mallipohja

Mallipohja is a Finnish term referring to a template or boilerplate used as a starting point for creating documents, forms, or digital interfaces. A mallipohja typically defines the overall structure, layout, typography, and placeholders for variable data, enabling consistent appearance and workflow across a set of documents or applications.

In practice, mallipohja is used in business, education, and public sector contexts to streamline document creation. Examples include letter templates, report templates, invoice templates, CV templates, and form templates. In word processing and office suites, templates are saved as template files and can be reused to generate new documents by filling in placeholders.

Creating a mallipohja involves specifying page margins, fonts, heading styles, sections, and any placeholders for names, dates, or data fields. Templates can include branding elements such as logos and color schemes. When a template is used, a new document is created from the template, preserving the original format and content structure.

Variants of mallipohja include content templates (structure and content placeholders), layout templates (styling and formatting), and data templates (data-binding layouts). The concept also appears in software development as skeletons or stubs that speed up project initialization. Etymology: from words malli (model) and pohja (base).