Optimize Squarespace Designing with a Theme Reference

You'll probably want to do this before you design your website.

Contents

Intro

Creating a comprehensive theme reference is a crucial step in mastering Squarespace design that many users overlook. While it may seem time-consuming initially, this strategy will significantly improve and organize your design process, ensure consistency across your site, and help you catch inconsistencies before they become problems.

The Power of a Theme Reference

A theme reference is essentially a visual library of Squarespace's design options, all in one place. By setting up a dedicated section to showcase all available themes, you're creating a powerful tool that will:

• Streamline your design decisions by allowing quick comparisons

• Highlight inconsistencies in design elements across themes

• Reveal opportunities for customization you might have missed

• Ensure brand consistency throughout your site

• Save you time in the long run by eliminating constant theme-switching and customization

This guide will walk you through the process of building your own Squarespace theme reference. Whether you're an experienced designer or new to Squarespace, this technique will become an invaluable part of your web design toolkit.

Let's dive in and learn how to create this essential resource for your Squarespace projects.

How to Build a Theme Reference

This method is the one I use before I start applying themes to pages and sections:

Create a Folder in the Not Linked section

• Name it something like "Theme Reference" or “Styles Reference“ (remember, this won't be visible to the public)

Create Your First Theme Page

• Inside the folder, click '+' to add a new page

• Starting with the first them, name it "LIGHTEST 1"

Adjust Page Settings

• In the page settings, turn off SEO

• Disable the page to ensure it's not public

• Note: You'll still be able to see and edit it in the admin panel

Add Sample Content

• Add various sections to the page (e.g., text blocks, images, buttons, forms)

• Include elements you commonly use in your designs

• Ensure you have a good representation of all major content types

Apply the Theme

• Apply the "LIGHTEST 1" theme to each section on the page

• In the example below, I’ve inserted some built-in Squarespace sections and applied each section theme to LIGHTEST 1.

Save, Duplicate and Repeat

• Once your first page is complete, save it, then duplicate it and add it to the folder

• Rename the duplicate to match your next theme (e.g., "LIGHTEST 2")

• Apply the new theme to all sections on this page

Continue the Process

• Repeat for each theme available in Squarespace

• Ensure you maintain consistency in the content across all pages, changing only the applied theme

Your folder should look like this by the end:

Review and Refine

• Once you've created pages for all themes, review each one

• Make sure all content is displaying correctly

• Add any additional elements you think might be useful for comparison

In this example, I applied each section BRIGHT 2. As you can see the text is unreadable, now I can make changes in the site styles panel to fix this across the website that uses this theme. Squarespace has a guide to changing element styles.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you'll create a comprehensive theme reference that allows you to quickly compare how different elements appear across all Squarespace themes.

This resource will be beneficial in streamlining your design process and ensuring consistency across your sites.

It has definitely helped me determine my themes before I go willy-nilly on applying themes that don’t look right. It has minimized the time it takes for me to figure out and fix the inconsistencies, and allows me to provide my clients usable themes for their own purposes.