Electronic product design

#The present invention relates to computer-implemented automated electronic product design.

#Many individuals, businesses, and organizations occasionally have a need to purchase a quantity of custom printed materials, such as birth announcements, party invitations, product or service brochures, promotional postcards, personalized holiday cards, or any number of other things. Many of these individuals and businesses turn to sources such as a local print shop while others rely on any of the various specialized software products available for purchase and installation on an appropriate computer system.

#To provide an alternative to the above approaches, printing service providers, taking advantage of the capabilities of the Web and modern Web browsers, provide document design services for user's desiring to create customized documents from any computer with Web access at whatever time and place is convenient to the user. These service providers typically provide their customers with the ability to access the service provider's web site, view product templates, and enter information to create a customized markup language document. In a typical Web-based system, editing is usually limited to allowing the user to add, modify and position text and perhaps upload images for incorporation into the product design. After a document has been designed by the user, Web-based service providers also typically allow the user to place an order for the production and delivery to the user's home or business of quantities of high quality, printed documents of the type that the user is not capable of producing with the printer systems typically connected to most personal computer systems.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a computer system with which the invention may be employed.

#FIGS. 2-5 are schematic representations of displays presented to a user engaged in designing an electronic document.

#FIG. 6 is a representation of component element identifiers associated with a product description identifier in one embodiment of the invention.

#Referring to FIG. 1, an exemplary user computer system UCS 100 includes processor 101 and memory 102. Memory 102 represents all UCS 100 components and subsystems that provide data storage, such as RAM, ROM, and hard drives. In addition to providing permanent storage for all programs installed on UCS 100, memory 102 also provides temporary storage required by the operating system and the applications while they are executing. In a preferred embodiment) UCS 100 is a typically equipped personal computer, but UCS 100 could also be a portable computer, a tablet computer or other device. The user views images from UCS 100 on display 140, such as a CRT or LCD screen, and provides inputs to UCS 100 via input devices 150, such as a keyboard and a mouse.

#When UCS 100 is operating, an instance of the USC 100 operating system will be running, represented in FIG. 1 by Operating System 103. In addition, the user may be running one or more application programs. In FIG. 1, UCS 100 is running Web browser 105, such as Internet Explorer from Microsoft Corporation. Other applications that may be running in USC 100, such as spreadsheet, e-mail, and presentation programs, are represented as applications 104. In the exemplary embodiment, design tool 106 is a product design program downloaded to UCS 100 via network 120 from remote server 110, such as downloadable design tools provided by VistaPrint Limited and publicly available at vistaprint.com. Design tool 106 runs in browser 105 and allows the user to prepare a customized product design in electronic form. Alternatively, design tool 106 could have been obtained by the user from memory 102 or from another local source. When the customer is satisfied with the design of the product, the design can be uploaded to server 110 for storage and subsequent production of the desired quantity of the physical product on appropriate printing and post-print processing systems. As will be discussed in more detail below, the user creates a custom product design by customizing a template provided by the service provider and adding the user's content.

#While server 110 is shown in FIG. 1 as a single block, it will be understood that server 110 could be multiple servers configured to communicate and operate cooperatively. Memory 111 represents all components and subsystems that provide server data storage, such as RAM, ROM, and disk drives or arrays. Template memory 112 contains the various layouts, designs, color schemes, font schemes and other information provided by the service provider to enable the creation and rendering of templates. Co-pending and co-owned U.S. application Ser. No. 10/449,836 entitled “Electronic Document Modification”, filed May 30, 2003, describes a Web-based document editing system and method using separately selectable layouts, designs, color schemes and font schemes and is hereby incorporated by reference into this application.