Here’s an existential question for web developers: How much separation should there be between a website’s content management system (CMS) and its design?
For a lot of the DIY services out there (Wix, Squarespace, etc.), just about every facet of a website can be edited visually. Whether it’s content, design or layout, you can tweak to your heart’s content. And you don’t need to understand code to do so.
But, save for some code-free page builder products, WordPress has traditionally stayed away from a full-blown site editor. The theme customizer allows users to change certain aspects of a theme – but only those defined by its developer.
That’s about to change. Full site editing (FSE) will allow the Gutenberg block editor to be used for editing the entire website – theme and all.
This newfangled feature may just revolutionize what is possible with a WordPress theme. With that, I wanted to take an early look at what it can do. Here’s what I found…
Setting up Full Site Editing in WordPress
As of this writing, full site editing has not been merged into WordPress core. It is a beta feature available through the Gutenberg plugin. So, I’ll grab the plugin and activate it first.
Then there’s the matter of finding a compatible theme. Q is the first WordPress theme that supports FSE and will serve as a canvas for this experiment. Having installed and activated the free theme, we can now take a look at what it does.
One other item to note: I’m doing this all on a local install of WordPress. There’s quite a lot to be tested and bugs to be fixed when it comes to full site editing. Therefore, it’s not ready for a production environment just yet. Test accordingly!
Initial Observations
Upon activating the Q theme, there are a couple noticeable differences in WordPress. On the back end, there is now a Site Editor entry on the menu. And when browsing the front end while logged in, an Edit Site link is displayed on the admin bar. Oh, and there’s also a warning notification about full site editing being experimental (we’ll just ignore that one).
The theme itself is pretty barebones – which is ideal. This provides us with an easier path to customize. When you think about it, you probably wouldn’t want to tear down an intricate design, only to build it back up into something else. Less is indeed more.
Peeking Inside the Site Editor
Now, about that site editor. Clicking into it opens up the Gutenberg block editor. But this time it’s more than just a standard blank page. Instead, I now have access to everything – header, navigation (through the experimental Navigation block), content area and footer.
As expected, making changes to any of these items is a matter of clicking into a block and getting to work. Individual blocks can be transformed to something else, edited or even deleted. Blocks can also be repositioned. Placing the navigation menu above the site’s title, for example, was a breeze. The same goes for replacing the single-column title heading with a multi-column layout.
But there’s more. Click on the WordPress logo on the upper left of the screen and you’ll open up the site editor’s sidebar. There, you can view and create theme templates (like the site’s index or posts template) or template parts (such as the header and footer). Note that you can also get to these items through the Appearance menu within WordPress. There’s also a way to get around to the site’s pages, posts and taxonomies.
What’s really nice here is that you have the option to isolate just the template parts you want to edit. If I pull up the header from Theme > Template Parts, that’s all I see in the block editor. But if I’d rather edit it within the context of the entire theme, I can just stay on that initial site editor page.
Creating New Templates
If you’re familiar with the Gutenberg block editor, creating new theme templates will be rather simple. The process is very much the same as crafting any other page or post. Create your desired layout using the available blocks and save – that’s it!
One thing to note is that, at this point, it appears custom templates will need to follow the WordPress template hierarchy naming conventions. That is, the slug of a custom template should match the name of its corresponding purpose within your theme (without the .php at the end).
For example, if you want to build a template to be used on your home page, its slug should be named front-page. Want to target the About Us page (yoursite.com/about-us/)? A template with the slug of page-about-us will do the trick.
The templates are available for download via the settings menu in the upper right of the editor. This allows you to manually save templates to your device and then upload to the server, protecting you from any potential mishaps.
Utilizing Template Parts
As previously mentioned, WordPress full site editing lets us edit and create template parts. This includes the site’s header and footer, but there are plenty of other possibilities.
Template parts can be created and then included into any template via a block. You can also add a template part to a specific page or post as well.
This might come in handy for times when you want to add a specific bit of content across several pages or posts types.
For example, think about a featured posts block that you want to display on both your individual posts and archive pages. Or perhaps there’s a navigation menu that you only want to appear when one or more specific templates are used.
Template parts are a means to set this up without the need for advanced techniques like conditional logic.
Questions for the Future of WordPress Themes
Overall, I felt positive about this experience with full site editing. There is still a long way to go in terms of squashing bugs and improving usability. Theme support is also going to be a big hurdle. But this has the potential to be a very useful feature.
Still, there are some questions that come to mind:
Who Is Full Site Editing Aimed At?
One of the overarching arguments for the Gutenberg block editor was that it was necessary to maintain relevance. Competitors in the DIY market have a more visual approach to building sites and WordPress had fallen behind.
With that, it makes sense that full site editing would be aimed at users who: a) don’t know or don’t want to utilize code; and b) want access to most (if not all) elements of their website.
What’s in It for Web Designers?
There are some benefits. Opening up a header, for example, may allow a client to quickly update a new phone number or address. This could save designers from dealing with very basic changes.
Yet there are going to be some things web professionals will want to lock down. Client-proofing a site is often done to protect against breakage. Layouts and functionality are essentials that we’d rather not take chances with.
Let’s hope that there are ways to easily exercise fine-grain control over what can and can’t be edited in the back end – like the existing theme customizer does. Otherwise, this is going to be one more potential nightmare to worry about.
How Will Full Site Editing Affect the Commercial Theme Market?
This will be fascinating to watch. Right now, it appears that very few themes have even been customized for Gutenberg. They are still relying on third-party page builder plugins for advanced layouts. And some products, like Divi and Beaver Builder, already have their own full site editing capabilities.
Therefore, don’t be surprised if adoption of full site editing is slow. Theme developers are unlikely to jump on the bandwagon until there is both demand and a clear indication of how they can benefit. Not to mention that a lot of existing features will need to be refactored.
In my view, developers will need to implement this in a way that increases flexibility for users while also minimizing risk of breakage. That could take the form of offering premade (and partially locked down) templates and letting users select which ones they want. But we are still very early in the game.
A More Seamless WordPress
So much of the WordPress ecosystem is piecemeal. Grab a theme from here, a plugin from there (and there and there) and try to make it all fit together. This is part of its appeal and has worked remarkably well.
But the design experience hasn’t quite benefitted from that flow. The look and layout of a theme has always been separated in some way. Whether it means hacking templates or using the theme customizer, there is a lot of running around involved.
Love it or hate it, full site editing is a step towards unifying the design process. With it, everything can be crafted in a single location within a single UI. It’s a more seamless experience, and one that should benefit a lot of users.
In my last post, I went over some of the pros and cons of various proposals for making PHP objects more immutable-ish, and the contexts in which they would be useful. I also posted the link to the PHP Internals list, where it generated some interesting if meandering discussion (as is par for the course on Internals).
One of the requests was for sample code to demonstrate why I felt particular feature proposals were better than others. Fair enough! This post is in response to that request, and I think it will help illuminate the challenges better.
For this exercise, I chose to experiment with a junior version of the PSR-7 request object as a concrete example. The code below is not exactly PSR-7; it's a representative sample of portions of a naive, slightly reduced scope version of PSR-7 requests only, and using all PHP 8.0 features available. The goal is not a complete working object, but sufficient real-world representative examples of situations that an immutability plan would need to address.
On this episode of the Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer podcast, I spoke with Mike Rhodes from Web Savvy about Google Ads. Mike is one of the authors of the Ultimate Guide to Google Ads book, now in its 6th edition. Below is the full transcript of this week’s episode. The video is above, on the Hartzer Consulting YouTube Channel, and you can also find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, such as Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Spotify.
Bill Hartzer (00:02):
Hi, this is Bill Hartzer, and this is the digital marketing podcast with Bill Hartzer. This is episode number 47. You may want to check out all the 46 episodes I’ve done in the past. I’ve done episodes on everything from digital marketing, various topics from SEO to PPC, to social media and Google Shopping. But today I have the pleasure of having a Mike Rhodes here. Uh, Mike Rhodes is, is, you know, one of the, uh, uh, I would say the experts on Google ads and certainly Google ads has changed so much over the years, um, and probably, you know, will continue to change. Um, but, uh, welcome Mike, um, to the program this afternoon and episode number 47 of the Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer podcast. So, Hey, um, I’m yeah. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about yourself and your background and you know, how, how you got into doing a Google ads.
Mike Rhodes (01:08):
When I was six, I wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Um, that was all I wanted to do for years and years. And, uh, when I was 20, I actually had the chance to learn to fly. I was actually in Hawaii for the summer. So I learned to fly in Hawaii, went back to the UK, ended up working for the most prestigious helicopter company in Europe that this guy called Lord Hanson, who is good mates with the queen and clients like bill Gates and Michael Schumacher. And I very quickly realized I didn’t want to be a pilot for the rest of my life. Um, crap, money, crap hours, never see your family, great fun flying around, but you’re basically a glorified taxi driver. And I decided, I think I’d rather be the guy in the back drinking the champagne. Um, so I left the UK, um, when it started my first business sold that a couple of years later and moved to Sydney thinking I was semi retired and started helping businesses grow.
Mike Rhodes (01:59):
It’s what I’ve always loved doing. But back then, all of these businesses, particularly, you know, anything smaller than a mid tier corporate, they were doing yellow pages and radio and letterbox drops. And they were just having a hard time getting people in the door. And then I saw this presentation 2004 by this guy called Perry Marshall, who I’d never heard of before. And he was taking the Mickey out of this thing called overture and how clunky their system. Wasn’t talking about this new thing called Google ads and how much better it was. And I just went back hair on fire. Oh my God, this is what all of these businesses want and need to only show up when people are searching for what they’ve got to only pay anything. If someone’s interested enough to click on this little ad and back then, all the clicks were about 5 cents.
Mike Rhodes (02:50):
So it was quite profitable to do so. And I ended up going to business with a mate and we sold a hundred grand’s worth of stuff in three and a half weeks and went, Oh my God, this stuff really works. And then I just started helping more and more businesses trying to teach everybody I knew about this thing called Google ads. Sorry, the sun’s getting very bright here in the morning and Australia coming at you from the future. It’s January the eighth, the seventh, um, beautiful summer’s day in Australia and yeah, and nine out of 10 people said, I don’t really care. I don’t care about whatever it is that you do with this Google-y geeky stuff. But if you could do it for me, for my business, that’d be great. And so web savvy, the agency was born and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 16 years is helping businesses grow by getting more people in the door and taking a completely different, but sort of parallel path, I think to your own because SEO, when I looked at it way back then was confusing to me and I, I loved the, the order and the mathematics of the Google ad side and the, the instant feedback loop.
Mike Rhodes (03:59):
So, um, yes, I know enough STL to be dangerous. I know that you’re an absolute bloody master at that, but that’s not my game. I like, like I like the Google ads and the instant feedback side.
Bill Hartzer (04:11):
Yeah. I mean, definitely. But you know, you have to, I’ve realized over the years though, that you actually do need to optimize landing pages and that there is some part of, you know, part of, you know, some messy, old basics that really haven’t changed. You know, a lot of these SEO SEO basics haven’t changed even when in the nineties with, you know, it comes down to a keyword and optimizing a title tag in a, in a page and having the content on there. Um, and you know, certainly now with, I don’t remember when it was that, um, that Google started actually, you know, in, in this whole process, you know, it’s changed since so much since, uh, 2001 or so when Google started with, um, Google ads, you know, Google AdWords and that, um, you know, that I believe around, I think it was around two, you know, 2006 or 2007, they started to electorally look at not only just the keyword you were bidding on and the ad copy, but also the content of your page. And so you had to kind of, you know, now opt, you know, kind of optimize your page and your landing page. Uh, now it’s, it’s boosting your quality score, um, you know, with, with the appropriate content on the landing page, that that’s kind of the, probably the over-simplified, um, version of that, is that correct?
Mike Rhodes (05:39):
Yeah. I mean, there’s huge parallels between SEO and SEM. You know, the content of the page matters the speed of the page matters more than ever. And I think SEO is we’re the first people to really say, Hey, look, speed is a really important thing. It’s part of the quality score algorithm. Now it’s part as a big part of Google ads and we’re seeing more and more clients that, that focus on speed and get a website sub three seconds. Google will magically go and find more impressions. It didn’t tell you in any of your reports, your impression share numbers, look good, everything seemed good, but when your site is fast or faster, Google will magically find more traffic to send to you. The flip side of that, just like in SEO, if your site is slow, certainly compared to your direct competitors, then Google can say, why would I bother?
Mike Rhodes (06:29):
I will send that traffic somewhere else because I want to give my users a great experience. So you can’t have that anymore. So, so yeah, there’s, there’s a ton of parallels between the SEO and SEM, worlds. I mean the same things effectively matter at the end of the day from Google’s point of view, I want to give someone a great experience, this searching for this thing, which website should I take them to? Not just the one that maybe has, you know, back in the day or those SEO tricks, you know, it’s got the keyword in the title. Google is way, way smarter than that now, obviously, and it understands semantic intendant and all of those things and understand what people are looking for. And obviously it knows more about us than our spouses most of the time.
Bill Hartzer (07:15):
Yes, definitely. I mean, we definitely want to make sure that, um, I mean, one thing we were talking earlier about, you know, it’s actually, you know, is, is the search results themselves. I mean, you know, certainly those have changed, certainly. Yeah. We started off with everybody primarily be being on a desktop, uh, you know, desktop or laptop and Google ads being on the right-hand side. And, you know, if you weren’t in the top 10, um, then you know, then basically, you know, your, your, your ads weren’t showing, I mean, you wouldn’t really get many quicks. Um, and so now it’s now, you know, now it’s really just those few ads at the top. And then the few ads maybe at the bottom of the page, um, depending on, you know, certainly on mobile, um, yeah, that can change as well.
Mike Rhodes (08:09):
Yeah. We’re, we’re one ad can fill the whole screen and yep. Three or four ads above those organic listings probably fill a couple of screens and people are lazy. A lot of people don’t scroll. A lot of people don’t read. So they’ll see that keyword bolded they’ll go. That’s what I was after click. And that’s how Google make money. Obviously. I mean, a lot of you were, you were saying when we were chatting before that most people, and we only really knows the exact numbers and it obviously differs by vertical, but most people are going to scroll past the ads and click on an organic listing. Yeah. Let’s say 20, 25% click on an ad in total, which leaves about 75, 80% on the organic side. And the lion’s share of that obviously is going to go to those top three positions and a huge chunk to the top one.
Mike Rhodes (08:56):
Yup. Um, we were chatting about before the, the incremental benefit to your business, even if you have that all high organic listing of running an ad, even if you’re in position one, you are almost always going to add to your bottom line by having both, you’ve got a perception of leadership. You’re blocking your competitors from bidding on your brand name or whichever other keyword and you’re gathering data, which is what we all live and breathe. Doesn’t matter whether you’re on the free side or the pay side, we want more data. We want to know that we’re getting our clients the best result, not guessing and picking a keyword at random. We want to know that it converts and it converts profitably for our client and puts money in their bank account.
Bill Hartzer (09:40):
Yeah, I mean, and you know, like I said, there’s, there’s not too many biz, you know, not too many opportunities out there. Um, the, where you can actually really start, you know, within, I’d say two or three days, be up and running it, you know, with a, with a brand new business. I mean, literally you can put up your website and, and, you know, let’s say, yeah, the first day, the second day you get your Google ads running, um, and get that traffic. And then, you know, then third day you’re tweaking that, you know, that traffic to get those conversions, um, and you get that instant data, you know, SEO certainly will take, uh, you know, by the time right now, indexing indexing is slow. So it actually could be a week or two by the time, you know, you, you know, or a few days before the indexing actually occurs.
Bill Hartzer (10:32):
And then I’m seeing now with brand new sites, it’s taking a good six to nine months to really start to get some really good traction. Unless of course, you’re, you’re able to start, you know, get that traffic going and getting that traffic going is, are Google ads is through, you know, the D G display ads and the whole ecosystem, you know, Google ECOS that paid ecosystem, if you will, um, you know, from, from shot, you know, shopping to display to, you know, YouTube ads and so forth. And so that actually, you know, getting that traffic yeah. Can definitely get definitely help.
Mike Rhodes (11:14):
And, and, and, and we were chatting before we recorded this, but even then, even at that six, nine month period as your SEO kicks in a lot of people at that point think, Oh, well now SEO is working. Now I can turn ads off. And what I would suggest to your listener is test that don’t assume that not running the ads is automatically going to save you money. Yes, you’re not spending anymore, but you’ve got to have the, the, the mindset of investing, not ending, we’re investing in. If you’re getting a profitable return, then only stop. If you can get a higher return elsewhere, the bank’s going to give you about one and a half percent. These days, if Google ads is giving you a hundred percent on your money, a hundred percent is not a good return in Google ads. It should be, you know, 400, 500, 600% often.
Mike Rhodes (12:04):
If it’s giving you a hundred percent return and you haven’t got any better place to invest it, then I would say, keep investing grow faster. If you can get more traffic, you can test your website faster. You can test your email sequences faster. You can test your author faster. And an SEO and SEM worked really well together. It’s not a, an either or proposition. It’s like, you know, humans and machines Hollywood, and the news media would have it all be like us is the machine. It’s not, it’s smart people working with smart machines. That’s the, that’s the future.
Bill Hartzer (12:37):
Yeah. I mean, definitely, you know, just consider a new blog, post a new, any new content, um, you know, any new products, any, anything that, you know, any kind of, you know, new pages on the site, you know, certainly, um, you’d want to get those in the app. You know, you get those in the, you know, Google ads and get that traffic going, um, and, you know, get, get, get that, you know, get that going. Um, and then it’s also the tweaking and tweaking and changing, you know, with, with conversions and watching that closely.
Mike Rhodes (13:09):
Absolutely. We, we not, I’m sure your listeners will know, you know, changing one word in a Google ad can have a huge impact in the number of people that click similarly, a character in a search term can have a huge difference. Um, Glen Livingstone, you know, I remember him one of the grand masters of marketing from last decade, um, used to use this search, this case study all the time between Guinea pig and Guinea pigs. And there was a three X difference in how people converted. So there’s loads of tools, SEMrush, and others out there that are going to tell you roughly directionally, at least how many people are searching for each search term in your target location every day or every month. But what none of those tools are gonna tell you is how does that term convert for you, given your website, your offer, your particular set of all of those different things.
Mike Rhodes (14:04):
How does that convert for you? Is it a profitable keyword for you and are enough people searching for it that it makes sense to go after from an organic point of view, because correct me if I’m wrong, but for me, SEO is a, is a time and effort, um, industry, right? You’ve got to put the work and you’ve got to create content. You’ve got to make sure you’re on page and all your technical stuff is right. That takes work and people think, Oh, it’s free, but it still costs to, to do that. Right. So let’s make sure we’re doing it for the right things that are actually going to put money in your pocket.
Bill Hartzer (14:38):
Yes, definitely. And you’re definitely gonna see, you know, the other benefit really is, you know, now that we, on the organic side and the SEO side, you know, we don’t have the keyword data. Um, that’s one, the big problem is for SEO’s is I remember, you know, back in, before not provided, you know, we had, we did not have we had all the keyword data. Um, now we just don’t and now through Google ads. So we, in theory, we do, um, you know, we have all the keywords that people clicked on it.
Mike Rhodes (15:15):
It’s, it’s shrinking. It is shrinking. Yes, they, they did that. The not provided what was that seven years ago or something and GA um, under the guise of privacy. Well, they’ve just done a similar thing in it for the last seven years. It’s been, if you pay for it. Yeah. Forget privacy. We’ll give you all of that data. But September the second, last year, they’ve started hiding more of that search query data, even inside of Google ads, about 30% give or take of that data is now disappeared. The insignificant search terms. Well, that was significant enough for you to charge us for them. But, but there’s no point when Jen, um, friends of mine put out a petition to Google four or 5,000 people have signed that petition. I tried to get a whole bunch of people to sign it, but it’s not gonna make any difference.
Mike Rhodes (15:58):
Google aren’t gonna change their mind. You know, there’s nobody in the machine, learning genie back in the bottle, they’re going to continue to hide data from us. We need to, as smart marketers, figure out how to work around these things and work with the machine and stop and moaning that, that Google keep doing these things. We need to understand why going through Google’s a crash course in machine learning. I’d highly recommend to all of your listeners. It’s a free course. Google put all their employees through it, and it will help you think like a machine learning engineer. It’s not going to turn you into a data scientist overnight, but you can start to understand why they do things. And then you can play with the machine much better because you understand why the machine is doing what it’s doing. You understand that it’s fuzzy, that it’s probabilistic.
Mike Rhodes (16:47):
It’s not deterministic anymore. There aren’t a whole bunch of if then rules, which there were in Google right back in, I can search back in the day, they got up to about 4 million rules in 2011. And then when we can’t keep doing this, people are searching for these weird things called mobiles. We think voice will be a thing in the future. Supposedly 15% of the individual search terms that we see every day are completely new. No one’s ever searched for them before. How the hell do we build rules for all of that? So machine learning, here we go.
Bill Hartzer (17:17):
Yes, definitely. So, um, we’re just about, just about out of time here on the, uh, uh, does your marketing with bill Hartzler podcast. So for the, uh, episode 47. So thanks again for joining me this afternoon. How do we get in touch? Um, we didn’t really talk too much, you know, about, um, the ultimate Google ads book. So how do we get, uh, working to find this, uh, you know, the ultimate Google ads, um, what we’re in the sixth edition, right? Is that correct?
Mike Rhodes (17:44):
Oh my God. The Google ads. Yep. Buy it wherever you buy your books. Obviously Amazon Barnes and noble it’s everywhere now. Um, and yeah, together with that, but we give away a three hour video course to, um, if you go to that supplement in the book, you can get that. So it’s me teaching you visually and showing you inside of a Google ads account where all of the things are. If you have any questions at all around Google ads hit me up. I love talking about this stuff. So send me an email mike@websavvy.com.au that’s w E B S a V V y.com.au. Cause I’m here in Australia or find me on Facebook, facebook.com/ Mike Rhodes. Hit me up, ask me a question more than happy to help.
Bill Hartzer (18:24):
Okay. Thanks again. Thanks again, Mike, uh, Mike Rhodes from web savvy.com.au. Thanks again for joining me this afternoon.
Mike Rhodes (18:33):
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Are you struggling to find that particular font that matches your creative vision? Well, you have come to the right place. We have collected fifty beautifully clean free fonts that will hopefully make your search that little bit easier.
You can use all of these free fonts in this collection in both your personal and commercial projects. But please still do check the licenses of each before you use them, as they have been known to change from time to time. Yes, they are all free but don’t let that detract you from the professionalism of their design.
Remember that typography has and always will play a critical and definitive role in how a user/reader interacts with your project. So when it comes to selecting your fonts please do “choose wisely“.
Asfalto is a uniquely grained free font that’s perfect for projects with an urban and gritty aesthetic. Just like it says on the tin: Asfalto mimics the texture of asphalt, and offers all-caps letters with the texture included. It is multilingual and perfect for posters, branding, and more!
Majestika is a clean and majestic brush script. It offers a certain feminine elegance so it’s perfect for projects embodying a similar aesthetic. You’ll get the regular version, as well as Majestika Sans, and 12 pre-made logo templates so you can get to work right away.
Bitter HT is perfect for projects that emphasize messaging, as it’s a highly legible serif typeface. You can even use it for longer copy. It offers extensive multilingual support with Cyrillic and Greek characters, as well as accents. You’ll get 3 versions: regular, bold, and black.
Add vibrancy to your standard designs with Southem, a fun and lively script typeface that mimics the natural handwriting flow of writing with a marker. It’s perfect for posters, logos, apparel, and more! You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters, punctuation, numbers, as well as multilingual support.
Based on the Korneuburg Display typeface, Korneuburg Slab adds a dash of Austrian neoclassicism (and elegance) to your designs. This typeface is free for personal use. And despite its bold strokes, it’s highly legible so you can use it for short paragraphs in addition to headings and titles.
If you need a signature font that absolutely radiates elegance, choose Ansterdam. This free typeface mimics the handwriting flow perfectly and adds glamour with sleek and tall lines. You’ll also get stylistic alternates to elevate your logos, quotes, display and apparel designs, packaging designs, and other branding materials.
Condensed and outstanding, Norwester is a clean display font. This sans-serif offers everything you need for it to become a staple of your go-to design toolkit: uppercase characters and variants, numerals, and punctuation. It will make your message resonate when applied to shorter copy such as headlines and poster content.
Crops is a free and clean sans-serif font. It was designed with minimalism in mind so if you need a no-fuss font for your next design, you’ve found it! You will get 3 versions (regular, light, and bold) with uppercase and lowercase characters, numerals, symbols, and multilingual support.
Geometrically perfect and incredibly legible, Homizio Nova is an elegant sans serif typeface. You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters; all-caps is perfect for large formats, while lowercase characters adapt to longer copy perfectly. You can combine 4 different versions with matching italics to tailor it to your project!
If you’re looking for a free, clean font for your next project, you’ll love Qartella. It’s a sans-serif typeface with a gentle personality which makes it perfect for friendly brands. It’s a great logo font, too! You’ll get 10 fonts.
Alegreya Sans is a humanist font family rooted in calligraphic origins, which will make it beautiful in large versions and legible with longer copy. The family offers 28 fonts in total (from black and extra bold, to light and thin SC); you can use it across projects for beautiful results.
Florest is a typeface that can’t wait to take you on an adventure. This clean and interesting sans-serif offers beautiful flourishes and strokes, stylistic and contextual alternates, and 2 font versions (regular and outlined). It’s perfect for designs that leverage typography to create a unique atmosphere.
Sketchetik Fill Light is a free and clean font from the Sketchetik font family. It’s incredible legible so you’ll have no problems using it for shorter and longer copy alike. With its perfect geometry, Sketchetik Fill Light font is an excellent choice for your next campaign.
A sans-serif with a twist! Gorga is a clean, modern sans-serif that offers a few touches of grotesque typography to create unique results. You’ll get 6 fonts with 3 weights, adjustable ligatures, contextual alternates, carefully crafted multilingual characters, and more. Give it a go (it’s free)!
Ayres is a clean and ornate typeface perfect for display campaigns, logo design, and other branding projects. The free typeface offers ligatures and alternate characters so you can make it your own with just a few clicks. You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as multilingual support.
Are you ready for the future? Orion Pro emulates a futuristic aesthetic to provide you with a clean and free sans-serif typeface. It’s perfect for minimalist headings, as well as big banners. You’ll also get the web font version to make your web designs stand out!
Add some liveliness to your designs with Kari, a free decorative typeface! Kari offers plenty of fun curves and strokes that makes it perfect for fun and friendly brands. You’ll get uppercase characters, numbers, and a few symbols. It works great for logos and designs with decorative typography!
Start a casual conversation with your audience with Southpaw. This script typeface mimics the handwriting flow (and of a leftie, at that!) perfectly while retaining its legibility. It’s fun, modern, clean, and totally free. You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numerals and punctuation.
Help everyone recognize your brand with Sullivan, a big and bold display typeface that’s perfect for brand awareness campaigns, as well as logos and other branding work. You’ll get 3 variations to work with, and each is uniquely layered so you can choose the right effects.
A clean and minimalist aesthetic, the old Exo family redesigned from scratch, 9 weights, multilingual support… Exo 2.0 is an absolute dreamboat, and a free one at that! You’ll love working with this font during your next project, especially if you like adding a twist with typographic ligatures.
Hallo Sans is a versatile and clean sans-serif typeface that works perfectly for web display materials. You’ll get 3 versions: Hallo regular, light, and black. With a combination of slanted lines and the traditional sans-serif curvature, Hallo Sans can be an excellent addition to your standard design toolkit.
A narrow grotesque, Cuprum works perfectly for modern designs and clean, readable typography. It combines slanted, bold, curved, and thin lines across its weights to provide you with the right option for your next project. You’ll get 2 weights with matching italicized versions, and support for multiple languages.
Reimagine your brand’s future with Figa. This free typeface is clean and perfect for decorative slogans, logos, and similar materials thanks to its unique characters. Inspired by retro-futuristic typography, Figa offers a unique take on display typefaces with all-caps characters and doubled lines for a dramatic end result.
Handwritten but still perfectly serif-like elegant, SilverLeaf is a great free typeface. This serif also works as a web font and adds a dash of elegance you might have seen in Victorian typography. The serifs create an authentically gothic feeling, so SilverLeaf is perfect for book titles, headlines, and more!
Neris is a friendly and clean sans-serif typeface that you can download for your next project free of charge. It offers 9 weights (matching italics included) and depending on your choice, Neris can emphasize the boldness of your headlines, or provide an excellent reading experience when used for longer copy.
Helvetica is renowned for being the hipster font, but what happens if we amp up the hipsterness to create stunning materials? We get Hipstelvetica! This new take on Helvetica adds more details, weights (bold, light, and ultralight), and experimental lines that create incredible end results for headlines and logo designs.
If you love Gothic typefaces but bemoan the fact that too few are modernized, you’ll love the free Carrois Gothic font! It looks stunning in both versions: Carrois Regular, and Carrois Gothic SC Regular. You can use it for branding materials, as well as longer and web copy.
Add a dash of mystery to your materials with Dyspepsia, an ornate and highly detailed typeface. It has elements of Romanesque and Gothic typography that offer beautiful results for book covers, shorter headlines, and logos. You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters, special accented characters, numerals, symbols, and punctuation.
Inspired by art deco and elevated by modern geometry, Sifonn is a great choice for your next design project. It offers all-caps characters, as well as plenty of alternates, ligatures, and more! You can create some truly unique results with stylistic alternates. If your brand is timelessly elegant, download Sifonn!
Esqadero is a modern sans-serif display typeface with extensive support for the Cyrillic alphabet. Thin and slanted lines make it perfect for headlines, posters, branding, and more, while it retains its legibility. You’ll also get stylistic and contextual alternates to create unique results with this versatile, free typeface.
Lousiane is unique in every sense of the word. It boasts flowery ornaments, gentle and feminine ligatures, and an overwhelmingly beautiful art nouveau aesthetic. It’s perfect for branding designs (logos, product labels), but it’ll stand out in headlines and quotes, as well. Download it for free!
Born might be based on traditional calligraphy, but its humanist presentation is incredibly modern. This makes it an excellent clean and free typeface for your standard design kit. You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters, alternates, ligatures, numbers, symbols, punctuation, and more! Embody tradition and supreme elegance with Born!
Tryst is a modern serif that shines across graphic design formats. You can use it to craft elegant and sleek headlines, feature it on your posters and product designs, and everything in between. Uppercase characters are incredible legible, while lowercase characters have strokes that make them unique on large displays.
Who said slab-serifs couldn’t look modern? Gaspar defies expectations and brings you 2 versions (regular and bold) with matching italics that work beautifully for headlines and titles, as well as posters and body copy. It’s an excellent alternative to traditional slab-serifs which sacrifice legibility for ornateness.
Just like the material, Corduroy is a reliable slab-serif inspired by vintage (think: Wild West) typography. With its all-caps presentation, Corduroy is great for headlines, logos, apparel, posters, and other branding designs. You’ll also get numerals and punctuation to make the typography in your designs capture your audience.
Emulate the spirit of Bauhaus and early modernism with Corbert. This modernized sans-serif typeface is perfect for crafting clean headlines and titles, as well as posters with a bold message. You’ll get Corbert condensed regular and Corbert condensed italic in the free download, so give it a go!
Professional and succinct, Verb is an excellent workhorse typeface that you can add to your design kit for free. This sans-serif is a part of the Verb family, and you’ll get two fonts free: Verb condensed regular and italic which are perfect for both shorter and longer copy.
Dense is elegant, geometric, and compact, making it the perfect typeface for graceful brands. The regular weight is free. It is perfect for shorter copy such as headlines or short paragraphs, as well as display campaigns and other branding materials where you want your message to be front and center.
Canter is an exciting sans-serif typeface with all-caps glyphs. It’s perfect for showcasing elegance, and some of its other weights are great at grabbing attention in larger formats, too. You’ll get 6 free fonts (from bold 3D, to outline and strips) with fantastic and dramatic effects.
Just like the WWII aircraft that inspired the name, Anson is reliable and powerful. This sans-serif offers a combination of ramrod-straight lines with slanted elements. It’s perfect for technical industries, and legible even when applied to longer paragraphs. You’ll get both cases, numerals, punctuation, and more.
Sabado is a free and clean font family inspired by Swiss typefaces. While it’s a sans-serif, it adds enough dynamism to not only be perfectly legible, but striking in large formats like posters, as well. You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters, accented characters, numbers, and punctuation.
Marta is a friendly serif font family that will look beautiful in body copy, as well as posters and other branding materials. Not only is it legible, but it offers unique twists to help you create incredible typography (ornaments, ligatures, and more). It also supports the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.
Baron draws inspiration from both classic sans-serif typefaces and art deco elements added for a unique twist. It’s an incredible clean and descriptive typeface that you can download for free. Since it’s an all-caps font, lowercase characters trigger unique alternates. Use Baron and wow your audience!
Create an industrial atmosphere of progress and innovation with Fairview, a condensed sans-serif. You’ll get both uppercase and lowercase characters, each offering unique glyphs that contribute to Fairview’s signature aesthetic. Fairview mimics early computing typefaces, so it’s perfect for design projects related to tech!
Bebas Neue re-imagines the well-known Bebas Neue font family with additional weights, some of which you can download for free (bold, book, light, regular, and thin). The sans-serif font family is perfect for legibility and friendliness, so use it for similar projects and you’ll certainly amaze your audience.
Barokah is a fun and free handwriting font. It was inspired by our pet peeve Comic Sans typeface, but only in terms of fun and friendliness. Barokah is perfect for comics, headlines, posters, and similar designs. You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numbers and punctuation.
Clean, legible, and perfect. Fira is a sans-serif typeface with plenty of font weights and a Fira Mono variation for all kinds of projects. Use the lighter and thinner versions of Fira for great web readability, and the bolder variations for standout poster typography. You’ll love every character!
Quirky Nots is exactly what it says on the tin: quirky. A fun, handwritten font, Quirky Nots is perfect for friendly brands and their marketing materials; from logos, to posters and apparel. You’ll get uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numerals, punctuation, and various special accented characters.
Kaiju is an excellent display typeface inspired by art deco and other editorial typefaces. It works best for logos and short headlines, especially when paired with different textures. You’ll get 2 Kaiju versions free: regular and bold. The combination of thick and thin lines makes for incredible typography!
When professionalism matters, it’s time to turn to the experts. But don’t think that means hiring a video producer and breaking the bank. Instead, use a professional intro video template for After Effects to set the stage.
You could use professional video templates for many purposes, like:
Start off a company town hall or event – give a preview or build energy with a polished intro.
Create a project proposal – before you meet with clients, use a professional video to make pitch. This can prepare your colleagues for a successful meeting.
Describe a business case – maybe you’re teaching a class or training session and covering a business case. Use a professional video intro to describe the details.
In this article, you’re going to see 10 of the best professional intro video templates for After Effects. These templates help you create videos without having to design everything. They’re all professional and ready for the board room.
The best intro template effects have a few things in common: they’re exciting, they’re stylish, and they’re easy to build. Modern Intro handily checks those three boxes, delivering powerful modern style in a stunning template. It’s versatile enough to support any project, but flexible enough to quickly adapt to your needs.
Featuring full HD graphics, this one looks great on any display. It uses a complete set of placeholders, into which you can quickly drop all of your own custom content. Whether you’re sharing photos or videos, you can style them in a flash, thanks to this Adobe effects intro.
If you frequent YouTube, you’ve seen plenty of videos that focus on typography. These videos are a great reminder that going viral doesn’t require hours of recorded footage. With the help of this typographic intro, you can tap into the best text animations to create a kinetic intro of your own.
All of the text placeholders you see in this preview are easy to update by just typing over the placeholders. Once you’ve done that, you can pair your work with an energetic background music track. It’s the perfect way to build an engaging text intro with just a few clicks.
Set the tone for a high energy corporate video with a stomp! You could use this intro to kick off an event. The perfect dynamic opener, it’s sure to fire up your audience and keep them focused as you share your big ideas. It delivers maximum energy in a fast-paced package.
A strong opener is a surefire way to deliver a successful message. Modern video templates like this help you build out spectacular openers in moments. After all – you’re trying to energize your audience, and there’s no reason to spend forever doing it.
As you choose the best intro template for your next project, it really pays to find a flexible option that you can quickly tailor to your specific needs. Intro effects like this one deliver exactly that, in a versatile pack full of elegant style. With timeless design elements, Classic Intro will never go out of fashion, and it looks right at home in any video.
Simply download the template, then drop in your own content. Whether you’re making a standalone short clip, or kicking off a big production, you’re sure to make a great impression with any audience.
Here’s another text-focused After Effects intro template with a different style. This intro template is easy to pair with a few photos or solid color slides. Throughout it features an abstract design aesthetic reminiscent of modern art. Classic retro styling seamlessly merges with modern elements to form a truly unique set of intro text effects.
Plus, always keep in mind that you can use a template like this for more than just an intro. It can also serve as a great set of text overlays, or a sleek transition between clips. The choices are truly all yours.
You’ll see glitch effects in practically every sci-fi or futuristic video. It gives a viewer the sense that the scene is slightly out of control and unpredictable. These effects are popular because they do one thing really well: command attention.
Even though this template is jumpy and glitchy, it’s polished and sharply produced so that it works well for a professional video as a way to get attention quickly. And it looks right at home in a film trailer or music video opener. Custom-built to grab viewer focus, it’s the ideal solution if you need to engage viewers right out of the gate.
Pictures might be worth a thousand words, but some text can really tell stories on their own. That’s exactly what you can do with Creative Intro, a powerful set of text effects to jumpstart your next video project. Dynamic and fast-paced, it’s easily adaptable to titles, intros, trailers, and much more.
Various background options are ready to serve. You might use an image, or opt for a solid backdrop. Either way, the handcrafted text overlays perfectly complement your choice. To enhance the impact, be sure to pair the titles with a rhythmic musical score for an unforgettable result.
By nature, the fashion world demands designs that are in style. Audiences will appreciate the fact that you stay up-to-date with the latest trends. Viewers always appreciate the fact that a video intro is in touch with popular culture. For you, that means instant credibility and a happy audience.
In total, you’ll find 10 image and 7 text placeholders in the pack. Each one is quickly customizable with just a few clicks. No matter what type of content you have to share, it will all benefit from the highly fashionable style found only in this sleek intro template for After Effects.
Think back to the best intro openers from your favorite films and TV shows. What do they have in common? Likely bright styling, memorable images, a fast pace, and a catchy musical score. Capture these essentials in your own opener, courtesy of Stomping Intro, a truly unforgettable (and quick to edit!) template.
Beyond its winning style, this one also delivers another key feature: flexibility. Not only is it the perfect show opener, it’s also long enough to work great as a standalone promo clip. Choose either one, or build a matching set to attract viewers and keep them watching through the credits.
Live presentations, business events, and lectures require a special kind of introduction. Specifically, it’s very helpful to introduce participants by name, with a photo and a few key details included alongside. This intro effects template is custom-built for that very purpose. Use it for your next documentary, or play it on stage before a live event.
Customizations are made simple with built-in features. For example, you can quickly change out the color scheme in just a few clicks. That’s extremely helpful, especially if you need a video matching your own branding. However you style it, it’s the perfect intro for your guest speakers.
Start Using Professional Intro Video Templates Now
Many professionals repeat the same idea: “fake it until you make it.” It’s a mantra for many business professionals rising the ranks to success. For video producers, it means creating a production while leveling up your skills. In the meantime, you can leverage pre-built templates.
Start your professional video on a strong note. Even if you aren’t an Adobe After Effects pro, you can create a video that shows your expertise. Use a template, add your details, and press export. That’s all you need to create a professional video intro of your own.
