The customer designer
What your customers see and can do when they press Design Now — tools, gallery, QR codes, quality warnings, multi-side editing, bulk quantities and editing from the cart.
The customer designer is the editor shoppers use to personalize your product: they add text, photos, gallery art and QR codes, preview the result on your product, and add it to the cart. Knowing it well helps you configure products sensibly and answer customer questions.
The designer opens when a shopper presses Design Now on a product page, reopens from the cart, and can be opened from an edit link you send after an order.
The canvas
- The product mockup for the selected variant is shown behind a marked print area. Anything outside it will not print, and the shopper is told so.
- Non-rectangular print areas (ellipse, triangle, diamond) trim the design to that shape in the preview exactly as they do in the print file.
- A safe area guide helps shoppers keep important content away from the edges.
- Zoom in, zoom out and reset zoom are available at any time.
Tools
The toolbar holds Text, Upload Art, Gallery, Elements, Templates, My Designs and Layers. Which ones appear depends on your settings and the product’s print method. When an object is selected, a context toolbar shows its options; anything that does not fit is under More.
Text
Add text and edit it in place. Shoppers can set:
- Font family, from Google Fonts grouped by category (sans serif, serif, monospace, display, handwriting) plus your own uploaded fonts.
- Size, bold, italic and alignment.
- Spacing — a Line height slider and a letter Spacing slider.
- Color — solid colors or gradients.
- Outline — a colored outline around the letters. The outline is painted on top and does not change the size of the text, so the layout stays the same in the print file.
New text wraps onto a new line after a short width instead of running across the whole canvas, which keeps names and messages readable. Dragging a corner scales the text up to the size of the print area. On phones, new text starts larger so it is easy to read, and tapping a selected text a second time opens it for editing.
Images
- Open Upload Art, then drag and drop or tap to upload. Allowed formats and the maximum file size come from your plan and print method.
- SVG files are accepted. Each one is safety-checked first — files with scripts or links to outside content are rejected — and then turned into a high-resolution PNG copy that the designer and print file use.
- Upload from phone shows a QR code so shoppers on a computer can send photos straight from their phone. See QR codes & phone upload.
- The Recent Images tab keeps everything the shopper uploaded in this session’s library, with search by file name and the ability to remove uploads.
- The original size is shown, with a Reset to original size action.
- Optional AI tools — background removal, upscale, image editor and vectorize — appear here when enabled.
Gallery
When you turn on the Design Gallery, a Gallery button opens your clipart and backgrounds. Shoppers choose Clipart or Backgrounds, browse by category or search by keyword, and tap an image to add it. A background fills the whole print area behind the design; Remove background takes it away again.
Elements: shapes and QR codes
Elements holds basic shapes with fill color and corner radius, and — when the print method allows images — QR code: Create a scannable code for a link, contact, or Wi-Fi. Shoppers pick a content type, a color and a damage tolerance, and the panel tells them how large to print it. To change a placed code they select it and press Edit QR. Details: QR codes & phone upload.
Color and gradients
The color picker offers popular colors, popular gradients, a custom color picker with hue control, and a custom gradient builder with multiple color stops and an angle control. Transparent is available where it makes sense.
Templates
If you offer design templates, the Templates panel lets shoppers apply a ready-made design. If the same design was changed in another tab or window in the meantime, the designer says This design was updated elsewhere. Reload to continue. Reloading brings back the latest version. Applying a template survives a page refresh, undo and redo.
Layers and properties
- The Layers panel lists every object; reorder, hide, lock and delete from there.
- Position, size, rotation and opacity are in the context toolbar, plus type-specific options.
- Ratio locked / Ratio unlocked decides whether an image or shape keeps its proportions when resized.
- Align, distribute, duplicate, delete, undo and redo are on the toolbar. Rotated objects are aligned by their visible edges, so they stay inside the print area.
Multiple sides
If the product has more than one side, a side switcher lets the shopper move between Front, Back, sleeves and so on. Required sides must contain at least one element before checkout; optional sides can be skipped, but at least one side must have a design.
When the shopper tries to order with a required side empty, they are told which one: The “Back” side requires a design. Please add at least one element.
Quality checks before checkout
Customezo blocks or warns on the mistakes that ruin print jobs:
| Check | What the shopper sees |
|---|---|
| Low print quality | A DPI badge and a warning: An image prints at ~120 DPI, below the 300 DPI required by this print method. Depending on your print method, they can continue or must fix it. |
| Outside the print area | 2 objects are outside the print area. Please move or resize them to fit. Ordering is blocked until fixed. |
| Empty required side | Named in the error, as above. |
| No design elements | Ordering and saving are blocked on a completely empty design. |
| No quantity | With a bulk table, at least one item quantity is required. |
On mobile the same warnings appear in a condensed form: Low print quality — shrink image or upload a larger file.
Variants, quantities and bulk ordering
The designer includes variant selection — color swatches and option pickers — and, for bulk-friendly products, a quantity table where shoppers enter a quantity per variant in one screen. Item numbers, the running total and any bulk discount are shown as they type.
If the design is being edited after it is already in the cart, quantity and product options are locked (Quantity (locked — change it in your cart)) and only the design content can change.
Prices in the designer
The order panel shows the product price plus anything your configuration adds:
- Side fees for designing on extra sides.
- Add-ons and effects the shopper selected.
- The bulk discount for the quantity they entered, with a teaser such as Discounts from 25+ items, up to 20% off.
- An updated total.
These are the same rules that are enforced at checkout, so the total does not change when they get there. See Pricing & fees and Bulk discounts.
Hiding prices
If you switch off Show prices in the designer under Settings → Store, the designer stops showing the product price, discounts and totals. Extra fees the shopper chooses stay visible, with the note Product price and discounts are calculated in cart and checkout. Extra fees stay visible here. Pricing and discounts still apply in the cart and at checkout.
Saving, adding to cart and editing later
- Save design stores a draft the shopper can come back to; saved designs appear in My Designs.
- If you set up add-to-cart confirmations, a Before you add to cart section asks the shopper to tick a checkbox or answer a question first. Required fields must be answered.
- Add to Cart validates the design, renders a preview and adds the line item with its personalization attached.
- From the cart, the Edit design link reopens the designer and Update Cart saves the changes — provided you enabled Customezo Cart UX in your theme. See Storefront setup. On phones and tablets, the designer closes by itself after the cart or order edit is saved.
- Once you lock an order or production starts, the cart link shows your locked label instead and the design can no longer be changed.
After the order, customers may also get a design summary, an edit link or a proof to approve, depending on your communication mode.
Branding and language
The designer uses your logo, theme color, button style and radius from Designer branding, and displays measurements in the unit you chose. It is translated into every language Customezo supports and follows the shopper’s storefront language.