The Silent Step enables allows you to add extra uneditable elements to your products without prompting the user to make any selection for it, in other words, it allows you to add design elements ‘silently’. This is commonly used on personalized products where a brand or product owner wants to maintain branding control or to create set designs with only a few personalisation options for any particular product. As the user cannot interact with this step, it does not render in the workflow/step selection window on the right (See below). The user cannot interact with the step in any way in most circumstances.

Adding Steps

Let’s start by adding our new step. Navigate to your applicable workflow and scene within, and simply add a “Silent Step”.

Silent Step Config

Unlike other step types, the config section of the Silent Step lacks a majority of the common, more universal step configurations. In this step, we only have access to an asset upload, as well as an ‘Exclude From Print’ toggle.

Adding a Silent Step Asset

To use your Silent Step, you first need to attach an asset to it. Formerly dubbed the ‘Silent Illustration Step’, the new variation of the step allows you to use either Image assets, or illustration(vector/SVG) assets.

Exclude from Print

As explained in the name of it, the ‘Exclude from Print’ toggle disables this silent asset from being applied to the final receivable files that you use to produce the product. This is especially helpful for cases in which you already have print stock that features the same design elements shown to the customer in this step. For example, you may have a wine bottle label stocked up for your products that have designs applied to them already, maybe featuring specific blank space. You may only wish to print the customer’s personalised elements, such as text or image uploads onto this existing stock for example. This toggle enables that functionality.

Silent Step Options

Unlike most other Step Types, the Silent Step lacks an ‘Options’ tab in its settings. This is an extension of the behaviour of the Silent Step wherein it only uses one asset, added in the ‘Config’ panel.

Silent Step Regions

Typically we recommend that images or illustrations used for silent steps are created (and exported) with the overall size of the design/panel in mind while keeping its position, scale, and rotation relative to this overall size. In this case, the region size for your silent step can simply be set to the panel size, and you won’t need any X or Y position changes. Read more about ‘Regions’ here.

Silent Step Examples

Your Brand Name – Where the name of your product needs to appear in a fixed position to maintain brand integrity. 
Label Details – The user can input the name or an image logo but can’t change the base label to maintain brand integrity, though using a Product Overlay Step would be ideal for this case. 
Set a Defined Background – Where the artwork for the background is a fundamental part of the product design and shouldn’t be changed.