travis.media

RelayThat Review: Branded Marketing Images Made Easy

How much time do you spend creating graphics for your blog posts, your social media shares, your ads and banners? Well, there is a new app on AppSumo that will not only allow you to do this at a much faster pace, but with a precise and professional design. Read on for my RelayThat review. 

relaythat-review-pinterest-image-new

On Time Again!

AppSumo must be reading my mind these days as they have been releasing some much needed products, and EXACTLY at the time I need them most. Here was my dilemma:

I would create a blog post. Then I would create some nice cover art with Affinity Designer that matches the dimensions of my featured images. Then I would create a version for Instagram, then Pinterest, and then if I included a video, a YouTube version. Let's then add on quote graphics and other "art" to help boost social engagement. 

This often took up hours of my morning, literally! And I'm not interested in going the route of a Virtual Assistant yet. 

What to do?

RelayThat!

What is RelayThat?

I hear people saying that RelayThat is perfect for people who suck at design. Not at all!

In fact, though I am not by any means a super designer, I actually enjoy designing graphics for my blog and social media. 

But the problem is TIME! I just don't have time to sit and design these all morning. Of course, there are graphics that cannot be rushed through, and for those I will take time in Affinity Designer, but the majority of the time I am simply looking for a clean, catchy, BRANDED, yet QUICK solution. How can 'clean' and 'branded' go in the same sentence with 'quick?'

With RelayThat.

RelayThat is an application that allows you to easily create professional graphics and industry sizes for your blog, social media channels, etc. In addition, it offers thousands of remixed "SmartLayouts" that stay branded according to the colors you set and images you determine. 

Here are some of the benefits that make it highly unique:

  •  350,000 photos, icons and backgrounds, 100% copyright-free
  • The ability to remix & resize any layout to create in the click of a button to resize for social media (Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube cover, etc.), your blog images (featured images, banner ads, etc.), digital device mockups, infographics, collages, etc.
  • The ability to put your brand colors, logos, and images into a "brand bucket" that populates thousands of Smart Layouts for you to use, resize, and "remix."
  • A drag and drop interface that automatically aligns everything pixel- perfect.

So without delaying any further, let's actually take a look at this application and see how it works.

A RelayThat Review

Okay, so let's walk through and discuss some of the main features in this RelayThat review:

Feature Overview

***RelayThat is no longer on Appsumo. This deal has ended. However, the price is now onlly $25/month, no longer $97. A great deal!!***

As mentioned above, this application just popped up on AppSumo for a limited time and includes the Pro plan. And it is available for  a one-time price of $49. This gives you a lifetime license! No further charges!

Outside of this deal, the Pro plan is $97 per month. Ouch! Not something I would pay for. As you see from the chart below, the only difference between the Standard and the Pro is the amount of projects with Standard allowing only 5 total. If you have multiple brands that you are building OR you are intending to use with clients, the Pro package is a must.

$100/month or $49 one-time? Easy answer.

Get the deal here

relaythat review feature overview

The Project Selector

relaythat review projects area

The project selector is where you can access all of your projects, whether your own or your clients'. By switching projects you access an entire layout library according to the brand you've designated for each one. A single click! The application comes with a default project and Sample project for examples. I've added my own for Travis Media.

The Layout Browser

relaythat review layout area

Next in this RelayThat review, the Layout Browser. The Layout Browser is simply the browser to the left where you scroll to select your desired Smart Layout, according to what style or size you specify. 

This includes size (square or wide or tall (or each Social platform), Facebook cover, business card, Twitter header, etc), style (mockup, book promo, infographic, collage, etc.), ads (leaderboard, wide skyscraper, etc ), or other (watermark, etc.).

relaythat review size relaythat review style relaythat review other

Each choice within each column presents you with a column of uniquely generated Smart Layouts, some much more than others. The layouts are many!, and they all look very professional. 

I mean, how cool is this generated layout as a banner ad on your website:

relaythat review banner ad

And see that little crop button? That is the resize button. Just clicking that automatically generated another banner for me like such:

relaythat review banner ad vertical

Very cool!

Project Management

relaythat review project management

The Project Management section. Very straightforward here. From left to right: 

  • The eye symbol: Allows you to view and edit all assets in one area. A great way to upload and view all the assets involved in your branding in one place.
  • The plus symbol: Create a new project
  • Two docs symbol: Duplicate project
  • Pencil symbol: Rename project
  • Trash symbol: Delete project

Add/Update Assets

relaythat review add update assets

As the paragraph states above. In addition, each layout provides a specific number of available assets for that particular layout. Some use a couple, others more. These can be replaced with your own images, one of the 300,000+ images or icons from the library, and can be checked and unchecked for visibility.

Asset Visbility

relaythat review asset visibility

As stated above in the image, and very similar to the image assets. These let you customize the borders, overlays, sections, etc. for each layout (each unique). This is a great place to include your branding colors to remain consistent through all layouts. Check and uncheck for visibility.

Layout Categories

relaythat review layout categories

See 'Layout Browser' section above.

Resize / Remix

relaythat review resize remix

This is a wonderful feature of RelayThat and one that will be highly beneficial to me. 

For example, this simple square image (Instagram?), when resized, gave me a wide post, YouTube thumb, blog post, and Pinterest size. In addition, it gave me one other "remixed" style.


relaythat review resize 2

The amount of resized and remixed images depend on the particular layout chosen. 

This is a gamechanger for me and will save me a lot of time going forward. 

Other Options

The vertical menu to the left of the layout browser also gives us some other useful features:

Images/Icons

relaythat review images

Image edit

relaythat review image editor

Fonts/Colors

relaythat review font styles and colors

Uploads

relaythat review uploads

From left to right:

  • Images and Icons: Images and icons together total 350,000+. If you look close at the image, you will see that it is pulling images from copyright-free libraries like Unsplash, Pixabay, etc. As I use these services a lot, I find this to be a helpful way to get the total sum in one place. Though the statement on AppSumo was: "over 350,000 photos, icons, and curated backgrounds that you won’t find anywhere else!" Hmm, not sure about that.
  • Image editor: This is wonderful as I've used a filter effect on most of my images in the past. Now I can do it with one click!. Click on an image element and a long list of image "filters" come up that you can click on to alter the image. 
  • Font color and styles: LOTS of great fonts. Not just the "Canva-ish" free fonts, but some real gems in there. 
  • Uploads: Upload images. 

RelayThat Review Verdict

Okay, a number of things to talk about here in this RelayThat review:

The Good

First the good:

  • Create images quickly
  • Graphics look GREAT!
  • Easy resizing for blog, social media, infographics, etc.
  • Consistent branding made easy
  • Tons of images and icons (350,000+), layouts, 2000+ SmartLayouts
  • Also business cards, infographics, digital device mockups, etc. 
  • Time saver!
  • There is a roadmap for future development available

And with the AppSumo Pro deal:

  • All the above
  • Unlimited graphic downloads
  • Unlimited projects

For these reasons alone, RelayThat is worth the price and much more. It will save me so, so much time creating the graphics where I don't need to put extra special time into (probably 90% can be handled by RelayThat!). If you are spending too much time repurposing graphics for the web, this tool will greatly benefit you. Thus in trying it out, I heartily recommend it in this RelayThat review.

The Controversial

Upon my using the app, I have not noticed anything buggy or notably "bad." 

The biggest complaint that I saw on AppSumo was the fact that you cannot reposition the text (or really anything) or change the font size.

At first this seems a HUGE problem, especially for clients that want things "tweaked."

But let me explain why I don't see it AT ALL as a problem:

  1. The entire applications's intent is to create graphics on an easier and much faster level. Elements automatically align themselves saving you tons of time.
  2. The moment you start manually rearranging elements is the moment you add the task of having to align and resize everything. In my opinion, this would defeat the purpose of RelayThat entirely. 
  3. There are other apps like Canva that will let you do this. This is not the program for it. 

There are a number of things so far that I would REALLY like to see improved:

  1. Craig Carpenter, the owner, stated that there would be layouts, etc. continually added. This is great. But I wonder if down the road the user may feel like he or she has seen it all. Also I wonder if they will feel like their graphics are starting to look like many others out there??? Time will tell. Definately not a deal-breaker by any means.
  2. It would be nice if the image search continued to display the results when going to another tab and then coming back instead of resetting. 
  3. Custom sizes!! My blog featured images are oddly 768 x 450. I would love to have the ability to define this size in the application. Not sure this would be a good idea, but perhaps just one or two?
  4. Change font size of highlighted text. Just the highlighted text. (By the way, the highlighted text is chosen by putting curly brackets around a word or phrase (ex. {highlighted}).
  5. Retina images. How great would it be to instantly produce a @2x version. 

But here's the kicker. Featuring an application like this on AppSumo brings about a LOT of critique, and from what I see from the interaction on AppSumo, many features are soon to be implemented. And since you have a lifetime license, it can ONLY get better! At this moment there looks to be many great improvements already added to the future roadmap. Take a look

RelayThat Review Conclusion

I am thrilled to have RelayThat.

As mentioned above, though I will still take time to custom design my important images, RelayThat will save me literally hours in the mornings preparing other graphics for the web. In addition, it will allow me to create MORE unique graphics for social engagement so be on the lookout for things like quotes, infographics, collages, etc. Exciting!

It is currently being offered on AppSumo for a limited, one-time price of $49 for a lifetime license. One time! Sure beats $97/month right?

**RelayThat is no longer on AppSumo. The deal is over. However it's now only $25/month! (used to be $97)s **


Grab the deal

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my reviews. Let me know if you have any questions!

Do you spend a lot of time repurposing graphics for the web? What is your current graphic design tool? Have you tried RelayThat? What are your thoughts?

Update —

Here's a follow up video that I created a few days after this post describing how I will use it for marketing images:

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About Me Author

Travis of

Travis Media

Who Am I? I was 34 years old in a job I hated when I decided to learn to code. Read More
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