Design slides
Design lays an entry out as slides — posters, each on a canvas, a slide's shape and size. A text box is linked to its paragraph, so changing the words in compose changes the slide too. The same room lays out a whole journal as its presentation, one slide per entry to start.
Basic design is free. The controls marked ✦ are journal gold (Gold).
Open it
- An entry's ⋯ menu: "design it", or "its design · n" once it has slides.
- The reader: "design it".
- A journal's menu: "present it", or "its presentation · n". Sharing a journal with no slides offers "present it" too.
- Bring to life's "design it first".
It starts already done
Something never designed opens as one slide per page — the page's title, its paragraphs, then its placed pictures — or for a journal, one per entry. If its journal has a template, it starts from that instead (Gold). See Gravity & a journal's template (Gold).
Leaving by any road keeps the slides — but only if it was already designed or you changed something. Opening and backing out leaves nothing behind.
The room
- The top — "‹ design" leaves. On the right, "1 of 3 · " and the canvas's name, then "undo" or "redo" while there is a step to take back, then "AI" — shown only while the AI is on for this app — and "shuttle".
- The slide — drawn as it will export. Tap a box to pick it up — the top one wins — and a dashed line marks it. Drag to move it.
- The slide numbers — tap one to show it. "✛" adds a new slide after this one.
- The hint line — "tap a box to pick it up", or "holding: the title" / "words" / "a picture" / "a sticker".
The menus
"the box" — needs a picked box, or says "tap a box on the slide first".
| part | what it holds |
|---|---|
| "move" | "← left", "right →", "↑ up", "down ↓" |
| "size" | "wider", "narrower", "taller", "shorter" |
| "line it up" | "left", "centre", "right", "top", "middle", "bottom" |
| "add" | a "✛" line for each of the entry's files not yet on this slide — or "every file this entry holds is already on a slide." A file added lands in the first clear place below |
| "take this box off the slide" | removes the box and says "off the slide", with undo and redo |
The menu also shows the box's size, in hundredths of the slide. A slide holds at most 40 boxes.
"slides"
| part | what it holds |
|---|---|
| "this slide's canvas" | "tall · stories and reels", "post", "square", "wide", "page · a4", "page · letter" — and "give every slide this canvas" |
| "this many" | "✛ a new slide", "split this one" (the lower half's boxes go to a new slide), "fold in the next" (the next slide's boxes come into the lower half), "take this slide away" — only when there is more than one; it says "the slide is gone", with undo and redo |
| "in what order" | "‹ earlier", "later ›" |
| "start again" | "one slide per page, made for me" |
| "or use a template" | each installed template, saying what it will do (Gold). See Templates & effect packs (Gold) |
"crop & mask", "background" and "more ✦" — see Crop, background & "more ✦".
"bring to life ✦" (Gold) — keeps the slides, then opens bring to life on the same entry or journal. See Bring to life (Gold).
Every menu closes with its "‹ title" line, "· done ·", a tap outside, or back. Without journal gold, a ✦ control opens the Gold sheet on that feature.
Drop from the shuttle
Let a shuttle item go on the slide: a picture or a video becomes a box centred there; words become a new paragraph in a text box — or, with no room for the box, stay at the end of the entry: "this slide is full — the words are at the end of the entry"; any other file goes into the entry's files. Every drop has "undo", and undo takes back the file it brought. A journal's slides, an entry open in compose underneath, and a full slide turn it away with a line. See The Shuttle in the Journal.
Undo
Taking a box off and taking a slide away each have "undo", then "redo" — at the foot, and on the undo button in the top right. Nothing else in design has an undo line. See Undo & earlier versions.
Each time you leave design after changing something, the entry as it was is kept as an earlier version in its history, so you can bring it back. See Save & earlier versions. Or move things back by hand, or use "one slide per page, made for me" to start again.
Ask the sky
Ask the sky can lay an entry out, change any one design step the room makes, and keep it only once you say so. See What the sky can do — design, screens, settings & more.
See also.
Crop, background & "more ✦" · Bring to life (Gold) · Templates & effect packs (Gold) · Share an entry (Gold)