflow that’s based on your business instead of somebody else’s. That’s exactly (amongst other things) what we do in a 1:1 Canva session.
*Affiliate link. This link affords me a small commission should you decide to upgrade from your Canva Free account. You do not pay anything in addition to the cost of the subscription.