Free design templates to browse, then swap in your own Mark

If you are looking for free design templates, Gradiently's whole library is free to browse, search and preview: finished layouts for posts, stories, posters, menus, cards and wallpapers, each drawn on a Mark, a living gradient and material background rather than a flat stock image. Putting a template into your own design is part of Pro. What makes them worth a look is one button, Swap in my Mark, which redraws a layout on a Mark you hold so it arrives in your look instead of the one everyone else started from.

This page is about that swap and how to get the most from it. For a tour of everything the template library does, read the full templates guide; if Marks are new to you, start with what a Mark is.

What is free and what is Pro

It is worth being exact, because "free templates" means different things on different sites. In Gradiently, looking is free and building with a template is Pro.

That split is deliberate. Browsing freely lets you judge the library properly, and the Free plan still lets you design from scratch with any Mark nobody has claimed. The plans themselves are laid out in Gradiently free vs Pro.

How to find a template worth starting from

Templates live in Explore. Search with the plain words you would use to describe the job: menu, launch, wedding, hiring, pink. Then narrow the results with the filters.

• Made by separates templates crafted by Gradiently from ones members have shared.
• For groups them by purpose: launches, events, shops and offers, food and drink, quotes and creators, business, wellness and places, occasions and wallpapers.
• Size finds the format you need, from stories to business cards.
• Colour and Look (light or dark) sort them by feel, which matters less than you think, because you are about to swap the Mark anyway.

How Swap in my Mark works

1. 1

   Open the template's page

   It shows the design large, its format and size, the Mark it wears and who crafted it.

2. 2

   Choose Swap in my Mark

   The same layout is redrawn on a Mark you hold. The composition stays; the colours, material, light and type voice become yours.

3. 3

   Compare with Back to its own Mark

   Flip between the two to check the layout still works in your look. Darker Marks and lighter Marks can shift the balance of a page.

4. 4

   No Mark yet? Find one first

   If you don't hold a Mark, Gradiently points you to the Market. Finding and claiming a Mark explains how to choose one.

5. 5

   Use this template

   With Pro, this makes a new design from the template and opens it in the Studio. The template itself is untouched.

A template page also tells you who owns the Mark it wears. You can use the template whoever holds that Mark; ownership only decides who can export with it. That is exactly why the swap matters: your own Mark is the one you can export with.

Why a swapped template stops looking templated

Templated work is easy to spot because most people change the words and nothing else, so the same background turns up in thousands of feeds. On a social post the background is most of the surface. Replace it with a Mark that has exactly one owner, and the most visible part of the design is now something nobody else can export. The wider argument is in template fatigue.

Rotating layouts on one Mark is the quiet trick. Your audience learns the look, not the template, and each post still feels new. Using social media templates well has more on keeping a set consistent without repeating yourself.

Templates in every size

Explore's Size filter covers posts, stories, squares, posters, pins, wallpapers, slides, thumbnails, business cards, banners, headers and link previews. A Mark renders live for each shape instead of being cropped from one picture, so a look that works on a portrait post holds on a tall story and a wide slide.

Once one version is finished you rarely need a second template for another platform. With Pro, Copy to sizes lays the design out again for each format you pick; one look, every size explains how.

Adding a template inside the Studio

You don't have to leave a design to use a template. Open Templates on the Studio's left rail and pick one: it is made again for your Mark at your page's size and lands as a new page after the one you are on. If your design is a single empty page, the template fills it instead. Photos you uploaded stay, and one Undo takes the whole template away again.

This is the fastest way to build a set: a launch post, then a story and a hiring card from templates, all wearing the same Mark from the start. Once it has landed, its pages, layers and text work like any other design. And if you make a layout others could use, you can publish it as a template yourself.