Most elements in the Design Studio hold something you gave them. A text element holds your words. An image element holds your file. Ten elements work differently: they hold values, and they draw the picture themselves from those values. Change the date on a moon element and a different moon appears, because the moon was never a picture in the first place.
This guide is for merchants deciding which of the ten to reach for, and what they all have in common before you learn any one of them.
The three stages every smart element goes through
That third stage is the reason these elements exist. A shopper who types their own city is not uploading a map of it. They are changing one value, and the map is drawn again from that value at the size the printer needs.
Where they live
All ten sit in the same place: the Elements panel in the icon rail on the left of the Design Studio.
Click a tile and the element lands in the centre of your print area, already selected, with its own settings panel open on the left. Avatar is the one exception: its tile opens the avatar maker first, and the layer arrives when you are done building the face.
Every panel opens on Edit, where the values live. What sits beside that tab is not the same for all ten:
| Panel | Tabs |
|---|---|
| City Map, Route Map, Travel Map, Star Map | Edit, Style, Personalization |
| Moon Phase | Edit, Effects, Personalization |
| Elevation Profile | Edit, Style |
| Avatar, Calendar, QR Code, Barcode | Edit, Personalization |
Two of those rows are worth knowing before you go looking for a tab that is not there. Elevation Profile has no Personalization tab because it holds no values of its own: it follows a Route Map layer, so the shopper changes the route and the chart redraws with it. The four on the last row have no look tab at all; Calendar, QR Code and Barcode set their colours on Edit, and an avatar’s face is built in the maker, which you reopen from Edit with Open avatar maker.
The ten, grouped by what they draw
Places
| Element | What it draws | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
| City Map | A styled street map centred on one place | The product is about one location: a home, a wedding venue, a hometown |
| Route Map | A recorded GPS track, with race details | The product is about a run, a ride or a walk that was actually recorded |
| Travel Map | Several places in order, joined by a route, on a map of countries | The product is about a journey between places |
| Elevation Profile | The climb of a route, as a chart | You want the hills of a route beside the route itself |
Sky
| Element | What it draws | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
| Star Map | The stars over one place at one moment | The product marks a date: a birth, a wedding, a first meeting |
| Moon Phase | The real moon as photographed on that date | The same occasion, but you want one clear object rather than a sky |
Data
| Element | What it draws | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar | One month, with a day marked | The product marks a month: a wedding month, a birth month |
| QR Code | A scannable code for a link or text | You want the printed item to lead somewhere |
| Barcode | A retail or inventory barcode | The item needs a code that a scanner reads |
People
| Element | What it draws | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
| Avatar | A built character face | The product is about a person and a photo is not wanted |
What they share
The Personalization tab decides what the shopper can touch. Permission is per field, not per element. On a city map you can let shoppers change the location and keep the style fixed, so every poster you sell still looks like yours.
Each element arrives with the obvious field already switched on and the rest off, so check the tab rather than assuming. A new city map lets shoppers change the location but not the style. A new moon lets them pick the date but not the place. A new star map lets them pick the date, the time and the place.
The Edit tab is the merchant’s starting value, not a placeholder. If a shopper changes nothing, what you set is what gets printed. Set it to something you would be happy to ship.
Caption text can fill itself in. Several of these elements publish their own values as tokens you can drop into a text layer, so a caption reading the city name or the finish time updates when the shopper changes the map. See Auto-filling captions from an element.
They are drawn again for print. What you see on the canvas is a preview at screen size. The file sent to your print partner is drawn again at print resolution from the same values.
City search needs nothing set up
Searching for a city works everywhere, on every plan, with nothing to set up. It reads an offline catalogue of cities that ships with Composerie, so it costs nothing and works with no key. Every element with a location field uses it.
Pinning an exact street address is a different job, and it depends on a geocoding key rather than on the city list. The editor tells you if your account can use one.
Picking between two that look similar
Star Map or Moon Phase? Both mark a date. A star map is a whole sky and reads as a poster from across a room. A moon is one object and survives being printed small, on a card or a mug.
Route Map or Travel Map? A route map needs a recorded track, usually a GPX file from a watch. A travel map needs only a list of places, so it works for a holiday nobody recorded.
City Map or Travel Map with one stop? Use City Map. It shows the streets and has the marker styles and the frame shapes; Travel Map is drawn at the scale of countries and built around the route between places.
Next
Start with City Map: it is the one most merchants sell first, and its settings panel is the pattern the other map elements follow.