The product

Creatives

A board's finished images, gathered on one page for review. Your agent makes every image with its own tools; Plainpaper keeps each version, frames it in its placement, and puts it in front of you.

Board & Creatives

Every board has two views, and the switch at the top of the board reads Board | Creatives. Board is the canvas, with Full board and Focus on one phase in its menu. Creatives is a gallery of the board's finished images. When your agent has added images since you last looked, a badge on the switch counts them.

The gallery is where you look at the images as images: every size of an idea side by side, at its real shape, before any of them goes into an ad or an email. The cards on the canvas are where those images end up.

Who makes the images

Your agent does. Plainpaper never generates, edits, crops, or resizes an image. Your agent makes each one with its own image tools, such as an image connector like Canva or Ideogram, uploads it, and files it on the board as a creative for one placement. Plainpaper keeps every version, shows it in its frame, and puts it in front of you.

That split is on purpose: you choose the image tools, and the results get checked in one place, against the brand and the brief. Put your brand fonts and colors in Guidelines, and your agent sets type with them.

Copy-paste prompt
On my "Summer sale" board in Plainpaper, make the Early bird images for P&P Bookstore: one for Instagram Stories, one for the Instagram feed, and an email header. Make each one at its own size, use the fonts and colors from our guidelines, and file all three in the board's Creatives under the message "Early bird".

Messages & sizes

Creatives are grouped by message: the idea an image carries, like "Early bird" or "Last chance". Inside a message, each image is one size for one placement: an Instagram Story, a feed post, a TikTok ad, an email header, a web banner. The placements are the frames on the Previews page, plus an email header and a web banner.

Each message shows as one sheet with every size at its true shape on a shared baseline, so a story stands next to a square post the way the campaign will run. Because Plainpaper never crops, an image whose shape doesn't match its placement is shown exactly as it is, and your agent is told to make the right size.

Reviewing creatives

Filter the gallery to New, Not used yet, or Used, or see all of it. The page header says what's there and what needs a look. Open a creative for its own page: the image, framed in its placement with the safe zones marked, the other sizes of its message, its versions, and three actions.

Use in…
Puts the creative into an ad or an email. See Using creatives in cards.
Send back with a note
Say what to change ("Use the night photo, and make the headline shorter"). Your agent picks the note up and makes a new version; while it's connected, the creative says it's working on your note. The fixed version lands ready and clears the note.
Discard
Takes the creative out of the gallery. That call is yours: your agent can't discard a creative.
Copy-paste prompt
Check the Creatives on my "Summer sale" board in Plainpaper. Fix every creative I sent back with a note, and tell me in one line per creative what you changed.

Versions

A new image for the same message and size becomes that creative's next version, and the earlier ones stay. The creative's page lists them newest first, each with a line on what changed: your agent's note, or yours.

A card that uses an older version keeps it until someone switches it. The card says a newer version exists and offers Use the newer version; switching an approved card sends it back to awaiting approval. You can delete a version, and the creative falls back to the one before it, but not a version a card still uses.

Adding your own images

Creatives aren't only your agent's. Use Add images, Add a size on a message, or drop files anywhere on the page (onto a message to add to it). Plainpaper guesses each image's size from its shape, and you can change it. An image for a size the message already has becomes its next version, and Upload a new version on a creative does the same, with an optional line on what changed.

Your own uploads never show as new to you. Your agent sees them and treats them like its own, and it never replaces one without being asked.

Using creatives in cards

A creative is approved together with the ad or email it goes into. Use in… makes a new ad card from creatives, one image per placement, or puts them into an ad or email that already exists, where an email gets the image at the top. Only a ready creative can be used, and an ad takes only ad sizes: an email header or a web banner shows as "Not an ad size" there. Putting a creative into an approved card sends the card back to awaiting approval.

Once used, a creative is drawn on its card in the gallery: the image on top, and the card's type, status, and title under it, one object the way it is on the board. Used in several cards, the others stack behind it with a count that lists them all. A creative on no card stays a loose print, so "used" and "not used yet" read apart at a glance.

Copy-paste prompt
On my "Summer sale" board in Plainpaper, make an ad card from the ready Early bird creatives, one image per placement, write the copy for it, and move it to awaiting approval so I can review the images and the words together.

Approval checks the images behind a card too: a card can't be approved while one of its creatives is built on a photo whose licence has ended. More in Rights & licences.

Images on the board's cards

The gallery ends with On the board's cards: the images placed straight on a card that aren't creatives, labeled by what they're for. They're read-only in the gallery; open one to change it on its card.

In Assets, each board has a folder under Boards that holds its creatives and every file on its cards, and search finds the current version of every creative.