With Tagboard's graphics engine, you unlock complete control to build customized graphic templates that match the look and feel of your production. Plus the ability to edit and produce with those Graphics on the fly. The first step is to build a template.

Begin by navigating to the "Graphic Templates" tab on the left sidebar of your Tagboard Account. This will take you to your Graphic Templates Dashboard. To build a new graphic, click "+ New Graphic" in the top right corner, then choose whether to (1) build from scratch or (2) use default pre-built templates.

Looking to pick up where you left off with a graphic template? From your Graphic Templates Dashboard, hover over the row of the graphic template you'd like to edit then click. You can also duplicate and delete a graphic template from this dashboard. Use the three horizontal dots on the far right of the row and pick from the dropdown.

After you create a template, the best place to start is in the top left corner of the builder where you can title your template. This is important so it's easy to identify which template you're selecting when adding the graphic to a production in Tagboard Producer.

After you title your template, work your way down the left side of the builder until you get to canvas settings. Before you start building it's important to have the canvas match the pixel width/height of the screen you're going to display your graphic on. The default is 1920X1080 (standard TV screen ratio). 

Safe Area: You can check the box to display a safe area on your canvas. This will help visualize areas on the screen you want your graphic to avoid. You can adjust width and height by percentage between 0-100%.
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Now that your template has a title and the canvas is set, let's start building. You will build your template by adding different layers: text, image and shape. As you click to add layers, you will see them automatically appear in your canvas. You can simply drag and drop individual layers to reposition them. 

Each layer will have its own robust list of customizations that appear on the right side of the builder when the layer is selected and highlighted. To learn more about the layer customization options, click the layer you want to know more about below:

Naming/Sorting: It is important to name your layers as you build your template, so they are easy to identify when building a graphic in Tagboard Producer. To name your layer, double click on the name. In addition to naming your layers, you can click and drag them to set the order from top to bottom.  

Grouping: When you have multiple layers of your graphic that you want to operate as a single layer, you have the option to group them together. Group your layers by holding down the shift key, selecting the layers you want to group, and then hitting (Command or CTRL + G). You can then rename your group. To ungroup your layer you can use the hotkey (Command or CTRL + Shift + G) or click the three vertical dots and select the option to ungroup.

​Lock: The lock icon (seen in the GIF above) is how you can lock or unlock a specific layer while building your template. Locked layers cannot be changed.
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​Editable/Rename/Duplicate/Delete: Clicking the three vertical dots right of the lock icon will open a modal with some additional options for each layer. Checking the editable box will make it so this layer of your template can be edited when customizing your graphic in Producer. Working your way down the modal you will see another way you can rename your layer, an option to duplicate your layer, and the ability to delete a layer.

Your template will not save automatically. Make sure to click save in the upper right corner of your template builder throughout the course of your build. 

In the upper left corner of your template builder you will see a keyboard icon that you can click to see different keyboard shortcuts that can be used to streamline your template building process. 

Once you have given layers of your graphic animations, this is where you can click to preview the animation. 

There is also a box you can check if you have an animation you want to loop while the graphic is being displayed. 
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Be sure to add tags to your graphics so they're easier to track down when selecting a template in Tagboard Producer. Think of these as folders. Everything with the same tag will essentially be in the same folder. 

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