A system and method for online product design. An electronic product template having a number of pre-defined text fields and template editing tools for allowing the user to incorporate user text into the text fields are downloaded to a user computer. The current state of the product design is retained at the user computer. When the user has entered text for incorporation into a text field, the text for that text field and the associated font information are uploaded to the server. The server creates an image of the text field and downloads the text image to the user computer for incorporation into the displayed product design according to text positioning information retained at the user computer. Each text field in the design is a separate image that can be individually and independently edited and positioned within the product design.