Ticket Design

The Design tab of the Tickets screen decides what the PDF ticket looks like: the one buyers receive by email and download from their account. You bring the artwork, Sway draws the secure zone on top of it. That zone always carries the QR code and the information the law asks a ticket to show, so a design can change the look of a ticket but never what it proves.

Open the tab

Open the event, go to Tickets, then the Design tab. The tab only appears to people with permission to manage the event's ticketing: door staff and people with view access see Tickets without it.

A promoter's templates live elsewhere: on the promoter page, under Settings, on the Ticket templates tab. See Promoter templates.

Choose what the design applies to

Design for picks the slot you are editing. Whole event covers every ticket type of the event. Each ticket type is listed under it, so a VIP ticket can look different from a regular one; a ticket type without a design of its own prints the Whole event design.

When the event has no design yet and its promoter has a default template, a line says Without a design of its own, this event prints the promoter template followed by the template's name. Nothing needs doing: tickets already print in it.

Promoter template links the slot to one of the promoter's templates instead of a design of its own. The link is live: Edits to the template show on this event's tickets. Choose None: this event has its own design to detach it. The event then keeps the template's current look as its own design, which you can edit from there.

Pick a layout

Every layout is an A4 page, so a ticket prints at home on any printer.

On A4 classic with your conditions, a Conditions text field appears with the artwork settings. What you write there (plain text, up to 1,500 characters) is printed in a block at the bottom of the page. A text that does not fit is cut with an ellipsis, so check the preview. The secure zone keeps its fixed place on this layout.

Open Technical details under the layout picker to see what the chosen layout expects: page size, artwork area in millimetres, the recommended and minimum image size in pixels (150 dpi minimum), the accepted formats and weight, the safe margin, the size of the secure zone and whether it moves, and the conditions block when the layout has one. The live preview above it is the demo of the layout, and Test PDF prints it as a real ticket.

Place the secure zone

The canvas shows your artwork with the zone over it. Drag the secure zone to place it. Its size is fixed and it always stays inside the page. The arrow keys nudge it once it has focus. Reset the zone puts it back where the layout starts.

The zone prints, whatever the design:

• the QR code, black on a white plate, at a size every scanner reads;
• the event, its date and time, the venue and the ticket type;
• the price paid including the service fee. A ticket bought with a coupon, a free ticket and a guestlist invitation each say so instead of a list price;
• the holder's name when the buyer gave one, the ticket number and the order reference;
• the organiser. For a company, its legal name and company number too.
• Sway's wordmark, in black or white to match the zone. It is part of every ticket. Only a promoter plan with White-label ticketing (Studio and Roster) prints tickets without it.

Whatever sits under the zone is covered by it. Keep the important part of your artwork elsewhere.

Add your artwork

Under Your artwork, click Upload an artwork. The line under the title gives the size the layout expects in millimetres; JPEG, PNG and WebP are accepted, up to 10 MB. Replace the artwork swaps it, Remove goes back to a plain page.

An artwork that contains a QR code is refused: This artwork contains a QR code. The ticket carries one code only, printed by Sway in the secure zone. A second code on the page would send door staff to the wrong one.

Use the event poster when there is no artwork fills the page with the event's own poster, blurred, until you upload something. It is how a ticket can look like the event without any design work.

Both switches, this one and Anti-copy micro-text below, start on.

Style the zone

Secure zone style picks the zone's look over your artwork: Light, Dark or Glass. Accent colour tints its details. Sway keeps the text legible: a colour too pale or too dark for the zone is corrected. The QR code itself is never tinted.

Anti-copy micro-text fills the back of the zone's text with very small, faint type repeating the holder's name and the ticket number. A photocopy or a screenshot blurs it, which helps at the door when a printout looks doubtful.

Language versions

Language starts on All languages: one design for every buyer. Pick a language to create a version of the slot for buyers in that language, with its own artwork, for instance a poster whose text is translated. A buyer gets the version in the language they bought in, and the All languages design when there is no version for it.

The secure zone translates itself: its labels follow the buyer's language in every version. Delete this language version removes one version and leaves the others.

Save, test and delete

Changes are kept by the bar at the bottom of the screen, Unsaved ticket design, with Save and Discard. Leaving with unsaved changes, for another tab of the screen or anywhere else, asks Leave without saving? first.

Test PDF opens the current design, saved or not, in a new tab, filled with sample data: the event's real title, date and venue, a sample ticket type and price, and a QR code that reads SWAY-PREVIEW-NOT-A-TICKET. It is the quickest way to check a print before sales open.

Delete this design removes the slot's design. Tickets will print with the next design in line: the event's, the promoter template, or Sway's default. Tickets already sent keep the look they were sent with; a buyer who downloads theirs again gets the new one.

Download the template

Download the template gives the layout's blank page with the secure zone marked where you placed it, to design your artwork in your own tool:

• Full kit (ZIP): every format below and a README.txt with the dimensions;
• SVG (Figma, Illustrator);
• PNG and PDF;
• PSD (Photoshop, Photopea, Canva), with the artwork and the guides on separate layers.

Design on the artwork layer, hide the guides, export the full page as JPEG or PNG, and upload it under Your artwork.

Promoter templates

A template is a design saved on the promoter page, to use on all of its events. It lives under Settings, on the Ticket templates tab, which appears to people who can manage the promoter's ticketing.

1. Under Template, pick New template, or an existing one to edit.
2. Give it a Name, then set it up exactly like an event design: layout, artwork, zone, style, language versions.
3. Switch Default for new events on to make it the template every event of the promoter prints with until it gets a design of its own. One template is the default at a time.

An event uses the templates of the promoter it pays out to: the one linked on the event's Payouts tab. On an event with several promoters, the others' templates do not apply.

Deleting a template does not change any ticket: Events that follow this template keep its current look as their own design.

Which design a ticket prints with

For each ticket, Sway takes the first that exists:

1. the design of its ticket type;
2. the event's Whole event design, or the template it is linked to;
3. the default template of the promoter the event pays out to;
4. Sway's own design.

Within the one it takes, the version in the buyer's language wins over All languages.

Where the rest lives

• Ticket Types: the prices and names the zone prints.
• Service Fee: what the printed price includes.
• Connect Payouts: which promoter an event pays out to.
• Scanners: the scanner reads the QR code the same way whatever the design.