Design and themes
A gallery's look is built on the Layout tab from four independent controls: Cover layout, Typography, Colors and Grid. There is no list of preset themes to pick from. You combine the four, and the combinations are what make galleries look different from each other.
On a wide screen the real gallery previews beside the controls, with desktop and mobile preview buttons under it. Changes save on their own a moment after you stop clicking, and the preview reloads to match.
The cover image
The card at the top of the sidebar, under Cover Image, is your cover. Click the pencil on it and Choose cover image offers two routes:
- Pick from gallery, which opens Select cover, a full-screen view of every photo in the gallery.
- Upload from your device, for a cover that is not one of the delivered photos. JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF or GIF, up to 5 MB.
The second button on the card opens the focal point picker. Set the focal point on the part of the image that matters. That part then survives the crop on every screen shape and every cover layout. Worth doing whenever a face sits near an edge.
You can also set any photo as the cover from its ⋯ menu in the Chapters tab.
Cover layout
How the opening screen presents your cover image. Fourteen options, each shown as a small preview tile:
Frame · Folio · Window · Qatar · Outline · Editorial · Postcard · Exhibit · Showcase · Split · Fade · Grand · Spine · Proof
They differ in how much of the image you see, where the title sits, and how heavily the image is framed. New galleries start on Frame.
Try a few with your actual cover image. A layout that suits a wide landscape can ruin a tight portrait. Watch the mobile preview too.
Typography
Fourteen sets, each pairing a heading and a body face. Every tile shows the set's name in its own heading face, so you are looking at the type itself rather than a label.
| Set | Feel |
|---|---|
| Vogue | High fashion |
| Serif | Classic and literary |
| Bodoni Moda | Sculpted and poised |
| Pinyon Script | Romantic calligraphy |
| Refined | Quiet luxury |
| Timeless | Light and airy |
| Editorial | Magazine italic |
| Josefin Slab | Airy geometric serifs |
| Modern | Sophisticated and spaced |
| Syncopate | Wide architectural letters |
| Warm | Soft and organic |
| Sans | Clean and quiet |
| Statement | Bold and modern |
| Instrument Serif | Expressive and intimate |
New galleries start on Refined. Pick one and stay with it across your galleries, so your deliveries look like a set.
Colors
Nine color sets:
Porcelain · Champagne · Blush · Sienna · Dune · Sage · Eucalyptus · Harbor · Onyx
New galleries start on Porcelain, which is plain white. Onyx is the dark one: it makes color-rich images sing, and it can overwhelm delicate ones.
A quiet set almost always serves the work better than a strongly colored one. It leaves the photographs as the loudest thing on the page.
Grid
How the photos are laid out, with two controls:
- Image size: Regular or Large
- Spacing: Tight or Relaxed
New galleries start on Regular and Tight. Large with relaxed spacing gives each photo room and suits a curated set. Regular and tight suits a big delivery where the client is scanning for what they want.
Putting it together
Start with the defaults, which are deliberately quiet, then change one thing at a time and look at the result.
Here is an approach that works for most people. Pick a color set and a typography set you will use for every gallery, and vary only the cover layout to suit each cover image. That gives you a house style people recognize, without redesigning every delivery.
Previewing
The panel beside the controls is the real gallery, so it is a fair preview. Switch it to the mobile view before you sign off. Most clients open galleries on a phone, and a cover layout that is magnificent on a laptop can put the title over a face on a narrow screen.
For the full experience, including the access screen and the action bar, use Preview in the gallery header. That opens the live gallery in a new tab with a thin bar at the top reminding you that you are viewing as the owner.