Certificate templates

How certificates get generated

Certificates are the clearest case for template rendering: the design is fixed by whoever owns the brand, and the only things that move are a name, a course title, a date and a signature block. Issuing them by hand means someone opening a design file once per student, which stops working the moment a cohort passes fifty people. Bind those four fields to variables and a completed-students CSV becomes a folder of finished PDFs. Because certificates usually get printed or archived rather than posted, this is the category where the print-ready PDF export matters most — 300 DPI with the fonts embedded, so the file opens the same way at the print shop as it did in the editor.

In practice: Most teams run these as a batch job: export the cohort to CSV, upload, download a ZIP of PDFs. Learning platforms that issue continuously call the API instead, one render per completion event.

Fields you'd usually bind

{{recipient_name}}

The student, attendee or employee being recognised.

{{course_name}}

The course, programme or achievement the certificate is for.

{{completion_date}}

Date awarded — usually straight from the CSV column.

{{verification_url}}

Bind to a QR code so the certificate can be checked against your records.

Any text, image, QR code or barcode on the canvas can become a variable — these are just the ones this category tends to use.