Illustrate Mode

Illustrate mode is a way of working on a tab, made for building finished visuals: a poster, a one-pager, a set of social posts or a short deck. Instead of an endless canvas you work on pages, sheets laid out in a row, each one a picture you build up and then export or present. It is one of three modes, beside Diagram and Draw, and like them it never changes what is on the tab: the same elements are there in every mode.

Two Kinds of Page

• Infographic: a sheet to lay out freely, starting from a layout if you like. Everything on this page is about infographic pages unless it says otherwise.
• Article: a page to write on, like a document, its writing flowing onto new pages as it grows. See Writing Articles.

A tab's first page asks What Is This Page For? while it is the only page and still empty; after that, every page keeps the kind it was made with.

Switching to Illustrate Mode

• The switch shows the current mode: press it and choose Illustrate. It sits in the Palette panel's title row (or, with the Toolbar layout, beside the menu button at the top left). Shift+D cycles through the modes too.
• Opens in: to have a tab open in Illustrate mode for everyone, open the tab menu (the … on the tab), choose Opens in, then Illustrate.
• Illustrate mode is on for everyone by default. It is still new, so it has a switch of its own: Settings, then Experimental, then Illustrate Mode. Turned off, the mode is offered nowhere, and a tab set to open in it opens in Diagram mode instead.

Your Content, Laid Out Into Pages

Switch a tab that already has a diagram, a mind map or a sketch on it into Illustrate mode and its content is laid out onto pages for you. Things joined by arrows, or sitting close together, stay together; each group gets a page of its own, turned portrait or landscape to suit its shape, in reading order (top to bottom, then left to right). Anything too big for its page is scaled down to fit, text included.

It is one step, and a message says so: Undo puts the tab back exactly as it was. Content you later leave off the pages (in the space around them) is gathered onto new pages the next time the tab enters the mode. Because every mode shows the same elements, Diagram mode sees the new arrangement too.

Pages

• Add a page with the + after the last page, or the + at the end of the toolbar strip in the Toolbar layout, and choose Infographic or Article. A new infographic page takes the last one's size and orientation, on plain paper.
• Each page's label sits above its top-left corner: its name, or "Page 2", then its size ("A4 · Portrait", "Square", "Story (9:16)") and its kind ("Infographic" or "Article"). Press the label to fit that page to the screen.
• Drag a label sideways to reorder the pages. A blue bar in the gap shows where the page will land; let go and it moves there with everything on it. Escape cancels.
• Content belongs to its page. Anything whose centre is on a page moves with it when the pages around it change, and whatever hangs off a page's edge is cut off at the edge, on screen and in exports, as if the pages were the only paper.
• The page navigator under each page (once there are two or more) shows "2 of 5" between Previous page and Next page, each fitting that page to the screen.
• Snapping: move or resize an element and it snaps to its page's edges, centre lines and margins, with the same guides as lining up with other elements.
• An empty page shows Start from a layout in its title bar, beside the cog. See Infographic Layouts.
• The Layers panel and its button are not offered in Illustrate mode; in their place is the Slides button (see Exporting and Presenting Pages).

The Page Panel

Press the cog above a page's top-right corner to open its panel, which opens beside the page so the page stays in view. At the top is the page's name (leave it empty to go back to "Page 2"). Below are its tabs: Page and Layouts on an infographic page; Page, Style and Text on an article page (see Writing Articles). Along the bottom are the page's actions.

Size and Orientation

The Page tab starts with the Size tiles, each drawn to scale:

Below them, Portrait and Landscape turn the page (a square page has no orientation). Changing a page's size or orientation keeps everything on it: content that still fits stays as it is, and content that no longer fits is scaled down as one to fit inside the margins, its text with it. Nothing is cut off.

Backgrounds and Patterns

• From your theme, in the first row: pale tints of the tab's theme colour, the theme's own fill, a deep shade, and a light and a dark gradient. Change the tab's theme and the row follows it.
• Solid colours, from Paper (the plain page) through pale Cream, Mist, Sky, Mint, Lavender, Blush and Sunshine to dark Ink, Midnight, Forest and Plum, plus the rainbow swatch for a custom colour of your own.
• Gradients: Sunrise, Ocean, Meadow, Peach, Dusk and Night.
• Pattern, over any of them: None, Dots, Grid or Lines, drawn faintly so they never fight the content.

Hover a swatch to preview it on the page; press it to keep it. A dark background keeps the page readable: elements without colours of their own are drawn in light ink on it, and text, arrows and icons you coloured yourself are lightened if they would no longer stand out (or darkened again on a light page).

Page Actions

Along the bottom of the panel: Duplicate page (a copy right after it, with everything on it), Move page left, Move page right and Delete page (the page and everything on it; the pages after it close the gap). Each one is a single step that Undo reverses.

Good to Know

• Everything else works as always: sharing, live collaboration, comments, undo and redo. Collaborators see your pages and their changes live.
• Your mode is yours: someone else on the same tab can work in Diagram mode while you build pages.
• Leaving Illustrate mode on a tab with articles asks whether to turn them into Page elements first (see Writing Articles).
• People who can only view a tab see the pages but not their cogs, buttons or the +.