Most of us are good at our jobs, but many of our jobs, and our avocations, just occasionally call upon us to develop a picture-perfect graphic design template. The problem with this is that producing such high-quality templates is really a profession of its own. And the moment you are facing a three-day deadline to produce a needed graphic document is really when you want to embark on a new profession.

The people at StockLayouts.com realize all of this. They have responded by preparing an encyclopedia of completed templates that are just waiting to be called into action by harried and panicking clients, who can set their panic aside as soon as they see the template they need.

A partial list of template types will help you get a sense of what it is the company has on offer. The software programs include Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress, CorelDraw, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Apple iWork Pages.

The types of templates include brochures, newsletters, postcards, business cards, letterheads, datasheets, presentations, restaurant menus, pamphlets, leaflets, sales sheets, posters, gift certificates, invitation, and greeting cards.

And one very clever search idea built into the site permits you to seek your desired template by business category, and those include agriculture and farming, automotive, child care, construction, education, energy and environment, financial services, food and beverage, and government. And that just takes us up to the letter G. It’s clear from this list, and also from our perusal of some of their wares, that they have built up an absolutely vast number of templates in each of their categories, which users can easily find through a very intuitive search process.

Once you have found the template you need, StockLayouts takes care of all the licensing obligations that accompany its use. They have come to terms with the software providers, who after all are not willing to allow their software to be utilized without compensation. Apparently, though, these major software companies are flexible enough to permit licensed use of their programs alongside their main business model of selling those programs for installation on users’ computers.

The company, which is based in Oregon, started operations in 2001 for the purpose of developing affordable graphic design solutions that permit users to produce professional-quality marketing and other business materials in print. Their service allows users to create such materials for a fraction of the cost and time that would be required in the absence of this service.

As it turns out, their typical customers include not only harried office workers with little skill in design, but also graphic design firms themselves, corporate marketing departments, advertising agencies, small businesses, commercial printing houses, and publishing companies. It turns out that even the pros like having an encyclopedia of templates to examine, without having to conceive of and create each new one from scratch.

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The company features thousands of customizable templates of course, and offers a good deal of detail as to how they are created. The templates offered by StockLayouts are created by award-winning graphic designers and seasoned production artists, and include royalty-free stock photos and original artwork. They also feature defined color palettes, headlines, and advertising copy content, where desired.

All of the layout files and graphics are high resolution and can be used for commercial printing. Moreover, the design templates are available for both Mac and PCs in Adobe, InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress, CorelDraw, Apple iWork Pages, or in various Microsoft file formats.

The user experience is fairly simple. People in need of a template are invited to visit the site, use its search engine freely to find a template, and then simply select, purchase, and download it. You can then customize the template with content and alterations specific to your intended use. The result will be a ready-to-print file.

And it is also worth noting that the company is always continuing to expand its offerings, and has a growing library of creative designs in each of its manifold categories.

Prices

A single template will run you between $29.00 and $99.00, which is a small price to pay to keep your job, if it comes to that. The higher prices are of course for multi-page templates that provide the guidance you need for a presentation or for newsletters, datasheets, or brochures, while the lower prices are for things like greeting cards and invitations. If you need three or more templates, they’ll knock 50% off of the price.

If you are a graphics consuming company, such as an ad agency or magazine, with a regular need for a wide variety of templates, a library subscription may make sense for you.

These are available for $299 for a three-month subscription, or for $599 per year, and this entitles you to access to the entire library, and to download up to 50 templates a month. The company advertises this as its best value resource, and we’d have to agree.

Complaints

There really were very few complaints to speak of. Most users who commented indicated that the company’s offerings are well-constructed and highly useful, and that the search engine is sufficiently detailed and granular that it allowed them to find the templates they needed. The only complaints we found were from customers who wished they had known about the service earlier, as it could have avoided them a lot of inconvenience that they had suffered in the past without it.

Customer Service

The company’s customer service department is available by phone, chat, and email, and one of their most user-friendly features is that they allow you to download a single template for free, to let you experimenting with editing it, so that you can be reassured as to its utility before you buy.

The company has arranged its software to permit you to download a purchased template multiple times in different formats, and those templates remain downloadable by you indefinitely. Although font software is not included, the templates do contain sample text – in Latin! – to show you recommended fonts and type sizes. You can edit essentially everything that is shown, and specific instructions, and a video tutorial for PowerPoint templates, are provided to show you how.

The firm does not design websites, preferring to focus on their core business of template provision. They do get repeated requests for website design from satisfied customers who have experienced their comprehensive design prowess.

Critically, the StockLayouts license permits you to display completed, end-user projects (which constitute “derivative work” legally) on your website. If you want to display a template for other purposes, you are invited to discuss that with the company’s business department.

Final Thoughts

Some ideas are so good that once you hear about them, all you can wonder about is why nobody thought of them before. Wheels on suitcases is one such great idea (that the world had to wait a century for), and StockLayouts, in our opinion is another. The firm moreover has done a bang-up job of producing a comprehensive portfolio of templates in a wide variety of industries and categories, in just about every major software platform that you might reasonably be expected to need. The pricing is reasonable, and includes individual template purchases for individual users, and bulk template purchases for corporate and other organizational consumers.

We can therefore wholeheartedly recommend the company as a highly useful resource for customers who need the bare bones of a brochure, PowerPoint presentation, newsletter, or for any number of other applications or uses.