Creating social media graphics with the Graphics editor

The Graphics editor is a built-in design studio for making branded images for your social media — event posters, offer announcements, closure notices and more — without leaving BookingNinja or opening a separate design app. It works like a simplified Canva, with a big advantage: it can pull real information straight from your venue, so a poster for a session fills in its own name, date, time and booking QR code automatically.

Finding the Graphics editor

You'll find it in the left-hand menu under Marketing → Marketing Graphics. This opens your Graphics Library — the home page for everything you've made.

The Library at a glance

Every graphic you create is saved here as a card, newest first. Each card shows a preview, a status badge, and buttons to work with it:

• Create New (top right) — starts a brand-new graphic.
• Edit — reopens a graphic in the editor.
• Download — appears once a graphic has been finished and exported (see Saving vs downloading below).
• Trash icon — deletes the graphic for good.

The status badge tells you where each graphic stands: Draft (still being worked on), Rendering (an image is being prepared), Rendered (finished and ready to download), or Failed (something went wrong — just reopen and try again).

Starting a new graphic

Click Create New and the editor opens full-screen with a Choose a Template window.

You have two ways to begin:

1. Pick a template — browse the ready-made designs, grouped by shape (Square for feed posts, Story for Instagram/Facebook stories, Landscape for wide banners). Click one, then click Use Template.
2. Start from scratch — click Blank Canvas for an empty design you build yourself.

Your own saved templates appear at the top under My Templates, and previously saved designs live on the My Designs tab.

The editor, explained

Once you're in, the screen has three main areas:

• The tool rail (far left) — every tool for adding and styling content: Templates, Text, Shapes, QR code, Draw, Photos, Brand Kit, AI, Generate, Background, Filters, Data, and Uploads.
• The canvas (middle) — your design. Click anything to select it, drag to move it, and drag the handles to resize.
• The panel (right) — has two tabs. Design shows the settings for whatever you've selected; Layers lists everything on the canvas so you can reorder, hide or lock items.

Along the top you'll find your document name and save status, the Size selector, Undo/Redo, the zoom level, Save, and the Download button.

Linking to a session (and other live data)

This is the most powerful feature and the main reason to design here rather than in an outside app. Instead of typing your event details by hand, you can link a graphic to a real piece of your venue's data so the design fills itself in — and stays correct.

You can link a graphic to four kinds of data:

How to link a session

1. Click the Data tool in the left rail.
2. At the top, choose a Data type — for example Session / Event.
3. Under Data source, you'll see a list of your actual sessions. Click the one you want. It shows Linking… for a moment, then a checkmark.
4. The Fields list below now shows everything available from that session — Headline, Subtext, Date / Range, Time, Call to Action, Booking QR, Venue Name, and more.
5. Click any field to drop it straight onto your design, already connected to the live value. You can also drag a field onto the canvas.

Once linked, those elements show the session's real details. If the session's time changes later, your graphic reflects the new time the next time it's opened and downloaded — you don't redesign anything.

Preview vs edit mode

While designing, a linked text box may show its field tag (like {{headline}}) rather than the real words. That's normal — it's the editing view. Use the Preview data toggle in the top toolbar to flip between seeing the tags and seeing the finished, filled-in result.

Repeating lists

Some data comes as a list — a session's upcoming dates, or a wall of recent reviews. These appear as a list field. Adding one creates a Repeating block that automatically lays the list out for you, row by row, with controls for Layout (List, Row or Grid), how many items to show, and the spacing between them.

Adding and styling content

Text

Click the Text tool and choose Add a text box, or one of the quick presets: Add a heading, Add a subheading, or Add body text. Double-click any text to edit it. With text selected, the Design panel lets you change the font, size, weight, colour, alignment and spacing — and even curve the text into an arc.

For instant results, open the Text Styles presets and click a look — Neon Glow, Gold, Chrome, Comic, Sunset and more — to style your text in one tap.

Shapes and drawings

The Shapes tool adds a Rectangle, Circle or Line. The Draw tool lets you draw freehand or use the pen tool to create custom shapes. The Generate tool adds decorative organic shapes like blobs and waves to liven up a background.

Images and photos

The Photos tool is your image hub. From here you can:

• Open your Asset Library to use images you've uploaded or your store logo, background and header.
• Search free stock photos from Pexels and drop them straight in.

With an image selected you can Crop it, apply a Mask to frame it in any shape (circle, heart, star and 20 more), change how it fills its frame with Fit Mode, and even Remove background to cut the subject out automatically.

Filters and effects

Filters are visual effects you can apply to a single image, a piece of text, or the whole canvas at once. There are around 70 of them, ranging from a subtle polish to a complete transformation.

Here's how to add one:

1. Select the image or text you want to change (or click empty canvas to affect the whole design).
2. Open the Filters tool and click Add filter.
3. Choose an effect from the Choose a filter... list.
4. Fine-tune it with the sliders and colour swatches that appear beneath it.

Effects stack — add as many as you like and they combine, applied from the top of the list down (so the order can change the result). Every effect in the list has a checkbox to switch it on or off without losing your settings, and a trash icon to remove it completely.

What's available

There's a lot to explore. A few examples grouped by the kind of look they give:

• Everyday polish — Blur, Glow, Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Vignette, Colour Adjustment, HSL Adjustment, Colour Overlay, Colour Tint, Grayscale
• Retro and film — Old Film, Film Grain, VHS Distortion, CRT Monitor, Scanlines, Glitch, RGB Split, Chromatic Aberration, Duotone, Posterize, Solarize
• Print and comic — Halftone (CMYK), Comic Halftone, Dot Screen, Cross Hatch, Pop Art, Ink / Woodblock, Blueprint, ASCII
• Artistic — Watercolor, Oil Painting, Pencil Sketch, Neon Edges, Emboss, Kaleidoscope, Voronoi Mosaic
• Text finishes — Gradient Fill, Chrome / Metallic, Long Shadow, Letterpress, Hollow / Outline Only, Striped Fill, Sparkle / Glitter, Distressed, Bevel, Outline
• Distortion and light — Bulge / Pinch, Twist, Fisheye, Motion Blur, Radial Blur, Zoom Blur, Shockwave, God Rays, Bloom, Tilt Shift, Frosted Glass

The same filters work on both images and text, so you can give a headline a metallic Chrome finish or a photo a soft Watercolor wash.

Heavier artistic effects like Oil Painting, Watercolor and Long Shadow do a lot of work behind the scenes, so they can take a moment to appear on a large design.

Backgrounds

The Background tool sets the backdrop for the whole canvas — a Solid colour, a Gradient (choose a preset or build your own), or an Image from your library.

Your brand

The Brand Kit tool keeps your venue's identity in one place: your Logo, your Brand colours, and your Brand fonts, ready to drop in with a click. You can also upload Custom fonts (TTF, OTF, WOFF or WOFF2) so your own typefaces are always available.

QR codes

The QR code tool creates a scannable code for a website, WiFi details, contact card and more. The quickest option is Use my booking page, which fills the code with your booking link so customers can scan straight through to book. Style it if you like, then click Add to design.

AI image generation

The AI tool creates a custom image from a description. Type what you want — for example "a warm illustration of a brunch table" — pick a style if you'd like, and click Generate image. The result drops onto your canvas.

Sizes and Magic Resize

Use the Size dropdown in the top toolbar to switch between Square, Story, Landscape, Gift Card or a Custom size. When you change size, Magic Resize rearranges and rescales everything to fit the new shape automatically — so you can turn a square post into a tall story without rebuilding it. It counts as one step, so Undo reverts it if you don't like the result.

Saving vs downloading (the one thing to remember)

These are two different actions and it's the most common point of confusion:

• Save keeps your editable design so you can come back and change it later. It does not put a file on your computer.
• Download exports a finished image file (PNG, JPEG or PDF) to your device, ready to post.

For the sharpest, cleanest result, download as PNG.

Handy keyboard shortcuts

The editor supports the shortcuts you'd expect from a design tool. On Windows use Ctrl; on a Mac use Cmd (⌘).

Tips

• Start from a template and swap in your own text and photos — it's far faster than a blank canvas.
• Link the session first, then design around the fields, so you're working with real details from the start.
• Jump straight into a matching graphic from a session or a venue closure using their Create graphic links — the editor opens pre-set for that item.
• Use Magic Resize to make one design in every size you need for different platforms.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to link a session? No. Linking is optional and only useful when you want a graphic to reflect real venue data. For a general announcement, just design it normally with your own text.

I saved my graphic but I can't download it — why? Saving keeps the editable design; it doesn't create a downloadable picture. Use the Download button in the editor to export an image file. Once you've done that, a Download button also appears on the graphic's card in the library.

Why does my text show {{headline}} instead of the real title? That's the editing view of a linked field. Turn on Preview data in the top toolbar to see the finished result with real values filled in.

Will my graphic update if I change the session later? The design pulls fresh data each time it's opened, so linked fields reflect the latest details. But because the specific session isn't permanently stored with the graphic, the safest habit is to download your final image while the correct session is linked.

Which file format should I use to download? Use PNG for the crispest, highest-quality image — it's the best choice for social media. JPEG and PDF are also available if you need them.

Can I reuse a design I made? Yes. Save it as one of My Templates (via Save as template), or reopen any past design from the My Designs tab and tweak it.