3 Tips for Designing the Perfect Product
What does The Bleed actually mean? It’s an area that may get cut off when the product is printed, but still needs to be filled so you don’t end up with unexpected spaces of white on your product when the product is actually made.
The Bleed (though it sounds ominous) is nothing to fear — but there are a few points to note:
1. You may not be able to see everything in the product area
Zazzle has made many improvements to view options to help you easily identify missed areas while designing. For a lot of products, you may not be able to see everything in the design area in one view. If you don’t account for “The Bleed,” you may miss areas to design, increasing the chances that a customer might be unsatisfied with your product and return it.
2. You need to click “Art View”
When designing make sure to use the “Art View” by clicking the icon in the button strip on the upper left of the product realview. With this view, you can see details about the printable area not shown on “Product View.”
3. Make sure background designs extend to or past “The Bleed” line
“The Bleed” line is the outermost red solid line. You want to make sure that important elements like text are inside this area, but that your background designs go all the way past “The Bleed” line, or the base color of the product will show through.
5 Simple Steps for Using Zazzle’s API
Zazzle provides a simple API that allows any third party to automatically generate a customized product with dynamic images and text. You can create a link from any image on your website to automatically generate a custom product for sale, while earning an extra 15% or more on top of your normal royalty if sales come through the link.
Here are 5 simple steps for using our API:
1. Create a product template (or category of various product templates)
If you’re creating a category, make sure to use the same value for “URL parameter name” for all of your products. “URL Parameter Name” is located under the advanced menu in the design tool (the gears icon). It becomes available after the “Make this a template object” box is checked. Find more info for creating a product template here.
2. Declare your domain
This is the domain where you’ll be hosting your images. Make sure the domain you declare matches the domain you use, or it will show an error.
3. Set up your API links
Go here. You will have two options: 1) a “template link” for one product and 2) a “template buffet” for a category of products. Enter the product ID number or select the category from the store you’ll want to use.
4. Enter placeholder data
This fills in all of your template fields. As you make changes, the link will automatically update with new information. This link is ready to be copied and pasted into your site for use! More info can be found here.
5. Check out some sites using our API for inspiration
Some great examples are Urban Dictionary and Cartoonize My Pet.
What’s the Best Royalty Range?
Have a great design? Make sure it gets the maximum views on our site, homepage or in emails by setting the royalty rate range within ten to fifteen percent. We recently held a Town Hall and discussed why. Learn more here.
FanMerch Updates
We’re excited to announce our new Frida Kahlo store on Zazzle. Fans of Kahlo will be happy to see media portraits, photographs and original graphics in the store.
Our Frida Kahlo store is also a part of our FanMerch program. Approved FanMerch submissions will post here instead of the main store. Click on “Get Started” to submit your designs. Excited to see your submissions!
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