Understanding template builds by Storyteq

A template build splits the work between your team and Storyteq.

Your team designs the content in its usual tools and decides what people should be able to change. Storyteq rebuilds the design as a template, adds the editable fields, and tests that it renders. Once the template is published, your team produces adaptations from it.

The tool Storyteq builds in depends on the kind of content:

You can also publish a Figma design to Template Builder yourself, without a handover.

A template has fixed elements, which stay the same in every adaptation, and dynamic elements, which change. A dynamic element can be a text field, an uploaded image or video, a choice between preset options, a size, a duration, or a scene. Each dynamic element becomes a parameter that someone fills in when they produce an adaptation.

Your design files show the build team where each dynamic element sits and how much room it has. A placeholder image or video gives the exact size and duration that an uploaded file replaces. A rectangle or guide around a text field shows how far the text can grow, and in which direction.

A design shows how a template looks. It doesn’t show how the template should behave when someone changes it, and the brief fills that gap.

A good brief lists every dynamic element, with the rules that govern it. For a text field, that includes the maximum number of characters. For a choice, it lists the options and any combinations that aren’t allowed. The brief also sets the naming convention for finished files, which the build team adds as naming parameters.

The more precise the brief, the fewer questions the build team has to ask, and the fewer rounds of changes the template needs. Layer names that match the names in the brief make each element easy to trace from one to the other.

A template build reconstructs your design’s structure, element by element. If the design changes after the build starts, the affected parts have to be rebuilt, and some changes mean starting again.

That’s why every handover guide asks for final, approved files, and why it’s worth getting sign-off from everyone with an opinion before you hand them over.

For video, the point of sign-off has a name: picture lock. Picture lock is your formal agreement that the video edit is final.

Building a video template from an edit takes a lot of work, and almost any change to the edit means rebuilding the template. Storyteq asks for picture lock before the build starts, and changes to the edit after picture lock are no longer free of charge.