Start a Design from a starter

Open Design Canvas to browse starters under Start a Design, or choose Starters in the Design Canvas navigation to open the separate gallery. Starters are grouped as Social media, Print, Work, and Screens and wireframes. Each one shows its size in pixels. Select a thumbnail to see a larger preview. Choose Use starter to create a new Design file in the current Personal or team context and open it. Blank Design opens an empty file straight away.

A starter is an ordinary Design file. Every word is a Text Layer, and every colour, shape, shadow and gradient can be changed in the Inspector. Double-click text to replace it. Changing the file does not change the starter.

Grey or coloured areas with a picture outline are empty image areas. Double-click one, or select it and choose Choose image in the Inspector, to fill it from Magpie media or an upload. The image fills the area and is cropped to its shape; change Image fit to show all of it instead. Replace image swaps it later. The outline only appears while editing; it is not exported.

Starters use fonts from the Font list. Some are Google Fonts: they appear in the editor and in Prototypes, but PNG, JPEG, WebP and PDF exports use installed fonts. Export as SVG, or install the font, to keep it in a raster export.

To offer your own layout, a team administrator opens the Design file, chooses Share Design, and turns on Team starter. The file then appears under the team's starters for everyone in the team. Choosing it creates a separate copy, so people cannot change the original by using it. Turn the switch off to stop offering it. Archiving or deleting the file also removes it from Starters. Instances from a team Library in a copied starter keep their appearance, but the new file needs the Library enabled to receive its updates.

The blank Frame sizes in the Inspector of a new file also link to Starters.

You can also Create a Design from JSON to create a Design file from a structured JSON definition. Website administrators can publish the same format as a starter for every account.

If a starter does not open or looks different from its preview, Contact support.