Every Squizzie report inherits its look and feel from the global settings in the Designer. But sometimes you need a specific report to look a little different — a different cover style for board reports, tweaked colours for a client-facing document, or comparison badges turned off for a simpler layout. That’s where per-report design overrides come in.
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The 3-Level Design System
Squizzie uses a layered approach to design, where more specific settings take priority over general ones. Think of it like CSS — the more specific rule wins.
1. Global Defaults (Designer)
Set in Tracksies > Designer > Squizzie tab. These apply to every report unless overridden. This is where you configure your baseline look — cover page style, header and footer layout, tile styling, and so on.
2. Per-Report Overrides (Report Editor)
Set in the Design section when editing an individual report. Any setting you configure here takes priority over the global default, but only for that one report. Settings you don’t touch continue to inherit from the Designer.
3. Per-Page Layout (Report Editor)
Set in the Layout tab of the report editor. This controls the tile arrangement on each page — how many tiles per row, which metrics go where, and the order of content. This is about structure rather than styling.
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What Can Be Overridden
When you open the Design section of a report, you’ll find the same settings that appear in the Designer — but here they only apply to this report.
Cover Page
- Show/hide the cover page entirely
- Cover style — Three Zone, Simple Text, or Portrait Image
- Background colour and accent colour
- Logo max width
- Zone layout (when using Three Zone style)
- Subtitle (when using Simple Text style)
- Featured image (when using Portrait Image style)
Headers & Footers
- Layout and bar style
- Colours for background and text
- Zone content — what appears in left, centre, and right zones
- Dividers — show or hide the divider line between header/footer and content
Tile Styling
- Background colour for individual tiles
- Page background colour
- Border colour
- Border radius — none, subtle, medium, or rounded
Comparison Badges
- Show/hide previous period badges (e.g., “up 12% vs last month”)
- Show/hide year-over-year badges (e.g., “up 8% vs same period last year”)
- Customise up/down colours — choose which colours represent increases and decreases
Section Headings
- Style — Left Border, Underline, or Banner
- Heading colour — overrides the global section colour for this report. Used as the border, underline, or banner background depending on the selected style
- Section labels — rename individual sections (e.g., change “WooCommerce Orders” to just “Orders”)
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How It Works
The key thing to understand is that overrides are additive, not destructive. If you only override the cover page background colour, everything else — header layout, tile styling, comparison badges — still comes from your Designer globals.
You don’t need to configure every setting in the override. Just change what you want to be different, and leave the rest alone.
Settings you don’t override inherit from the Designer. Always.
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Use Cases
Different audiences, different covers. Your monthly executive report might use the Portrait Image cover style with a professional hero photo, while your weekly team update uses Simple Text with a quick subtitle summarising the week’s focus.
Client-branded reports. If you’re producing reports for different clients or departments, you can match each report’s accent colours and cover styling to their brand — without changing your global defaults.
Simplified internal reports. Turn off comparison badges and use minimal section headings for quick internal digests where the team just needs the numbers without the period-over-period analysis.
Seasonal or campaign reports. Override the cover page colours and featured image for a specific campaign report without touching your standard monthly template.
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Common Questions
If I change the Designer settings later, do my overrides get lost?
No. Overrides always take priority. If you’ve set a custom cover background colour on a report, changing that colour in the Designer won’t affect that report. The override stays put. However, any settings you haven’t overridden will pick up the new Designer defaults — so the rest of the report updates automatically.
Can I reset a report back to global defaults?
Yes — just remove the overrides. Once there are no per-report overrides in place, the report inherits everything from the Designer again. You don’t need to manually re-enter the global values.
Do I need to override everything, or can I just change one thing?
Just change what you need. That’s the whole point of the layered system. Override the cover style and leave everything else alone — the report will use your custom cover with the global defaults for everything else.
Can two reports have completely different designs?
Absolutely. Each report’s overrides are independent. Report A can have a banner-style heading with rounded tiles, while Report B uses minimal headings with no border radius. They share the same Designer globals as a starting point, but each can diverge as much as you like.
What happens if I override a setting and then later add the same setting to the Designer?
The per-report override still wins. The Designer setting becomes the fallback for any reports that don’t have their own override for that setting. Your existing overrides are never automatically replaced by Designer changes.