Template for new coffee mug designs?

[BothHands]

I have a logo and web address that will appear on every coffee mug I design.  I found a way to accomplish this, but would like to know if there's a better way.  Perhaps a way to set up a "mug template" that I could use directly for each new mug?

This is what I'm doing now:
1. I created a hidden coffee mug product that contains the logo/website elements 
2. Store  >  Products tab  >  open that hidden product 
3. Select the 'Manage Your Design' button  >  Transfer Your Design 
4. The "Choose a Product" window opens  >  select a blank mug product
5. The new mug product page appears, displaying the intended logo and web address
6. Select the blue 'Edit Design' button
7. Add the intended graphic element(s)  >  Done

Is there a better way?
Thanks,
Tom

[Windy]

I am unclear on what you are asking.

Do you mean you will use your logo and web address on same mug, but will apply different images or text? If this is the case, It's not necessary to do the "transfer to a new design" portion. Just open your hidden product, edit it. After you make the changes, post that for sale.  Your hidden product will remain unchanged and you can repeat the process as often as needed. I do not know of a better way and I too use the hidden product route you have described.

If you are talking about making mugs on different mug products, that's a different story.

[BothHands]

@Windy   Thanks for making that distinction. 

[ EDITED: I deleted my prior comments ]  I just tried your suggestion for modding the hidden mug product.  I saved the modifications to a new product name and it worked!  I'm sure I tried it before, but didn't get the result I was after then.  I think the hidden mug took on the new design elements.  

Based on the experiment just undertaken, maybe in my earlier attempt I failed to choose a new name for the modified public version of that hidden mug product.  Your advice makes for a much quicker process when using the same mug product.

Thanks, Windy.   

[Windy]

Glad that works! I had forgotten, but I do ALSO use Jerry's idea of keeping a file in my images and then I can pop that logo file into a product as needed.. The reason I forgot about this solution, is that I mainly used that logo file on the back of greeting cards, and then Zazzle made a change to the back of greeting cards, making my image not so useful any more. 

[BothHands]

"I mainly used that logo file on the back of greeting cards, and then Zazzle made a change to the back of greeting cards, making my image not so useful any more."

Change is the only constant, and it so often bites.  =]

[JerryLambert]

The way I would manage this is to create one PNG file with all of my logo/website elements, ready for any coffee cup design area, name it "mylogo" and upload it to my image gallery. Then whenever I need to add it to a new coffee mug design in the design tool, I just click on 'My Files' and search for "mylogo" then add it to the new mug. 

If you make the PNG file large enough, you could probably use it on many different products. 

[BothHands]

@JerryLambert   Thanks, Jerry.  That's a quick approach.  My logo is very simple, and I did indeed upload a high-resolution .PNG with transparent background.  But the second-element URL is small type, so I'm a bit concerned about pixelation.  I don't know any way to store a small block of Zazzle vector text among my account files/elements.  If you know a way, please advise.

It's early days in terms of sorting out my standardized design elements, so it's useful for me to keep the raster logo and the vector web address separate.   That way I can continue to adjust them in relation to one another.  Once satisfied, I probably will combine the two into a single high-rez .PNG image file as you suggest.  

I haven't seen an actual printed Zazzle product yet, so I'm still concerned about pixelation of very small type (the URL).  But as you said, an image file at high enough resolution might overcome that.  Whether or not it will probably depends ultimately on the printing technology (ppi) used for Zazzle mugs.  

[Windy]

Make the logo into one file and make the website URL line into another PNG image file. Make that website URL file big, and reduce as needed when you create the mug. If having two steps is what you would like to avoid, then just make the logo huge and apply your URL  text to that logo, nice and large.  Then upload your large logo and URL website image. As far as I can tell there is no upward limit on the size of an image upload.

(I hope I am understanding the issue!)

[BothHands]

(I hope I am understanding the issue!)

You are.  =D   And if the raster image resolution is high enough, I guess that'll avoid pixelation at small print sizes.  As for avoiding two steps, I will indeed combine logo and URL into one image once I'm sure their relative proportions are right. 

OR... just continue with what I have now: a high-rez raster image for the logo, and Zazzle vector text sized correctly for the website URL.   It looks like that'll work well, and now that I know I can modify an existing mug (and name it differently to make a new mug) the process is pretty easy.
As always, thanks, Windy.

[ColsCreations]

If as you say your logo is very simple you could convert it to an .svg, including the web address in it. That way you can scale it to any size large or small as necessary and the web addy & logo will always stay in the same relative position & size to each other if you're after consistency. Bonus is that with the one svg file you can change the colors in it to anything on the fly in the design tool.  (The design tool allows for up to 5 colors in an SVG.) So you could use that one svg on virtually any product, changing the size & color in the design tool as desired for each product. Here's one of my mugs with a 3-color svg in it:  SVG mug example 

Also - you can do as Windy suggested with any published product, it doesn't have to be Hidden. So with the above mug, I could go into Edit on it, change the blue, black and white in the svg to other colors, and then click Sell It to publish it as a new product in those colors. Extra bonus is that those color versions would get grouped together so on the product page, the customer would see color-swatches to click on to choose one of your other color versions.

So yeah, if it's a simple logo and you plan on using it a lot, svg would be the way to go for maximum efficiency.

@BothHands 

[BothHands]

@ColsCreations   I've been working with digital graphics for a long time and have never used an .SVG file.  It's always been a format I "scroll past" in the list of file types.  Thanks for cluing me in to the venerable .SVG.  

I'm using old software, which exports to an .SVG v1.1 file.  My logo is simple line art, and the exported SVG file opened in my old software just fine.  Too good, but then I realized the line thickness does not adjust as I scale the vector image.  When I scale smaller, the lines remain the same thickness, and become too thick.  Also, uploading that .SVG file to Z results in just a black rectangle.  Too bad, as it sounded like a solution.   

Also, two thumbs up on your 'Thin Blue Line' mug.  Thanks for the suggestion.