Your First Project

1. Create a New Document

Launch Varve and you'll see the home screen. Click New to open the New Design dialog.

Varve gives you two paths:

• Design canvas — Start from scratch with a custom width and height for screen design and exploration
• Publishing page preset — Choose A4, A3, or Letter with optional CMYK color mode and bleed for page-layout output

For this tutorial, choose a custom blank canvas at 800 × 600 pixels. Name it "My First Design" and click Create.

2. Add Shapes

With your document open, you'll see the editor interface. Let's add some shapes:

1. Rectangle: Press R to select the Rectangle tool. Click and drag on the canvas to draw a rectangle. Release when you're happy with the size.
2. Ellipse: Press O to switch to the Ellipse tool. Click and drag to draw a circle or ellipse.
3. Text: Press T for the Text tool. Click on the canvas and start typing. Press Escape when done.

At this point, your document should have three nodes visible in the Layers Panel on the right.

3. Select and Move

Press V to return to the Select tool:

• Click on a shape to select it. You'll see blue selection handles appear.
• Drag the shape to move it around the canvas.
• Drag handles at corners and edges to resize the shape.
• Drag outside a corner handle to rotate.
• Shift+click to add to your selection, or drag a marquee around multiple shapes.
• Focus the canvas and use arrow keys to nudge selected shapes by the configured small amount (Shift+Arrow uses the big amount). Set both values in Settings → Nudging & Movement; fractional amounts retain fractional positions.

4. Edit Properties

With a shape selected, look at the Inspector Panel on the right side. Here you can edit:

• Position & Size — Numeric fields for x, y, width, height, and rotation. Type values or drag to scrub.
• Fill — Click the fill swatch to open the color picker. Choose a solid color, gradient, or image fill.
• Stroke — Add a border with configurable weight, color, dash pattern, cap style, and join style.
• Effects — Add drop shadows, inner shadows, layer blur, background blur, or glow effects.
• Corner Radius — For rectangles, set uniform or per-corner rounding.

The section order follows what you select: text layers lead with Typography, and placed images lead with Image Placement and Crop & Boundsbefore the generic appearance sections. Open the section manager from the Inspector header to hide, restore, or reorder sections; once you reorder, your order is kept.

Try giving your rectangle a teal fill and your ellipse a sandstone fill. Add a subtle drop shadow to the rectangle via the Effects section.

Design canvases and frames

A new design starts with a named Design Canvas, an unbounded work surface. Create additional canvases from the Design Canvas navigator when you want separate explorations or product areas. Canvases organize the document; Frames are the sized, editable objects that appear in Layers and can be exported directly.

5. Work with Layers

The Layers Panel shows all three shapes in a list. Layers are painted from bottom to top:

• Reorder: Drag a layer up or down to change its stacking order.
• Rename: Double-click a layer name and type a new name.
• Group: Select multiple layers, press Ctrl+G to group them. The group can be moved and transformed as a unit.
• Duplicate: Select a layer and press Ctrl+D to duplicate it.

Group the rectangle and ellipse together. Notice how the group appears as a container in the layer tree — you can expand it to see its children.

6. Use Frame Presets

Frames are editable design containers inside a design canvas; they are not publishing pages. Frames can clip their content, use auto layout, and export directly. Press F to select the Frame tool: with nothing selected, the Inspector listsFrame Presets. Drag on the canvas to draw a frame, or pick a preset to place one at that size. To resize an existing frame or multiple frames at once, select them and use the Resize to Preset selector directly within Position & Size. It features instant search, category chips, orientation flipping, star favorites, and a Save current size as preset option for your custom dimensions:

• Phone (iPhone, Android common sizes)
• Tablet (iPad)
• Desktop (laptop, desktop monitor)
• Social media cover and post sizes
• Presentation sizes (16:9, 4:3)

7. Export

When you're ready to share your design, Varve offers multiple export options:

1. Press Ctrl+E or go to File > Export to open the Export dialog.
2. Select a format:
   • PNG — Raster image with configurable scale (1x, 2x, 3x)
   • SVG — Vector format, editable in other tools
   • PDF — Print-ready document
3. Choose a destination and click Export.

You can also generate code directly from your design. See Export & Code Generation for details on React, Tailwind, Flutter, and SwiftUI output.

8. Save Your Work

Varve's native format is .varve, a JSON-based document format that preserves all your design data including layers, effects, variables, and interactions.

• Press Ctrl+S to save. The first time, you'll be prompted to choose a location.
• Varve also auto-saves your work periodically (configurable in Settings).
• Recovery points are created automatically, so you can restore from a previous state if needed.