Grid templates

What a template is here

A grid template is its prompts. Somebody decides what the board asks (the twenty questions of an About Me: Video Games board, the eighteen types of a favorite-Pokemon board, the years of a game-of-the-year list), writes one short line under every slot, and publishes the board so other people can answer the same questions with their own pictures.

Opening one gives you your own copy with every picture cleared. The prompts are ordinary text, so you can rewrite any of them, add rows or columns, change the palette and the slot shape; the original stays exactly as its author published it. The ready-made boards on this page work the same way, except that nobody made them but the site.

Sizes and shapes

A grid is anything from 1 to 12 rows by 1 to 10 columns. The blank opens at 3x5, fifteen slots, and the quick starts add 3x3, 3x4, 4x5 and 5x5. Ready-made boards use whatever their prompts need: a 4x5 for the twenty about-me questions, a 3x6 for the eighteen Pokemon types, a 6x6 for one game per year since 1991. Changing the size later keeps the prompts and pictures already sitting in the slots that survive.

Each slot is a picture box with the prompt printed under it. The box is square by default; portrait suits posters, covers and character art, landscape suits stills and screenshots, and the whole board switches at once. Four palettes (Slate, Paper, Ink and Cream) set the page, the boxes and the prompt bands together, and an optional caption strip prints each picked item's name over its picture.

Where the pictures come from

The pictures come from the site's shared library, docked beside the board on a desktop and sliding up from the bottom on a phone. It holds packs of game covers, Pokemon, anime and manga art, album covers, film posters, TV shows, board games and book covers, each with its own search box, and an Upload tab for anything the packs do not have. Click a slot, click a picture, and the slot is answered; one picture per slot, no cropping or resizing to do.

A ready-made board opens with the pack it is about already selected, so the About Me: Anime board starts on the anime pack and the board game board on the board game pack. A template you open from this page does the same when its author built it from one pack.

How to use a template

The whole loop is a few minutes for a fifteen-slot board, and the last step is what turns a filled board into something other people can fill too.

1. Open the template. It loads in the editor as a copy that belongs to you, prompts written and slots empty.
2. Rewrite any prompt that does not fit, and add or drop rows if you want more or fewer questions.
3. Click each slot and pick its picture from the library, or upload your own.
4. Download the grid as a picture, or publish it: as a grid, so people see your answers, or as a template, so they answer your prompts themselves.

Publish a template of your own

The scarce part of a good grid is the set of questions, not the pictures. If you have written fifteen prompts that get at what someone actually thinks about a game series, a decade of music or a shelf of books, that board can carry every grid like yours: fill it in or leave it empty, and choose "Publish as template" in the publish dialog. It appears on this page with the pictures cleared, and anyone who opens it answers your prompts with their own.

• Grid maker: the editor itself, with the ready-made boards and the picture library.
• Community grids: finished grids people have published here, every slot answered.

Collect a pool, leave it unranked, and publish it as a template. It appears on this page, and anyone can open a copy. Open the grid maker to start from scratch.