Picasso templates

This repository holds picasso templates that can be used to generate image assets. Picasso is a tool that can take a template and data, and generate images from them. The templates that Picasso uses are written in HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) and define the input, output and design of the resulting image.

Some of these templates might require additional assets to be copied into this repository for them to work. Due to licenses for those assets, they are not included in this repository.

Note: The paths in the templates are computed from the folder the binary is run in. This means that a template that refers to images/background.png and is executed with the command picasso generate -t hashitalks/regional/banner.hcl will look for the background at $PWD/images/background.png.

Install Picasso

1. Download the binary for your operating system located at Picasso's releases.

2. Unzip the binary using your command line.

   unzip picasso_${OS}${ARCH}.zip

3. Make sure to change the permissions it is executable.

   chmod +x picasso

4. Copy the picasso binary to your /usr/local/bin.

   $ cp picasso /usr/local/bin

5. You can verify that you've installed it by running picasso in your command line.

   picasso

Generate your first assets for a regional HashiTalks

Let's say you want to generate assets for HashiTalks: Test. You need the following images:

• A banner for Marketo (for sending emails)
• Social graphics (Twitter and LinkedIn share cards)

We have some templates created for you. You can use these to generate a banner and social graphics for your regional HashiTalks.

1. Reach out to the HashiCorp Community team to retrieve the background and font assets. They will send you a compressed file named picasso_assets.zip.

2. Download this repository.

   git clone https://github.com/eveld/picasso-templates.git

3. Change folder into the repository.

   cd picasso-templates

4. Unzip the picasso_assets.zip.

5. Copy the images/ and fonts/ folders to this repository.

6. Generate a banner using picasso. You need to pass some information. Use the template in hashitalks/regional/banner.hcl and output the image to banner.png. You also need to specify the regional edition of HashiTalks by setting the edition variable. In our example, we set edition="Test".

   picasso generate \
        -t hashitalks/regional/banner.hcl \
        -o banner.png \
        --var edition="Test"

7. You should now have a file named banner.png with HashiTalks: Test.

8. You can generate a social media card with a similar command. Use the card.hcl template, output the image to card.png, and add a tagline.

   picasso generate \
        -t hashitalks/regional/card.hcl \
        -o card.png \
        --var edition="Test" \
        --var tagline="Regional learning"

9. You should now have a file named card.png with HashiTalks: Test and the tagline, Regional learning.

Generate a speaker card

After you've scheduled speakers for HashiTalks, you can create speaker cards. These can be used for speakers to promote their talks over social media and for transition slides.

1. Make sure you have a folder named Hashitalks with folders called:

   • fonts/
   • images/
   • picasso-templates/

2. In the HashiTalks folder, make a new folder called speakers.

3. Download all of the speaker photos into the speakers folder.

4. Crop all photos to be 400 x 397 pixels. This ensures that the top and bottom of the photo line up with the top and bottom of the text.

5. Create a comma-separate value file with the edition, speaker, title, photo, date, and URL.

   • Headings must be lower case.
   • Make sure the photo uses the correct file name of the photo in the speakers folder.
   • For example, your CSV file might look like below:

     edition,speaker,title,photo,date,url
     Test,Cookie Monster,DevOps is like a Cookie,speakers/cookie.jpg,January 1st 2021,hashi.co/hashitalks
     

6. Save and download the file as hashitalks.csv in the HashiTalks folder. The HashiTalks folder should now contain the following:

   • hashitalks.csv - CSV file with speaker names, titles, and photos
   • speakers/ - folder with all of the original speaker photos, cropped to 400x397
   • fonts/ - folder with special fonts
   • images/ - folder with background images and logos
   • picasso-templates/ - folder with all of the templates.

7. Open a terminal and navigate to the HashiTalks folder.

8. Run picasso to generate the speaker cards. It uses the template for a speaker card with 1 line and outputs all cards to the HashiTalks folder.

   $ picasso generate \
        -t hashitalks/regional/speaker_1line.hcl \
        --csv hashitalks.csv \
        -o .

9. You should now have many files named output-<some id>.png for the speaker. For multiple speakers, each file will have a unique ID.