How to use Locking & Set Brand Restrictions

Have you ever needed to share a design with one of your work-mates, but feared that they are going to stretch the logo, change the fonts or colors to something unsuitable, and make a big, fat mess of your hard work?

You’re not alone. With marketers, sales teams, and other team members required to make visual content at a super-high frequency, more and more [non-designer] pieces of visual content are hitting eyeballs in the wild.

And whilst there is a multitude of DIY design tools out there to create designs on the fly, are you really sure that you want the brand you’ve worked so hard to build exposed to crazy colored text, weird image effects, and a feast of fonts?

Do I hear a ‘Hell, no!’?

But what’s a designer to do? You don’t want to be making all those designs and pesky changes for every teammate that needs a piece of visual content created (and needs it.. now!).

Well, this is where Easil’s locking features can save the day.

Access granular restrictions to control what another member of your team member can edit and not edit within each document, you’ll be able to rest easy that your brand will stay exactly as intended.

Locking and restrictions in Easil can be utilized when sharing designs and creating templates to be used by other members of your team.

Walk through the basics of setting these restrictions in Easil, all without any programming skills!

STEP-THROUGH OUR IN-EASIL TUTORIAL TO LEARN THESE SKILLS

The following 6 skills are all contained in our in-Easil lesson. Click through to interact and learn in the Application.

1. How to Lock the position of an element within your design, so it cannot be moved;
2. How to Lock a design element, and only allow the color of it to be edited;
3. How to Unlock elements in a design;
4. How to lock down a text box to only allow the text content to be edited – restricting changing the font, size, and any other visual edits;
5. How to lock down an image box into place, only allowing the content to be replaced, in the exact same position within your design; and
6. The difference between Element Restrictions, and Document Restrictions.

HOW TO LOCK THE POSITION OF A GRAPHIC

Locking the position of an element such as a text or image box, or a graphic, is one of the most common uses of the restrictions available. Even if you’re not working with a team, it’s handy to know that you can lock down the position of items quickly and easily, in order to prevent accidentally moving them yourself.

1. Select the Graphic or Element that you would like to lock down by clicking on it.
2. Click on the Locking tab in the right Sidebar.
3. Click on the small lock icon next to ‘Size and Position’, and the Graphic is immediately locked into place.

HOW TO ONLY ALLOW A GRAPHIC TO HAVE IT’S COLOR CHANGED

You can allow color changes to graphic elements and text, whilst restricting a member from being able to move, resize, adjust opacity, and so on. This is handy for brand elements and frames, and be used in conjunction with the Document Restriction – Brand Colors only – to reduce the number of colors you’d permit changing to.

1. Select the Graphic by clicking on it.
2. Then click on the Locking tab in the right Sidebar.
3. At the top of the list, you can toggle between Select/Unselect all. Click once to apply the lock to all of the listed options.
4. Then click on the ‘Color’ option again to unlock the restriction, leaving this as the only editing option for the selected element.

HOW TO UNLOCK AN ELEMENT RESTRICTION

Lifting the restriction from an element that has previously been locked is just as quick as applying it! You will however only be able to remove the restriction from a design or template if you have the ‘Designer’ role applied to your Easil profile:

1. Click on any locked element in your Design.
2. Click on the Locking tab in the right Sidebar.
3. Remove any restrictions currently applied by clicking on the lock icon, and changing it to the Unlocked position.

HOW TO LOCK A TEXT BOX TO ONLY ALLOW EDITING OF THE CONTENTS, AND NOT THE STYLING

To keep your documents on brand, you’ll find that you’ll use this permission most frequently! The below steps take you through how to restrict anything other than allowing the user to input new text content:

1. Select the text box you would like to lock down by clicking on it.
2. Click on the Locking tab in the right Sidebar.
3. At the top of the list, you can toggle between Select/Unselect all. Click once to apply the lock to all of the listed options.
4. Then locate the ‘Text Edit’ option, and Unlock the restriction.

Hot tip: Keep an eye on the options available in the top Actionbar. This visually shows you which editing options will be available to team-mates sharing the document.

HOW TO LOCK AN IMAGE BOX INTO PLACE

In this example, we’re going to walk through how to prevent an image box from having any changes applied, apart from allowing a new image to be placed within it.

1. Select the image you would like to lock down, by clicking on it.
2. Click on the Locking tab in the right Sidebar.
3. At the top of the list, click the lock to Select all locking options.
4. Then with the Image box still selected, Unlock the ‘Image Replace’ option. We also recommend this option to allow ‘Cropping’, which allows the end-user to reposition the image within the original image box placement.

With those options placed on every image box within a design, you can rest assured that your design layout will stay in-tact!

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELEMENT AND DOCUMENT RESTRICTIONS

Now that you’ve learned about Element level restrictions, we’d also like to introduce you to Document Restrictions.

Document Restrictions can be accessed via the Locking tab when there are no design elements selected. (Hint: click off to the side of your design to deselect).

Document Restrictions control access to the right Sidebar tabs, and other controls surrounding the design. They include:

SHARING LOCKED DESIGNS WITH TEAM-MATES

Once you’ve locked down your design, you’re able to share with your team-mates via a Draft Design, or via a Team Template.

It’s important to note that any team member with the Designer role can edit and unlock templates. Ensure those team members that are to receive the restrictions are invited as ‘Members’.

ADD ANOTHER LEVEL OF CONTROL WITH APPROVALS

If you have designs that need another level of compliance, you can also opt-in any Team template to go through a Design Approval Queue, that will require a Brand Manager in your team to sign off the design before it can be downloaded by your Team-mate. Read more about that here.

OVER TO YOU

Are you ready to take the plunge with sharing designs with your teammates, knowing that they’ll now be in good hands (or controls)? Send us a message via email or in the application if you need a hand – we love ensuring our users have their designs under control… 🙂