Print Template Design, Pixartprinting

Pixartprinting is an Italy-based online print service and one of Europe's leading mass-customisation platforms, operating as part of the global Cimpress group.

I led a team of 3 junior designers to design and deliver templates across multiple products, all within a tightly controlled production environment. I set design benchmarks, managed KPIs, provided structured feedback, and contributed to innovation initiatives within a global mass-customisation environment.

All templates were built within ACE (Adobe Cimpress Extension), a proprietary Adobe InDesign extension that came with severe creative limitations. The extension eliminated core typographic controls: no kerning, tracking, or leading adjustments, no stroke attributes, no transparency or blending modes, and no support for complex vector paths. Each template was adapted across multiple products and sizes, spanning flyers, folded flyers, postcards, business cards, decals, roll labels, and posters, through to large-format signage and display solutions including PVC banners, rigid media, roll-up banners, and expo banners. Every template had to work across 5 languages — English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and French — with no ability to adjust typography to compensate for text expansion between them. Each template was also designed in 5 colour variants, meaning every layout decision had to hold up across languages and palettes simultaneously.

Producing polished, commercially viable work at that scale, within such rigid constraints, demanded rigorous systems thinking and creative problem-solving well beyond a typical design brief.