I take it that what i see is what i get with the kdenlive titler - i must create a new text box each time i want to change colors or font size etc.
is there no easier way?
can one import titles from - say - premiere?

Hello,
I sometimes edit titles in GIMP (using PNG export) or Inkscape (using SVG);
If you have Première, you can probably export a title as an image, or if animated, as a lossless sequence to use in Kdenlive?

Create a title and save it with the extension of .kdenlivetitle

Change the colours or fonts to your liking and save as another filename but with .kdenlivetitle.

For example, you could have a blue background with orange text and save as blue_orange.kdenlivetitle
and another one with a blue title and yellow text and save as blue_yellow.kdenlivetitle

If you're willing to import clips from premiere, you can make pngs with gimp and every time you export it should automatically update.
If it's just to change font size or colour though, I think the kdenlive title tool works fine, just use alt+T for a next text box and it's pretty fast.

Also it might be a weird question but if you want to use premiere for titles, why not use it for your whole project ?