Create a design in the Designer

You create a design in Files: click New, choose New design, name the design, pick an orientation and a resolution, pick a template or Blank design, and click Create design. The Designer opens right away. From then on a design behaves like any other content item: send it to a screen, add it to a playlist or schedule it.

Create a design

Go to Files and click New.
Choose New design.
Fill in Design name.
Under Orientation, choose between Landscape and Portrait.
Under Resolution, choose between Full HD (1920x1080) and 4K (3840x2160). Only pick 4K if your screens are 4K: 4K is more demanding to render on low-powered hardware.
Pick a template from the grid, or choose Blank design.
Click Create design.

The New design option only appears in the menu on desktop, not on mobile.

Templates

The grid holds 35 templates, spread across seven industries with five templates each: Retail, Hospitality, Fitness, Office, Education, Healthcare and Real estate.

Every template comes in a landscape and a portrait version. Which one you get depends on the orientation you picked. Use the buttons above the grid to filter by industry, or the search box to look one up. To switch templates later, use Templates in the left toolbar; that overwrites your current canvas.

Add elements

The left toolbar in the Designer holds:

Text: choose Heading, Subheading or Body. Each one picks up the matching brand font.
Shapes: Rectangle, Rounded rectangle, Circle, Triangle, Line and Arrow.
QR: a QR code with its own colors and style.
Content: an image or video from your files, a stock photo or an upload from your computer.
Playlist: a playlist as an element inside the design.
Apps: eight app elements, namely Clock, Weather, Countdown, Notice Board, Ticker, News, Website and Stopwatch.

Editing

Click an element to select it, drag to move it and pull the corners to resize it. The properties of the selected element sit on the right.
Double-click text to edit it. Font, size, weight, alignment and color are in the right-hand panel.
In Layers you set the stacking order with Move up and Move down, and you can Lock, Hide, Duplicate or Delete elements.
Your brand colors appear as a row of swatches at the bottom of every color picker. In browsers that support it (Chrome and Edge) there is an eyedropper as well, for picking up a color from your screen. See Set up your brand settings.
Undo and Redo work on every edit.

Saving and your screens

The Designer saves your work automatically, so there is nothing to save by hand. Every saved change reaches the screens showing this design within a few seconds. While something is being saved, Saving... shows at the top, and after that it reads Saved. Ctrl+S saves right away, without waiting for the automatic save.

To edit a design without your screens picking up the changes right away, first make a copy with Duplicate in Files. Work in the copy, and send it to your screens once it's ready.

Send the design to a screen

Send to screen in the top right of the Designer sends the design straight to one or more screens. See Send content to a screen.
In Files, right-click the design and choose Add to playlist. See Create a playlist.
To show it at a set time, use a schedule. See Create a schedule.