Working with an assistant

How it works

The assistant edits one template at a time, in a loop:

1. It starts a template (or opens one you give it) and reads what is there.
2. It makes a few edits: a text frame, an image, a shape, a field. Each edit answers what it did and the template’s issues now: text overflowing its frame, a missing glyph, an image of too low a resolution, a field nothing shows.
3. It renders the page and looks at it, comparing it with what you asked for or the picture it reproduces. It can show every frame’s outline and id, and zoom into a frame or a region.
4. It fixes what’s wrong and goes on. An edit can be taken back; one that would break the template is refused, and nothing changes.
5. It ends by checking everything (with print preflight for a print template) and saving the package, or publishing it.

What it makes is an ordinary template: open the saved file in the editor with Open package and carry on there.

Briefing it

Say what the document is for and who fills it in. The more of these it knows, the less it guesses:

• The size and use: an A6 flyer for print, a 1080 × 1080 social image, a badge 90 × 120 mm. For print, say so: it then works in CMYK and sets a bleed.
• What changes from one document to the next: the name, the price, the photo. These become fields, with realistic sample values. Brand marks, decoration and layout stay fixed.
• The typography: the fonts and sizes, or a picture that shows them. It defines styles first and builds the text with them, so a later change reaches every text.
• The colours: hex values, or CMYK and spot inks for print.
• Pictures and fonts: the files on your computer it may use: a logo, a photo, the picture to reproduce, a licensed font.

A short brief works: “A conference badge, 90 × 120 mm, for print: the attendee’s name large, their role below, their photo in a circle, our logo at the top.”

Reproducing a picture

Give it a picture of an existing design (a PDF page saved as an image, a scan, a screenshot) and ask for a template that matches it. It looks into the picture to measure positions and sample colours rather than guessing, cuts logos and photos out of it, and lays the picture over its own render to see where they differ. Lettering no font has, such as a hand-drawn logo, is better kept as an image, and it does so.

Say which parts should become fields: otherwise it decides from what looks like content.

Components and brand kits

A group used more than once, say a price badge or a product card, becomes a component: built once, placed many times, changed in one place. Ask for one when a design repeats. When each copy needs its own values (two products’ prices), say so: each instance then gets fields of its own.

A component from the template’s brand kit is placed like any other, but the assistant never changes its parts or fields: that is done in the editor, by whoever looks after the brand kit.

Checking its work

Before you use what it made:

• Open it in the editor and look at it at full size, with long and short sample values in its fields: a long name should fit or shrink, not overflow.
• Read the fields’ labels and descriptions in the field panel: they are what the people filling the template see.
• For print, run the preflight in the editor’s proofing.

The assistant works on its own copy of the template: changes you make in the editor afterwards don’t reach it unless you save the package and give it the file again.

Mistakes to watch for

• Editing blind. It should render after a handful of edits, not after twenty: if it doesn’t, ask it to look.
• Frames just big enough. Text overflowing its frame is an error; frames need room for longer values.
• Many tiny text frames where one frame with several paragraphs reads and edits better.
• A field that should be fixed, or fixed text that should be a field: a logo made a field, a price typed in.
• Raw settings on every frame instead of styles: ask it to define the styles and use them.

Publishing

With a Paprika address and a key that may publish, the assistant can publish the template as a new version, ready for the API to render. Publishing a template you haven’t looked at in the editor isn’t a good idea; saving it and publishing from the editor after a look is the usual way.