📚 Customizing Fonts, Colors, Backgrounds, and Transparency

1. What This Tutorial Covers

Learn how to style your Criss Cross Math puzzles by adjusting fonts, colors, cell borders, backgrounds, and transparency. This allows you to match your brand, theme, or intended audience.

This tutorial applies to:
Puzzle Maker Pro – Criss Cross Math

2. Introduction

Why Customize Styling?

Styling your puzzles isn’t just about looks — it’s about accessibility, branding, and audience appeal. Whether you’re creating children’s activity books, educational worksheets, or elegant puzzle books for adults, styling helps differentiate your product.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll learn how to:

Choose and apply different fonts
Set cell colors and borders
Adjust canvas background or make it transparent
Crop whitespace from your puzzle images

3. First-Time Setup

Getting Started

Open Puzzle Maker Pro – Criss Cross Math
Go to the Style tab at the top to access all visual customization options

4. Customizing Puzzle Styling

Step 1: Select Fonts and Font Colors

The Font section shows a live preview of the currently selected font style.
Click the font image to open the font editor where you can change:
- Font type
- Font color
- Font size and spacing (where applicable)

Tip: Use bold, readable fonts for younger audiences or large-print puzzles.

Step 2: Cell Fill and Border Styling

Use the Cell Fill Color to add background color to each puzzle cell
Use the Cell Border Color and Border Width to emphasize or de-emphasize the grid

Pro Tip: For a clean professional look, try light fill colors with dark font and border contrast.

Step 3: Canvas Background Color or Transparency

Set the Canvas Background Color if you want a solid background
Or enable Transparent Background for overlaying puzzles on colored or textured book pages

Use Case: Transparency is especially useful when importing puzzles into Canva, InDesign, or PowerPoint.

Step 4: Use Dynamic Grid Size to Remove Whitespace

Enable Dynamic Grid Size to remove empty margins around the puzzle
This results in tighter output that fits better in books or worksheets

5. Key Features and Why They Matter

Font Control: Match the puzzle to your audience’s age and readability needs
Color Themes: Reinforce branding or make puzzles more engaging
Transparent Exports: Layer puzzles into custom page layouts
Whitespace Cropping: Create clean, book-ready visuals

6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: Can I use my own fonts?
A: Yes, as long as the font is installed on your system, it will appear in the dropdown list.

Q: Will the background be visible when I use transparent output?
A:
To get true transparency, you must export as SVG, PDF, or PNG.
JPG format does not support transparency — it will always include a white background.

Q: Why doesn’t my puzzle fill the whole canvas?
A: That depends on your layout settings. For full control, see the tutorial on layouts and cropping.

7. Further Reading

8. Call to Action

Now that you’ve styled your puzzle layout, take it a step further by adding your branding or exporting your designs for print or digital use!