Studio
Web-based graphic design tool
Product Design
Graphic Design
Completed at
Sticker Mule
Date
2022
Role
Designer
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From Idea to Order: Designing a Seamless Custom Creation Experience at Sticker Mule
Imagine you have an incredible idea for a sticker, a label, or even custom packaging—but you’re not a designer. Sticker Mule wanted to bridge that gap, making it easy for anyone to create pro-level designs in minutes. Our mission? Build a web-based design tool that let users customize templates and order printed products seamlessly. Simple, right? Not exactly. The challenge was making it powerful enough for flexibility but simple enough for anyone to use—all while encouraging users to order more products, more often.
With endless design possibilities, we needed a system that made creativity effortless. The big insight? Everything should be editable. Users needed to tweak text, colors, and layouts without frustration. But we also spotted a hidden opportunity: Most customers weren’t just ordering one item. They needed a full brand look across multiple products. That’s when we had a breakthrough: template families—sets of coordinated designs that worked across stickers, labels, and packaging, making it easy (and tempting) for users to add more to their order.
We had a solid plan:
Make templates ultra-editable. No dead-end designs—every element had to be flexible.
Design with branding in mind. Template families would encourage users to create matching sets.
Keep layouts simple. The best designs wouldn’t need much tweaking—just a quick edit and done.
This wasn’t just about aesthetics—it was about removing friction and making the path from idea to purchase as smooth as possible.
Now came the real challenge: scale. The goal? 200 unique templates per designer, per month. A wild number. But with clear principles in place, top designers hit 150+ quality templates a month—a huge win. But there was a catch: On the front end, users mostly picked from the first page of results. That meant some templates barely saw the light of day, making it harder to measure success. We needed a smarter way to surface the best designs.
Despite that hurdle, the impact was clear. The "edit-anything" approach made designing easy for users, and template families encouraged bigger orders. We transformed Sticker Mule’s web app into a tool that wasn’t just about design—it was about business growth. More users were creating, customizing, and ordering—without needing a designer.
This project proved something big: Principles drive scale. By setting clear rules for flexibility and efficiency, we could move fast without sacrificing quality. And it revealed another truth—great UX isn’t just about design. It’s about how design is presented. If users can’t find the best templates, they won’t use them. That’s a challenge worth tackling next.
So, what happens when you mix smart UX, scalable design, and a little psychology? You don’t just help users create—you help them order more, with confidence. That’s the real win.
