Customization

Are you allowed to customize your own deliverable template? Goodness, we’d like to think you couldn’t, but you do. In fact, since we started doing this for clients in 2006, we’ve seen clients – and other vendors for those clients! – rebrand the templates in their own visual style.

So, while you can’t SELL your version of the system (or assets therein) to anyone else, you are free to extend it and brand it for your own work and create deliverables for projects.

Customization Steps

Here’s the basic tips for customizing the deliverable template:

1. Logo
   As in, the cover page (page 1) and the Background-B master page. I strongly recommend getting a vector-based version of your logo, expanding any type objects that might already be there, and making all elements white so that they are attractive on the black background. Make the logo sizes proportional (larger on the cover, smaller on the interior page). For information on customizing the logo, refer to how to Customize the Logo.
2. Branded Backgrounds
   A few clients ditch the black bar in favor of a brand forward, colorful header and cover page. I recommend against this, if only because the focus should be on the design, not the deliverable, and the black both detaches the document’s metadata (title, date, version, etc) from the meaningful content of each page. I’ve found branded versions to distract from the document’s content: keep the focus on the design!
3. Typography
   Use the two paragraph styles that provide you with cascading control over the whole template. In the paragraph styles panel, you’ll find a folder called “type controls,” in which you’ll be able to change the body font family (set by default to Myriad Pro) and display font family (set by default to Times Roman) to whatever pair of typefaces you like.
   Due to the default families, type styles are defined as Regular, Bold, Italic. If you choose a typeface with styles different than those values (such as Medium, Black, Oblique, etc), you’ll have alot more work to do changing other paragraph styles too.
   A huge system benefit is that all other elements depend on that cascade from those two type controls: page layouts from /deliverables/_pages/, annotation markers from /deliverables/_elements/, project plan elements, everything. Therefore, changes to those two type controls should reach far and wide into all other elements of the /deliverables/ templates.
4. Annotations
   EightShapes loves orange. But that doesn’t mean you have to love orange too. Use styles in the Object Styles panel folder for annotation to change the fill color of annotation markers to another color you prefer.

Example: WebEx

One week, we’d taken a group through our documentation training workshop, including an introduction to our deliverable templates and techniques. Then BAM! The next week a deliverable comes across our email inbox that is based on our template, BUT reskinned effectively.

WebEx’s Amelia Bellows updated tabloid landscape deliverable template all on her own, adding a second logo (and swapping the first too), changing the typography, and adding a branded header bar and cover.

WebEx Cover Page (Used with permission)

WebEx Document Metadata (Used with permission)

Example: Embarq

Embarq commissioned a documentation system and requested a branded header & footer piece using their “origami” brand. The deliverables template included flares of green in the header and even a corner of the bottom. Additionally, typography shifted by replacing Myriad Pro with Trebuchet font, which is also used in their site design.

Embarq Deliverable Template, drag upper right corner to turn to second page (Used with permission: Randall Blair)

Example: Sprint

While the specific Branded typeface is Berthold, it’s bit much to expect all designers to have it – so the Helvetica Neue family was an easy option as Berthold was created off it. Plus you can’t go wrong with Helvetica

Sprint Deliverable Template, drag upper right corner to turn to second page (Used with permission: France Rupert)