Clipart Library Settings for WooCommerce Product Designer

Applies to Cmsmart Product Designer (NBDesigner) 2.17.0 · Updated October 2026. This guide replaces the 2020 walkthrough for turning on Pexels photos and Flaticon icons: the settings have moved, the library is far bigger, and the business question worth asking today is different — not "how do I turn this on" but "who should see what."

In short

  • Outcome: every product line shows only the templates, cliparts and icons that fit it, so buyers finish a design faster and nothing off-brand reaches your press.
  • How it works: Cmsmart's global studio library sits alongside your own uploaded templates, fonts and backgrounds, and you decide per product what shows.
  • What it takes: a few settings under the new Media admin group and an optional Flaticon key — no code, no developer ticket.

Most stores that have grown past a single product line hit the same moment: the designer that felt generous on day one now feels cluttered, and nobody remembers which setting controls what. This is the business case for taking twenty minutes to curate it properly, and the tutorial that gets you there.

What does an unmanaged clipart library cost a multi-category store?

An unmanaged library costs a WooCommerce store buyer attention and staff time: Cmsmart Product Designer ships with a large shared clipart and template library, and if every product shows all of it, buyers hunt longer, staff review more designs by hand, and off-brand artwork occasionally slips through to production.

  • Buyers open the designer and the first thing they see is every clipart category your store owns, including ones built for a completely different product line.
  • Staff quietly review finished designs before they go to the press, because nothing stopped a buyer from picking a graphic that doesn't belong on that product.
  • Nobody owns the asset library day to day, so cliparts and backgrounds pile up in the wrong categories and nobody has time to move them one by one.
  • The icon panel sits empty because nobody ever added a Flaticon key, so instructions written for an older version no longer match what's on screen.
  • None of this shows up as a single incident — it shows up as a buyer who gives up mid-design. Checkout friction already drags the average documented cart-abandonment rate to 70.22% across 50 studies (Baymard Institute, 2025); a cluttered design step adds the same kind of friction earlier in the funnel, before a buyer ever reaches checkout.

What would it look like if every product only offered on-brand design assets?

It looks like a design panel that already knows the product: Cmsmart Product Designer shows each buyer only the templates, cliparts and icons the store owner assigned to that product, so the browsing and searching disappears and every finished design already matches the brand.

Example scenario: A stationery shop sells wedding invitations and corporate holiday cards from the same WooCommerce store. A bride opens the online designer for an invitation and sees only wedding-appropriate scripts, florals and templates. Two tabs over, a buyer designing a corporate holiday card sees a completely different, on-brand set of templates and icons — no florals, no clutter, nothing meant for the other product line. Neither buyer scrolls past assets that aren't theirs, and nothing reaches the cart that the shop owner wouldn't want printed.

How do clipart library settings for WooCommerce product designer actually work?

Clipart library settings for WooCommerce product designer work as layered permissions: Cmsmart's own global library can be switched off site-wide or restricted per product, your uploaded templates can be assigned to only the products they belong to, and everything is managed from one admin area instead of being scattered across tabs.

  • Templates (in the plugin): a Template manager lets you build collections and use Assign to products to show a whole collection only on the products it belongs to.
  • Cliparts & Backgrounds (in the plugin): your own uploaded library sits next to Cmsmart's global studio library, which you can turn off store-wide or restrict per product to selected categories only.
  • Fonts & icons (in the plugin): your own font library, plus an optional Flaticon icon library once you add a free API key.
  • One admin home (in the plugin): Template, Cliparts, Fonts and Backgrounds now live together under a single Media menu instead of being split across unrelated screens.
  • A production safety net (in the plugin): once a design is approved, Cmsmart's approved-artwork lock stops further edits to that specific order, and the print-ready PDF that matches the order is generated from the exact file the buyer approved — whatever you change in the library afterward.
  • Store-specific governance (custom development): for rules the standard toggles don't cover, Cmsmart builds franchise- or brand-specific library permissions as custom development.
Clipart library settings for WooCommerce product designer: Templates, Cliparts and Photos panel in the online designer
The online designer's left panel: Templates, Text, Cliparts, Photos, Elements and Layers, scoped to whatever this product is allowed to show.

Cmsmart insight: check every product's clipart whitelist again after a catalog change. We see the same drift on delivery projects: a product launches with the right categories switched on, a new collection gets added months later, and nobody circles back to add it to the whitelist — so buyers can't find assets the shop owner assumed were already there.

Cmsmart order detail timeline showing a design moving from placed to in production
Whichever library a buyer designs from, the finished order lands in the same production timeline, with the print-ready file attached.

What's the business value of curating templates, cliparts and icons?

The business value is measured in design-completion rate and staff time: Cmsmart Product Designer's per-product library settings cut the browsing a buyer has to do and the manual review your team has to run, so more designs finish clean the first time.

BenefitHow it shows up in your businessKPI to track
Faster design completionBuyers find an on-brand asset in the first panel they open, not the tenthDesign-to-cart completion rate
Fewer manual reviewsOff-brand clipart is filtered out before a buyer can ever pick itStaff minutes spent reviewing designs pre-production
Consistent brand across categoriesEach product line keeps its own templates, cliparts and iconsRe-do requests tied to design assets
Lower reprint riskNothing reaches checkout that the whitelist didn't allowReprint rate tied to design-asset mistakes

Rough-cut worksheet: (minutes a buyer spends hunting for the right clipart) × (orders per month) = design-time cost of a cluttered library. Separately: (designs flagged for an off-brand asset per month) × (minutes a staff member spends reviewing and messaging the buyer) = review-time cost you can remove by curating the library per product instead of catching problems after the fact.

Getting this right pays off beyond production costs, too: 57% of consumers say they'll spend more with a brand that offers a personalized experience (Shopify, 2025). A generic, cluttered design step is the opposite of that experience; a curated one is the point of running a WooCommerce product designer at all.

Invitation product page showing Your artwork after the buyer finishes a design
A finished design, built only from the assets this product was allowed to show.
WooCommerce cart line item with Edit design and Upload design actions
However the design was built, it reaches the same cart, with Edit design and Upload design sitting side by side.

How do you set up and restrict the clipart, template and icon library?

You set it up in two places: an optional Flaticon key under Settings → General, then the Media admin group where you choose which clipart categories each product can use, move misfiled assets between categories, and assign template collections to specific products — all without touching code.

  1. Open Cmsmart → Settings → General and add a Flaticon API key if you want buyers to have an icon library inside the designer; Flaticon issues the key for free.
  2. Go to Cmsmart → Cliparts, now grouped under Media, to see your own categories next to Cmsmart's global studio categories.
  3. Open a product's Clipart settings and choose whether it includes the global library at all, or restrict it to selected categories only.
  4. Use the category picker next to any misfiled clipart or background to move it to the right category, instead of deleting and re-uploading it.
  5. Build or edit a collection under Cmsmart → Template, then use Assign to products so that collection only appears on the products it belongs to.
  6. Repeat the whitelist and template assignment for each distinct product line or category in your catalog.
  7. Open the product on the storefront yourself and step through the online designer to confirm buyers see exactly the templates, cliparts and icons you intended.
Cmsmart settings tab bar showing General and Libraries tabs
General (left) is where the Flaticon API key field lives; Libraries is now its own tab further along the bar, next to Printing Options — not folded into Design Tool, where older guides point.
Video thumbnail: managing WooCommerce Online Designer clipart in the backend
Video: How to manage WooCommerce Online Designer clipart in the backend (Cmsmart on YouTube).
Text tool panel with heading and font presets in the Cmsmart online designer
Confirming the buyer's view after setup: the Text panel offers only the heading styles chosen for this product.

What can Cmsmart build beyond the built-in library?

Beyond the standard toggles, Cmsmart builds store-specific library governance as custom development: franchise permissions, ERP-driven categories, licensed-asset checks and vendor-scoped libraries, each fitted to how your business actually organizes its catalog.

  • Franchise and multi-brand libraries: a multi-location or multi-brand store needs every location or brand to see only its own approved assets. Cmsmart builds brand-locked library permissions as custom development.
  • ERP or PIM-driven categories: your product taxonomy already lives in an external system. Cmsmart builds a sync that keeps clipart and template categories matched to it automatically, as custom development.
  • Licensed-asset compliance checks: regulated categories, like safety labels or certification marks, can't risk an off-license icon reaching print. Cmsmart builds compliance checks into the review step as custom development.
  • Vendor-scoped libraries for marketplaces: a multi-vendor storefront wants each vendor to curate their own templates and cliparts without touching anyone else's. Cmsmart builds vendor-scoped libraries as custom development.
  • Custom icon sets: an industry with its own symbol standards needs more than a general icon library can offer. Cmsmart builds and maintains a dedicated icon set as custom development.

Every one of these starts the same way: discovery, a solution design you review before anything is built, build sprints, QA against your real catalog, launch, and ongoing support — the same delivery model behind Cmsmart's ecommerce project work since 2012.

Plan my curated design library

Why work with Cmsmart on your product design platform?

Cmsmart has built and supported the WooCommerce product designer behind this tutorial since 2012, with 6,300+ client projects, 4,600+ projects delivered and 1,800+ live stores running today — the same team that ships the library settings described above also builds the custom work that goes beyond them.

Cmsmart has built and supported the Cmsmart Product Designer (NBDesigner) plugin since 2012, with 6,300+ client projects and 4,600+ projects delivered across 80+ countries; browse related project case studies or the full product designer customization service. Trustpilot rates Cmsmart 4.2 out of 5 from 404 reviews (Trustpilot).

"We have had the NB Designer plugin installed for three years and have experienced absolutely no problems during that time. It is wonderful to see their commitment to continuous development, with new features being added frequently to keep the software current," says a verified Trustpilot reviewer.

Frequently asked questions about clipart and template library settings

Do I have to use Cmsmart's global clipart library?

No. The global library is on by default, but you can switch it off for the whole store or restrict any product to your own categories only, from that product's Clipart settings.

Does the Flaticon icon library cost extra?

Flaticon issues its own free API key; Cmsmart only asks for that key under Settings → General so the icon panel can load inside the designer. Flaticon's own terms govern how the icons may be used.

What happens to an approved design if I change a product's library settings afterward?

Nothing changes for that order. The approved-artwork lock keeps the approved design exactly as the buyer signed off on it, and the print-ready PDF that matches the order is built from that locked file, whatever you change in the library for future buyers.

Can different product lines show completely different template collections?

Yes. Assign a template collection to only the products it belongs to from Cmsmart → Template, and buyers on other products never see it.

How is this different from letting a customer upload their own photo?

It's the other direction: this is about what you supply to buyers who have no artwork of their own. If a buyer already has a finished photo or design file, see our guide to customer photo upload instead.

Can Cmsmart build a fully custom asset library for our store?

Yes. Cmsmart builds brand-locked libraries, ERP-driven categories and licensed-asset checks as custom development — talk to the team through the quote link above, or read how we lock template fields and manage the icon library in related guides.