Stop Building Invoices. Give Your Users a React Design Studio Instead.

Jafran Jemal — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 10:42:39 +0000

If you're a React developer, you’ve probably gotten that email.

It usually arrives right after you’ve shipped a shiny new feature, and it begins:

"Hey, quick change: can we move the customer address below the invoice number, make the total amount bigger, and add a 'Discount' column to the items table?"

Suddenly your sprint is derailed. Instead of building the next big feature, you’re back in the weeds — tweaking CSS, shuffling components, redeploying for what feels like a minor layout change.

It’s not just frustrating. It’s a repeatable waste of dev time.

I thought: There has to be a better way to handle user-facing documents in React.

✨ Introducing `@aavanamkit/designer`

@aavanamkit/designer is an open-source React component that works as a full drag-and-drop template designer — right inside your app.

It’s built for invoices, quotes, reports, certificates, or any printable document your app generates.

💡 Core idea: Stop being the bottleneck. Let your users create and edit their own templates with a familiar, intuitive interface.

No more redeploys for layout tweaks
No more CSS churn for “just one more change”
Zero config to get started

Teams using @aavanamkit/designer have cut document change requests from hours to seconds.

🚀 Live Demo — Try It Now

Big button, no distractions. Click it. Play. Done.

🚀 TRY THE LIVE DEMO →

🛠 How It Works — For React Devs

The integration is intentionally three simple steps.

1️⃣ Install the Package

npm install @aavanamkit/designer

2️⃣ Define Your Data Schema

This tells the designer what dynamic fields users can insert.

// Your application's data structure
const myAppSchema = {
  customer: { name: "string", address: "string" },
  invoiceNumber: "string",
  items: [{ description: "string", total: "number" }]
};

3️⃣ Render the Component

import React from 'react';
import AavanamKit from '@aavanamkit/designer';

// Prebuilt CSS — no Tailwind setup needed
import '@aavanamkit/designer/dist/AavanamKit.css';

function TemplateEditor() {
  const handleSave = async (templateJson) => {
    console.log("Saving template to database:", templateJson);
    // await saveTemplateToApi(templateJson);
  };

  return (
    <div style={{ height: '100vh', width: '100%' }}>
      <AavanamKit schema={myAppSchema} onSave={handleSave} />
    </div>
  );
}

When your user clicks Save, you get a clean JSON object representing their design — ready to store or render.

🆚 Why Not Just Use Figma, Canva, or PDF Generators?

Figma / Canva → Great for designers, but your users need something inside your app, tied to their real data.
Static PDF generators → You’re still hardcoding layouts, and changes mean more code.
@aavanamkit/designer → Live, in-app, React-native, and powered by your own schema.

📦 Features at a Glance

✅ Drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor
✅ Works with Next.js, Vite, CRA out of the box
✅ MIT Licensed — no lock-in
✅ Save designs as JSON — render anywhere
✅ Easy theming & custom components

📢 Get Involved

@aavanamkit/designer is MIT licensed and fully open source.

It was born from real-world developer pain, and I believe it can save hundreds of hours for teams everywhere.

Here’s how you can help:

⭐ Star the GitHub repo: https://github.com/jafranjemal/aavanamkit

📖 Read the Docs: https://aavanamkit-docs.vercel.app/

🚀 Try the Live Demo: https://aavanamkit-demo.vercel.app/

❤️ Sponsor the Project: https://github.com/sponsors/jafranjemal

💬 Got feedback? Open a GitHub Discussion or DM me on Twitter.

🏆 Community Challenge

Fork the repo, build a creative template, and post it in Discussions.

Best design each month gets a GitHub Sponsor shoutout 🎉

Final Thought

Every hour you spend tweaking invoice layouts is an hour not spent building your app’s real features.

Give your users control, and give yourself back the time you deserve.

🚀 Install @aavanamkit/designer Today

DEV Community: AavanamKit