Today, we are excited to announce a new local library and new grouping functionality in Google Web Designer, which make it easier to add, edit, manage and group creative assets. We’ve also spruced up many of the components in the gallery, which build on the updates we launched in August, to help designers and developers make interactive and engaging HTML5 ad units for cross-screen campaigns. 

Manage your assets with ease:
  • Add, edit, and manage your assets in one place in the new local library: Add assets from the stage or within the library workflow, drag and drop from your desktop, or use the new import dialogue under File. Then, customize your folders and organize your assets to your liking. 
  • Group elements together: Once you group elements together, they are stored in your local library. You can drag and drop groups onto the stage and edit them all at once. 
Create more engaging, interactive ads:
  • Build ads that expand in all directions: The “view mode” will allow you to see the expanded state as an overlay, and move it to the desired expanded position. Learn more.
  • New audio component: Provides functionality for autoplay, loop, mute, etc. for audio files. 
  • YouTube autoplay feature: You can now use the YouTube component to build a masthead that automatically plays the embedded video.
  • Other enhancements to the components gallery allow you to:
    • Add “navigation” (the dots or thumbnails at the bottom of a gallery that show that multiple images exist.)
    • Auto-scale images: stretch, resize or crop images to fit within the gallery 
    • Snap to ‘n’ frames: advance by a specified number of frames in the swipeable or carousel gallery (i.e. 3 images show on the first page of gallery, swiping moves to the next 3). Learn more.
  • SVG (scalable vector graphics) support: Google Web Designer now supports uploads of SVGs and provides a set of basic features, including 2D editing, cut, copy & paste, and selection tool support. 
Share your awesome Google Web Designer ad units with us! Submit them to the Rich Media Gallery and we’ll promote them to the ~35,000 people who view the site each month.

 If you don't yet have Google Web Designer, you can download it for free here.

Posted by Tony Mowatt and Sean Kranzberg, Product Manager and Engineering Lead for Google Web Designer

 P.S. It may take a couple hours for the updates to show up in your version of the product.