Template Intake and Render Contract (Onboarding)

Template Intake and Render Contract (Onboarding)

1. 01

   Inventory every recurring asset format the client buys before a single template is built

   Pull the last two quarters of creative requests and count distinct sizes, languages, and placements. A retainer that ships 40 banner sizes across 6 markets needs a different template architecture than one shipping 4 hero images a month.

2. 02

   Separate static templates from variable fields and write the field list down

   Name each swap slot (headline, price, product cutout, legal line, locale) and mark which are text, image, or computed. Bannerify-style headless rendering and AppScreenshots-style device mockup sets both fail at scale when a field is discovered mid-campaign rather than at intake.

3. 03

   Confirm the render path: API call, editor export, or manual fallback

   Decide whether generation runs from a CMS webhook, an ad platform feed, or a scheduled batch. Document the fallback so delivery does not stall when a render queue backs up during a launch week.

4. 04

   Lock brand assets into a versioned source of truth with an owner and a date

   Fonts, logo lockups, color tokens, and approved icon sets go into one folder with a named maintainer. Text Logo and NA city icons style libraries show how quickly a shared asset pool drifts when nobody owns the canonical copy.

5. 05

   Set the output spec sheet: dimensions, file weight, color profile, naming convention

   Include the naming pattern that downstream ad ops and CMS ingestion expect. A 3-pixel dimension mismatch or a missing locale suffix turns a 200-asset batch into a manual rework job.

6. 06

   Run a 10-asset pilot and time it end to end

   Measure minutes per asset from brief to approved file, not render time alone. That number becomes the baseline the retainer is priced against and the benchmark for every later batch.

7. 07

   Get written client sign-off on the template set and the change-request path

   State what counts as a template revision versus a new template, and what each costs. Ambiguity here is where scope creep enters high-volume visual retainers.