When you run a survey, theme design shapes the respondent-facing experience: typography, colors, buttons, and optional imagery. A coherent look builds trust and keeps attention on your questions—whether you ship a quick pulse check, an NPS follow-up, or a branded employee form that must match company colors on the public link or embed.
In Responsly, visual styling lives under Design in the app sidebar while you work on a form. This guide walks through Styles, My styles, and the Design tab, how saving works, and how to pair strong visuals with readable content.
Who this is for
You need:
- Editor access to the form you want to style.
- The Design entry in the sidebar (opens the theme workspace for your current form).
Changes apply to how people see the form; they do not replace question text, logic, or distribution settings. After you save theme changes, use your live form URL (or embed) to confirm the result the way respondents will.
Open the Design workspace
- Open the form you want to style in the builder.
- Click Design in the sidebar.
You land on the theme screen with a live preview of your form on one side and theme controls on the other. Editing here is separate from adding or reordering questions in the main builder.
Choose a ready-made style (Styles)
The Styles tab lists public presets curated for quick starts.
- Stay on Styles (the first tab).
- Click a preset card to apply it.
The form’s active theme updates immediately so you can judge the preset in the preview. This path is ideal when you want a polished default in seconds and may customize later.
Reuse your brand kit (My styles)
The My styles tab lists private themes you (or your team) previously saved.
Use My styles when:
- Several forms should share the same palette and font.
- You iterated once in the Design tab and want to apply that look again without rebuilding colors from scratch.
Click a saved style to apply it to the current form, same as picking a public preset.
Build a custom look (Design tab)
The third tab is labeled Design in English (this is the detailed editor—not only “create new,” but the place where fonts and colors are tuned).
- Open the Design tab.
- Font — Open the font menu and pick a typeface. The preview updates as you try options.
- Colors — Adjust:
- Background — Page or canvas color behind your form.
- Questions — Headline and primary question styling.
- Answers — Body and answer-area color.
- Buttons — Primary action color (for example Next / Submit).
- Background image (optional):
- Use Upload image from disk or Search to add an image.
- When an image is present, pick a scale mode (full-bleed cover, contained tile-like contain, or auto—icons in the UI map to these behaviors).
- Tune Background brightness and Background blur so text stays readable over busy photos.
- Style name — Enter a short name (up to 15 characters) so you can recognize this theme under My styles later.
- Click Save changes when you are happy.
If you started from a public preset and save your edits, Responsly typically creates a new private style you can reuse. If you were already editing a private style, Save changes updates that saved theme.
Use Cancel to discard unsaved edits in the custom editor and return to the last saved snapshot for that editing session.
Preview while you work
The browser preview on the design page reflects your current font, colors, and background choices as you adjust them. Use it to catch harsh contrasts or illegible buttons before you share the link.
For final sign-off, still open the published form in a clean browser session (and on a phone) to confirm everything feels right outside the builder chrome.
Accessibility and contrast
Strong branding should not come at the cost of readability. Keep enough contrast between Questions, Answers, and Background (including dimmed or blurred photos). If respondents struggle to read text, lighten the image, increase blur slightly, or choose darker/lighter text colors.
For a broader checklist (keyboard use, labels, errors, screen readers), see Create Accessible Surveys in Responsly (WCAG Troubleshooting Guide).
Translations vs. theme
Translations change the language of labels and question copy people read. Theme design controls the visual layer. You can run multilingual surveys with one consistent brand theme so every locale feels like the same product experience.
Summary
- Use Styles for fast presets, My styles for reusable private themes, and the Design tab to fine-tune font, colors, and optional background treatment.
- Save changes persists custom work; Cancel drops unsaved tweaks.
- Validate on your live URL and consider accessibility when choosing colors and imagery.
