Why Add Nine More? The Gaps We Wanted to Fill
When you've already got 51 templates, adding more is not about the headline number. It's about coverage. We looked at what the existing collection was missing and asked a simple question: what kinds of documents could the catalogue not handle well today? Three groups of answers came back.
The first was content with a strong creative identity that needed dedicated typography: recipes, screenplays, comic scripts. The second was bold and visual aesthetics that nothing in the previous catalogue captured: tattoo flash, jazz club posters, watercolour art. The third was niche but useful settings: coffee shops, detective files, Western saloons. Nine in total, three from each group, all aimed at filling real gaps rather than padding the count.
Every template includes a hand-picked font pairing, a colour palette designed to work in both light and dark mode, and proper line spacing. Apply it once and your document picks up the entire aesthetic in a single click. No tweaking required unless you want to.
Templates are professional design, automated
Each template combines a body font, a heading font, sometimes a subheading font, colours for primary text and accents, line spacing, and weight rules. Together those choices form a design system. Templates let you borrow a fully-formed design system in one click rather than having to choose every single piece yourself.
The First Three: A Creative Trio
Kitchen Recipe
CookbookBest for: recipes, food blogs, cookery notes, meal-planning documents, anything you might find in a well-thumbed family cookbook.
What it looks like: warm cream paper, deep wine-red headings in a flowing cursive (Caveat), warm coffee-brown body text in Lora. Mustard accents pull the eye to key ingredients and steps. It feels exactly like the printed cookbooks people actually love.
The font pairing: Lora for body, Caveat for headings, Lora again for subheadings. The cursive heading gives the personal-cookbook feel, while Lora keeps the recipe instructions clear and easy to scan.
Soundstage Script
HollywoodBest for: screenplays, stage directions, audition scenes, draft scripts, any writing that needs the industry-standard format.
What it looks like: off-white manuscript paper, pure black ink, double-spaced (line height of 2.0, which is the actual screenplay standard), studio-red accents for emphasis. The typewriter-style Special Elite headings make scene markers stand out without breaking the format.
The font pairing: Courier Prime for body (the screenplay font), Special Elite for headings, Courier Prime for subheadings. If you've ever read a printed screenplay, you've seen this aesthetic. Now it's a single click away.
Comic Strip
Graphic NovelBest for: comic scripts, graphic novel pitches, kid's stories with punch, action-packed writing, fanfic that wants to feel like a comic.
What it looks like: pale panel-cream background, ink-navy body text, classic comic-red primary colour, speech-bubble yellow accents. The headings use Bangers, the font that's done more for indie comics than any other in the past decade. Subheadings in Permanent Marker for that hand-inked feel.
The font pairing: Comic Neue for body (modern, readable, not Comic Sans), Bangers for headings, Permanent Marker for subheadings. The whole template feels like a comic book panel, but the text is still genuinely readable.
The Middle Three: Bold and Visual
Watercolour Studio
ArtisticBest for: art journals, creative writing, exhibition catalogues, gallery notes, poetry, anything that benefits from a soft, painterly mood.
What it looks like: ice-white paper, soft slate-blue headings in flowing Italianno cursive (think a watercolour artist's signature), gentle peach accents. The body type is Quattrocento, a Renaissance-flavoured serif that looks beautiful with the calligraphic heading style.
The font pairing: Quattrocento body, Italianno heading, Quattrocento Sans subheading. Italianno gives the brushstroke feel, while Quattrocento keeps the body proper and refined.
Tattoo Parlour
Bold InkBest for: bold creative writing, dark fiction, gritty essays, biker memoirs, anything that wants the old-school tattoo flash aesthetic.
What it looks like: aged cream paper, ink-black body text, deep blood-red accents, ornate blackletter headings (Pirata One) that look like they were stencilled onto a flash sheet. Subheadings use Black Ops One for that wanted-poster stencil feel.
The font pairing: Crimson Text body, Pirata One headings, Black Ops One subheadings. The classic serif body keeps the text readable, while the heading fonts deliver the visual punch.
Vinyl Jazz Club
Smoky LoungeBest for: music writing, album liner notes, club promotional material, jazz-flavoured short fiction, sleeve essays.
What it looks like: smoky cream paper, midnight-blue body text, brass-gold accents, showbusiness-marquee headings in Limelight (the font literally feels like a vintage Broadway theatre sign). Sansita subheadings keep things grounded.
The font pairing: Cabin body, Limelight heading, Sansita subheading. A clean humanist body grounded by the dramatic marquee-style heading. Reads warm and a touch nostalgic.
The Last Three: Niche but Brilliant
Coffee Roastery
Cafe MenuBest for: cafe menus, coffee shop blogs, espresso reviews, recipe books with a coffee theme, anything that smells like a roastery in the morning.
What it looks like: warm latte-cream paper, deep espresso-brown body text, caramel-gold accents, elegant Sacramento cursive headings that feel like a hand-lettered cafe chalkboard. Forum subheadings (classical Roman capitals) add a hint of artisan formality.
The font pairing: Old Standard TT body, Sacramento heading, Forum subheading. Old Standard TT is a quietly warm classical serif that suits the cafe atmosphere, while Sacramento delivers the hand-lettered chalkboard charm.
Detective Files
Case DossierBest for: crime fiction, mystery stories, case notes, investigative writing, anything that wants to feel like it has been stamped CLASSIFIED.
What it looks like: manila yellow paper (the exact tone of an old case file), black ink, classified-red accents, stencil-block headings that look like they were rubber-stamped at the FBI office. Inconsolata typewriter subheadings complete the look.
The font pairing: IM Fell English body (a beautifully aged old-printing serif), Big Shoulders Stencil Display headings, Inconsolata typewriter mono subheadings. The combination feels exactly like a 1960s case folder.
Western Frontier
SaloonBest for: Western stories, cowboy fiction, ranch newsletters, country event posters, anything with a wanted-poster sensibility.
What it looks like: parchment yellow paper, saddle-brown body text, sheriff-red accents, classic Wild West Rye headings (proper saloon-style display type), stencilled wanted-poster subheadings in Stardos Stencil. Pure Western frontier from top to bottom.
The font pairing: Asap Condensed body (slim, newspaper-style), Rye heading (the saloon font), Stardos Stencil subheading (the wanted-poster font). Distinct from Desert Sunset's general southwestern feel, this one is specifically frontier.
What This Brings the Total To
With these nine, Type Shifter now has 60 professionally designed templates. That's a meaningful step up from 51, and the new additions cover ground that none of the others did. If you write recipes, screenplays, comic scripts, art journals, dark fiction, music essays, cafe menus, crime stories, or Western tales, you now have a dedicated template that gives your work the visual identity it deserves.
And if you write something more conventional (business reports, academic papers, blog posts, novels), the existing 51 templates still cover you. The newcomers don't replace anything. They sit alongside the rest, available when you want them, ignorable when you don't.
Templates and Bionic Reading work together
Every new template supports Bionic Reading. You can apply Kitchen Recipe to a long-form recipe, then turn on Bionic Reading for faster scanning through the method section. The two features layer beautifully. The same goes for the OpenDyslexic font, dark mode, and the new text-to-speech feature.
How to Try the New Templates
The dropdown menu at the top of Type Shifter lists all 60 templates in a single scrollable list. The nine new ones sit at the bottom of the list, in the order they appear in this article (Kitchen Recipe, Soundstage Script, Comic Strip, Watercolour Studio, Tattoo Parlour, Vinyl Jazz Club, Coffee Roastery, Detective Files, Western Frontier).
Pick whichever takes your fancy. Click Shift My Text. The document reformats in seconds. If you don't like the look, pick a different one. There's no commitment, no waiting, and no loss of work, your text stays exactly as you typed it. Templates only change the appearance.
A handy tip: you can also use the new templates as a starting point and then customise. The "Customise Sizes & Colours" panel lets you tweak font sizes, change colours, swap line spacing, and substitute fonts entirely. Apply Tattoo Parlour as a starting point, then ease back on the heading drama if you want something a little softer. It's a flexible system.
The Quiet Magic of a Good Template
It's easy to underestimate what templates do. They look like a small thing, just a dropdown of options. But they encode hours of design decisions that you'd otherwise have to make yourself: which fonts go together, what line spacing feels right, how heavy the headings should be, what colours work in both light and dark mode, where to place the visual emphasis.
The right template makes your work feel finished without you doing any of that thinking. The wrong template makes everything look slightly off. Having 60 to choose from, each one targeting a specific use case, means there's almost always a template that fits.
If you've been writing a recipe blog and using a generic clean-business template because nothing else fit, try Kitchen Recipe. If you've been writing fiction in a plain document and wishing it had more personality, try Comic Strip, Western Frontier, or Tattoo Parlour. If your screenplay has been struggling to look like an actual screenplay, try Soundstage Script. The visual transformation is immediate, and the feeling of "this finally looks right" is worth the click.
Try all 60 templates free for 14 days
9 brand-new designs plus the original 51, every one of them with hand-picked font pairings and full customisation. No credit card, no limits.