The decoration methods you configure in settings come to life inside the Design Studio. When a customer designs a product, the method they're using shapes what they see on the canvas, how their design is priced, and which quality prompts appear. This article connects your method setup to the customer's experience.
Selecting a method
For products that support more than one technique, the studio offers a method selector so the customer (or your staff) chooses how the design will be decorated. The selected method then governs pricing and canvas behavior for that design.
What the method changes on the canvas
Once a method is active:
- Print-area boundary — the canvas outlines the decoration area. Important: this boundary comes from the product's impression area, not from the method. The method only changes the color of the outline. A method's maximum print width and height are not applied to the canvas.
- Print-size indicator — the overlay in the top right of the canvas shows the physical size of the print area, again taken from the product.
- Color-reduction step — if the method has Enforces color limit switched on, the studio shows a color-reduction step as soon as any image is on the canvas. It is not triggered by exceeding a limit, and it always reduces to a fixed 6 colors rather than the Maximum colors value you configured.
How the method prices the design
- For area methods the studio measures the placement in square inches, and for stitch methods it uses the stitch count. Both are priced against your matrix.
- Flat methods apply their flat price per placement, plus any setup fee.
- The add-to-cart summary reflects this pricing, and checkout validates against the same structure so totals match.
color-count methods are not measured. The studio never calculates how many colors are in a design, so a method priced by color count falls through to a value of zero, matches none of your color tiers, and contributes nothing to the price. If you price screen printing by color count, decoration will come through at no charge. Price those methods by area or as a flat price until this is fixed.
On the finished order
The chosen method rides along with the design onto the order and its quote or invoice, where the decoration specs (color count, stitch count, or dimensions) appear on the line item for your production team.
Tips
- Set accurate impression areas on your products. That is what controls the print-area boundary, not the method.
- Keep pricing tiers and quantity breaks current — the studio and checkout both rely on them, and a placement that matches no tier or no quantity break is priced at zero.
- Avoid the color-count pricing dimension until color measurement ships.