Consonance ships with a default marketing material template. On any work, go to Data exchange › PDF Exports and click to download.

However, for unique and tailored marketing materials, customise your own templates.

Watch this livestream video for an introduction to configuring your marketing materials.

1. Create a new template

Go to Data exchange & admin › Settings › Export templates › Marketing material templates ⤴. Click Add template. Give it a name and choose either Customise your own multi-work, multi-column, or Customise your own single-work, two-column.

Single-work is for a template such as a tip sheet, advance information sheet or ABI. It contains data from one work. If the content won’t fit on a page, it will flow onto second and subsequent pages.

Multi-work is for a template such as a flyer, catalogue backlist section, or brochure. It contains data from more than one work. If the content won’t fit in the space provided, it will be chopped off, rather than flowing to the next available space.

Click Save and click through to edit your new template.

2. Add data elements

Two regions, Left-hand column and Right-hand column, appear. Click Add elements and use the filter to find your first element, e.g. Product title. Click Edit against the element, to adjust spacing, style, labelling, layout and additional texts. Click Save to see the results previewed on the right of the page. Repeat for all the data elements you want to appear on your template.

Choose a product (single-work) or batch (multi-work) to preview the template for specific records.

3. ‘Customise your own’ layout options

Click to edit this region, and adjust spacing, page size and orientation, colours and bullet point shape. When you are doing a multi-work template, the Page, layout, and colour region also includes options for the number of records to display per page and the number of columns per page. Cover width also determines how much space the cover takes up within each column. The best way to see how it works is to have a play.

4. Images

Create artwork for your banner and footer outside of Consonance, and upload them here. The region provides templates to get the aspect ratio correct.

5. Content tiles

Content tiles are blocks of predefined content that are more complex than the other elements you choose. For the beta release of the ‘customise your own’ feature, there are two customisable ‘content tiles’: reviews, and related works. There are also content tiles that are not currently optional: spreads, and the footer. Adjust the number of reviews, the heading text, and other options in this region.

6. Footer

If you choose not to upload footer artwork, Consonance will default to text. Add that in the Footer region.

Previewing the results

Choose a product (single-work) or batch (multi-work) to preview the template for specific records. For multi-work layouts, if the text exceeds the space available, a red + will appear. This is a link: click on it to be taken to the end of the PDF to read the error note. Amend either the data or the layout of the template until the error is fixed. Use the Show grid? option in the Page, layout, and colour region to temporarily reveal how much space you have.