The habit
The template gallery you know is a store. Illustrator opens a grid of presets that want a network, a login, or a download before the third card will render. Photoshop's new-file dialog mixes blank sizes with Adobe Stock templates that are not on the machine. Affinity's new document is cleaner: sizes, a few presets, then you are on your own. When you do want a start, you hunt a file someone mailed you in 2019.
The hand wants a bank that is already here. Search by the thing you are making, not by a SKU. A café card. An essay cover. A ticket. Filter when the search is too wide. Pick the page size you actually print, or type a width, a height, and a DPI that the built-in list does not have. See the layout at those proportions before you commit, because a square preview of a tall poster is a different poster.
You also want the blank page to stay easy to find. A template gallery that replaces "new document" is a gallery in the way. The welcome screen can offer the bank and the blank. The File menu can open the bank while you are already drawing, without closing the file you have open.
The constraint
Fifty-two designs ship in the binary. They are available immediately. There is no weekly download, even though a weekly drop plan exists as an editorial sequence and a remix prompt for each design. That plan does not schedule posts and it does not publish anything. The gallery cannot wait on the network to decide which cards exist. Local fonts only, on purpose, so opening a card does not phone home for a typeface.
The gallery has to stay light. Preview rendering runs in the background. Thumbnails stay small. The grid lays out the visible rows. Choosing a size reflows the preview to those proportions, including portrait, square, and wide pages, and including a custom size. A gallery that renders all 52 designs at all 20 built-in sizes up front will hitch the welcome screen. You are here to start a file, not to watch a contact sheet bake.
+ Vector is this bank. + Layout is a different door: frame-based starters for screens. Raster opens a size chooser. The template library is not allowed to swallow those. One welcome screen, three kinds of start, and the 52 are the vector designs.
Search has to hit name and idea. The nine categories are the coarse filter: events, food, culture, community, editorial, branding, education, wellness, and products. Thirteen artwork families sit under the 52 compositions. You should be able to find Palm House because you thought "café," and Still Water because you thought "essay," without memorizing the week number in the editorial plan.
What landed
On the welcome screen, + Vector opens Templates · 52. While you are drawing, File → Template library opens the same bank. The chooser has a stable width. You search by name or by idea. You filter the nine categories. You pick any of the 20 built-in document sizes, or you type a custom width, height, and DPI.
Previews adapt to the proportions you chose. A tall size shows the tall layout. A square size shows the square layout. A wide size shows the wide layout. The designs include distinct artwork for those three, so the preview is not a uniform scale of one master. Very small custom sizes drop secondary copy that would be unreadable. You see that in the preview before you create the file.
Click a card and press Use this template, or double-click the card. The template opens as a new unsaved document. Paper, artwork, and copy layers are editable. The file you were already working on stays in its tab. You did not replace it. You did not have to save it first in order to look at a starting point. Save the new document when it becomes yours. Until then it is an unsaved document, like any other new file.
The 52 are specific. After Hours is an events poster. Palm House is a food card for hours without a stock photograph. Still Water is a quiet editorial cover. Admit One is a ticket you can also use as the poster. First Edition is a numbered cover for a newsletter. The weekly plan pairs each one with a remix prompt. That prompt is a suggestion for how to edit. It is not a lock on the file. All 52 are in the gallery on day one. You do not wait for week 29 to open Admit One.
Dates, venue lines, and sample business copy in the bank are placeholders. They were written for these designs. You replace them before you publish. The artwork was made for Omadesign. It is vectors and live type, not a flattened poster with a text box floating near it.
In the hand
Launch the app. On the welcome screen press + Vector. Or, with a document already open:
File → Template library
Type an idea. "Café," "ticket," "essay," "workshop." Or type a name you already know: Palm House, Admit One, Night School, Open Alphabet. If the list is still wide, filter. Food. Events. Editorial. Education. The nine are events, food, culture, community, editorial, branding, education, wellness, and products.
Pick the size. A built-in page size if you print standard stock. Or type the width, the height, and the DPI for the slot this file actually has to fill. Watch the card. The preview follows those proportions. If the size is tiny, expect the secondary lines to leave so the remaining type can be read.
Double-click the card. Or click it once and press Use this template.
A new tab opens. The previous tab is still there. The new document is unsaved. Click the headline and type. The type is live. Click a shape and recolor it. The shape is a shape. Save when the file has a name you want on disk:
Ctrl+S
You get an .oma. The template is a start, not a link. Editing it does not write back into the gallery. Next time you open Templates · 52, Palm House is still Palm House.
Need a screen with frames? That is + Layout, the frame-based starters. Need a blank pixel canvas? Raster, and a size. Need a blank vector page with no artwork? The vector file icon beside + Vector is the blank size chooser. The 52 are the designed starts.
The edge
The gallery refuses to fetch a design. All 52 are local, and the weekly drop plan does not gate them. Search and the nine filters only narrow what is already on disk. A custom size refuses to keep secondary copy that would be unreadably small. The preview shows the omission before you create the document.
Opening a template refuses to close the work you already have. The new file is a new unsaved tab. Your current tab stays put.
Press + Vector, double-click the card, and the unsaved document is yours to edit.
The thread
Part 87 of 144 in the Omadesign 0.5.8 feature thread.