Social media design templates your team can run daily
Posting three times a week is over a hundred and fifty pieces of artwork a year. That is a template problem, not a design problem.
What is social media design?
Social Media Design is the creation of reusable template families and asset kits for social platforms, built to each platform's aspect ratios and safe areas. It suits Australian marketing teams publishing regularly who need consistent, on brand posts produced in-house at speed rather than commissioning a designer for every individual item.
Get a fixed written quote- Typical timeline
- 1 to 4 weeks
- What drives cost
- The number of distinct post types, how many ratios each has to cover, whether motion versions are needed.
- Best for
- Teams publishing weekly who currently make each post from scratch
- You own
- The templates, the master files and the brand kit in your own account
- Built with
- Figma or Canva template systems, locked elements, motion presets
Your handover
Why template families beat commissioning individual posts
Work out how many pieces of artwork your calendar needs in a year, then divide the design budget by that number. For most organisations the maths makes commissioning each post individually indefensible, and what actually happens is that the budget runs out in March and the rest of the year is produced by whoever is free, in whatever tool they know. Consistency collapses quietly and nobody is quite sure when.
- 01Template family for each recurring post type
- 02Every template adapted to the ratios you publish in
- 03Safe area guides marked on each layout
- 04Brand kit configured in your own account
- 05Locked elements and constrained text boxes
- 06Short motion presets for animated posts
- Story and short video templates with caption zones
- Populated example posts for reference
- One page cheat sheet and a live handover session
A template family fixes the economics
A template family fixes the economics. We design a small number of post types that cover what you actually publish, such as a quote card, a statistic, a product feature, a staff introduction, an event promotion, a testimonial free customer story and a link announcement, then build each one as an editable template with the layout, type and colour decisions already made. Your team changes the words and the image. The design stays correct because the decisions were made once, in advance, by someone who understood the system.
Whichever we use, the principle is the same: lock what must not change, leave open only what should.
Designing for sound off, thumb distance and a moving feed
Social artwork is read at speed, at arm's length, on a screen the size of a hand, often with the sound off and frequently in daylight. That imposes rules that do not apply to a website or a brochure. Type has to be substantially larger than feels comfortable in the design file. Contrast has to be strong enough to survive an outdoor screen at low brightness. Long lines of body copy do not get read at all, so the artwork carries one idea and the caption carries the rest.
More on designing for sound off, thumb distance and a moving feed
For anything with movement, captions are burned into the frame rather than relying on the platform's automatic captions, because auto captions are inconsistent, frequently wrong on Australian place names and product terms, and disappear entirely when a video is downloaded and reposted. We also design the first frame to make sense as a still, since that is what appears in a feed before playback starts and in the grid afterwards. Where video sits on your website too, the video work needs proper caption files alongside the burned in version for accessibility.
How the engagement runs
How a template system gets built
We start by looking at what you have actually published for the last three months rather than what the content plan says. The real mix is always different, and templates built for the real mix get used. Then we design the smallest set that covers it, because ten templates get learned and forty get ignored.
- 01Stage 1Audit the last three months of posts and group them into recurring types
- 02Stage 2Agree the smallest set of template types that covers the real mix
- 03Stage 3Design each type at its primary ratio, then adapt it to the others in the family
- 04Stage 4Check text sizes and contrast at actual viewing size on a real phone
- 05Stage 5Build in the chosen tool with locked elements and constrained text
- 06Stage 6Populate example posts and write a one page cheat sheet
- 07Stage 7Run a live session with the people publishing and adjust on the spot
Two decisions on your side that keep the project moving
Handover is a working session, not a folder. We sit with the people who will use the templates, watch them build a post, and fix whatever confused them on the spot. That session usually improves the templates more than another day of design would.
Two habits keep the system alive afterwards. Keep the masters in one shared place rather than letting copies multiply across personal accounts, and appoint one person who is permitted to change a master while everybody else duplicates. Without those two rules the templates quietly fork within a couple of months and you are back where you started.
Choose the right level
The platform specifications we design to
Every platform has its own aspect ratios, and each one crops, compresses and overlays interface elements differently. Designing one square graphic and pushing it everywhere produces posts with headlines sliced off by a profile bubble or a caption bar. We build each template as a family covering the ratios you actually use, and we mark the safe areas so text never lands underneath platform furniture.
Placement
01
Feed square
Ratio and common size
1 to 1, commonly 1080 by 1080
What to watch
Safe for every platform, though it wastes vertical space on mobile
02
Feed portrait
Ratio and common size
4 to 5, commonly 1080 by 1350
What to watch
Takes more screen height in feed, so it is the default for most brands
03
Stories and short video
Ratio and common size
9 to 16, commonly 1080 by 1920
What to watch
Interface elements cover the top and bottom, so keep text in the middle band
04
Link preview
Ratio and common size
1.91 to 1, commonly 1200 by 630
What to watch
Crops differently per platform, so keep the key element centred
05
Carousel and document posts
Ratio and common size
Square or portrait, multiple pages
What to watch
First frame decides whether anyone swipes, so it carries the hook
06
Profile and cover images
Ratio and common size
Circular crop over a square, wide banner
What to watch
The circular crop removes the corners, which is where logos usually sit
How we work this out during scoping
The specific numbers below reflect what is stable across the major platforms at the time of writing. Platforms change these without notice, which is exactly why templates beat one-off artwork: when a ratio shifts, we update the template once instead of relearning it on every post. We note the current specification in the handover document and review it periodically so your team is not the last to find out.
We design the profile furniture at the same time, because it is seen on every visit and updated almost never. Profile images crop to a circle on most platforms, which removes the corners where a full logo usually sits, so we supply a version built from the standalone symbol instead of shrinking the full lockup until it is unreadable.
Which tool your templates should live in
The right tool is the one the person publishing at four on a Friday can already use. That is usually not the tool a designer would choose, and insisting otherwise guarantees the templates get abandoned. We build in the environment your team works in and set up the guard rails there rather than delivering something technically superior that requires a licence and a fortnight of training.
Brand colours and fonts loaded as a kit rather than typed in each time
Whichever we use, the principle is the same: lock what must not change, leave open only what should. Brand colours and fonts loaded as a kit rather than typed in each time. Logos placed as locked elements. Text boxes constrained so a long headline reflows instead of overflowing. Image frames that crop rather than stretch. And a set of example posts already filled in, because a blank template intimidates and a populated one invites editing.
Canva
Suits teams with several non designers publishing. Brand kit holds colours, fonts and logos, elements can be locked, and permissions can be set so staff copy a template rather than edit the master. The trade off is less typographic control and a licence tier requirement for some features.
Figma
Suits teams with a designer or a design minded marketer. Components, variants and constraints give far tighter control and the templates share a system with your other interface work. The trade off is a steeper learning curve for occasional users.
Adobe or master source files
We keep editable masters regardless of the working tool, so anything can be rebuilt, resized for print or handed to another supplier. These are not intended for daily use by your team, but they matter the day you change tools.
When new templates will not fix your social presence
If your engagement is low and your posts already look reasonable, new artwork is not the problem. Design changes how something looks, not whether anyone cares about it. The usual culprits are a content mix that is entirely about you, an inconsistent posting rhythm, or a proposition that has never been made interesting. That is content strategy work, and doing it first makes the design investment worth more.
The other honest case is reach
The other honest case is reach. Organic reach on most platforms is modest for business accounts, and beautiful templates do not change distribution. If the goal is measurable growth rather than looking coherent, a portion of the budget belongs in paid social or in ongoing management instead. Templates are the right buy when you are already committed to publishing and the constraint is production speed and consistency.
How we scope it
Four ways to scope your Social Media Design project
We do not publish package prices, because the same brief can be a short build or a long one. These are the shapes the work usually takes. Tell us which one sounds like you and you will get a fixed written quote that spells out exactly what it covers.
Social Media Core
The essentials, done properly, not a template
Fixed written quote, agreed before work starts
- Template family for each recurring post type
- Every template adapted to the ratios you publish in
- Safe area guides marked on each layout
Full identity
A complete identity your team can apply without us
Fixed written quote, agreed before work starts
- Everything in Social Media Core
- Brand kit configured in your own account
- Locked elements and constrained text boxes
- Short motion presets for animated posts
Brand system
A system that holds up across products and campaigns
Fixed written quote, agreed before work starts
- Everything in Full identity
- Story and short video templates with caption zones
- Populated example posts for reference
- One page cheat sheet and a live handover session
Brand care
Applying and extending it as the business grows
Rolling monthly, quoted in writing
- New assets and applications as they come up
- The system extended rather than reinvented
- Files and source artwork kept in order and in your name
- Rolling, cancel with 30 days notice
These are shapes, not menus. Most quotes end up somewhere between two of them, and we will say so when the honest answer is the smallest one. Describe the problem and we will tell you which it is.
Questions buyers usually ask
Frequently asked questions
How long does a social template system take to build?
Usually 1 to 4 weeks. A single brand with six or seven template types and two ratios each sits at the short end. Time grows with the number of post types, the number of platforms and whether animated versions are included. If an identity already exists and is documented, the work is faster because the type and colour decisions are settled.
What makes one template project cost more than another?
The number of distinct post types, how many ratios each has to cover, whether motion versions are needed, and whether we are working inside an existing identity or establishing the visual rules as we go. multi-location businesses that need locked head office elements with editable local fields add a layer. We size the work and put the price on paper.
Can our team really edit these without a designer?
That is the point of the build. We lock the elements that carry the brand and open only the fields that should change, so a staff member swaps a headline and an image and the result is still correct. The handover session is where this gets proven, because we watch real people build real posts and adjust anything that trips them up.
What happens when a platform changes its image sizes?
Templates absorb that far better than individual artwork does. When a ratio or safe area shifts, we update the affected templates once and your existing content keeps working. We review specifications periodically as part of an ongoing arrangement, or you can commission a refresh when you notice something cropping badly.
Do you write the captions and schedule the posts too?
Not as part of this. This scope is the design system your team runs. Caption writing sits with copywriting and publishing sits with whoever manages your accounts, and we are happy to work alongside whoever handles those. Being clear about the boundary matters, because a template system delivered to a team with nobody assigned to publish goes unused.
We are a clinic and cannot use testimonials in our advertising. Does that limit the templates?
It changes the mix rather than limiting it. Practices in beauty and wellness and regulated health settings need post types built around education, process explanation, team introductions and before and after rules that match their obligations. We design the set around what you are permitted to say, so nobody has to reject a post at the approval stage.
Related services
Get a fixed written quote for your social template system
Send us three months of your posts and tell us who publishes them. We reply within one business day with a proposed template set and a fixed written quote.