Designer node

The Designer node gives you complete design editor inside Spaces. You can create layouts with text, images, shapes, and effects, then connect them to the rest of your workflow. AI-generated images and text flow in through placeholders, and finished pages flow out as images to downstream nodes.

Designer also has a standalone mode accessible outside Spaces — the features are the same, but it runs independently. This article covers Designer as a node within Spaces workflows.

In this article

• Opening Designer in Spaces
• The Designer interface
• Canvas and tools
• Working with text
• Working with images and media
• Effects and styles
• Multi-page designs
• Templates
• Placeholders
• Workflow integration
• Exporting
• Collaboration
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Tips and best practices

Opening Designer in Spaces

1. Add the node

   Open Spotlight and search for Designer. Add the node to your canvas.

2. Choose a starting point

   Click the node to open the Design Picker. Choose a blank canvas (with custom or preset dimensions), a template, or a saved project.

3. Start designing

   The full Designer editor opens in a modal over your Space. Everything you need is inside.

When you close the editor, your design is saved automatically. The first time you close after creating a new design, Spaces runs the node automatically to populate the output.

The Designer interface

The editor opens as a full-screen modal over your Space. It has four main areas.

The Inputs tab is unique to Spaces mode. It shows visual cards for each upstream node connected to the Designer, so you can see what content is available to use in your design.

Canvas and tools

Navigation

Selecting and moving elements

• Click to select a single element.
• Click + drag on empty space to draw a selection box around multiple elements.
• Shift + click to add or remove elements from the selection.
• Drag selected elements to reposition them. Drag corner handles to resize (hold Shift to keep the aspect ratio).
• The rotation handle appears above the selected element. Hold Shift to snap to 15-degree increments.
• Use the Inspector panel on the right for precise values: X, Y, width, height, rotation.

Layers

Open the Layers tab in the sidebar to see every element on the current page, stacked in visual order. Drag layers to reorder them. Use the eye icon to hide/show a layer and the lock icon to prevent accidental edits.

Alignment and smart guides

With multiple elements selected, alignment options appear in the toolbar: left, center, right, top, middle, bottom, and distribute evenly. Smart guides appear automatically as you drag elements, helping you snap to edges, centers, and equal spacing.

Working with text

Adding text

1. Open the Text tab

   Click the Text tab in the sidebar.

2. Choose a preset

   Pick Heading, Subheading, or Body, or add custom text.

3. Place it on the canvas

   Click to place the text block, then double-click to start typing.

Formatting

Select a text block and the Inspector panel shows all typographic controls.

AI text-to-image

Designer includes a built-in text-to-image tool. Select an image placeholder or an empty area, open the AI tool, type a description, and the generated image fills the area instantly. You can iterate on the prompt without leaving the editor.

Working with images and media

Adding images

• Images tab. Browse Magnific stock or your uploaded images from the sidebar.
• Drag and drop. Drag any image from the sidebar onto the canvas.
• Upload. Import images from your computer.
• Inputs tab (Spaces mode). Images from connected upstream nodes appear here. Drag them onto the canvas or link them to placeholders.

Image adjustments

Select an image and open the adjustment controls in the Inspector. All adjustments are non-destructive, so your original is preserved.

Content fill mode

When an image is inside a frame, you can control how it fits: Fill covers the entire frame (edges may be cropped), Contain shows the full image (empty space may appear), and Crop lets you pan and zoom manually.

Elements and shapes

The Elements tab provides basic shapes (rectangles, circles, lines, arrows), stickers and decorative assets, the Magnific graphics library, and SVG imports.

Effects and styles

Effects transform flat designs into polished compositions. You can apply them to any element on the canvas.

Blur

Gaussian blur softens the entire element uniformly. Great for backgrounds or depth of field. Background blur blurs the content behind a semi-transparent element, producing a frosted-glass look. Both have an adjustable radius.

Shadow

Add a drop shadow behind any element to lift it off the canvas. You control color, offset, blur radius, and spread. You can stack multiple shadow layers on a single element for complex lighting.

Stroke

Add outlines to shapes, text, or images. Configure color, width, style (solid or dashed), and alignment (inside, center, or outside the element edge).

Blend modes

Blend modes change how an element's colors interact with the layers beneath it.

Pair any blend mode with the opacity slider to fine-tune the result.

Duotone filter

Apply a two-color tone effect to any image. Choose separate colors for highlights and shadows. This produces stylized, editorial looks that work well for social media and brand visuals.

Color tools

Designer includes a color picker (visual picker, hex, RGB/HSL), pre-made color palettes, dominant color extraction from images in your design, and an eyedropper to sample any pixel on the canvas.

Multi-page designs

Designer supports multi-page documents. Create presentations, brochures, social media sets, or any project that needs multiple pages. Each page can have different dimensions, and every page exports as a separate image.

Managing pages

• Pages are listed at the bottom of the canvas. Click + to add a new page.
• Rename a page by double-clicking its name.
• Reorder pages by dragging them.
• Duplicate or delete a page by right-clicking it.
• Each page can have independent dimensions, so you can mix formats in one document.

Multi-page in Spaces

The Designer node card shows page navigation thumbnails. Toggle the grid view to see all pages at once with checkboxes to select which ones to export. Each page produces a separate output image, and downstream nodes receive them individually.

Use cases

• Social media set. Instagram post, story, and reel cover in one document.
• Presentation slides. A full slide deck with consistent branding.
• Brand kit. Logo on page 1, business card on page 2, letterhead on page 3.
• Storyboard. Each page is a panel or scene.

Templates

Designer includes a library of professionally designed templates. Open the Templates tab in the sidebar to browse by category or search by keyword. Click a template to preview it, then click Use to apply it. Every element is fully editable: change text, swap images, adjust colors, and add your own content on top.

Many templates include placeholders, which are designated areas for images and text designed to be replaced. In Spaces, these placeholders can be linked to workflow connections for automatic content filling.

Placeholders

Placeholders are the bridge between your design and your Spaces workflow. They are designated spots in your design that get filled with content automatically when the workflow runs. Think of them as slots that receive AI-generated images or text from connected nodes.

Types of placeholders

• Image placeholder. A frame that gets filled with an image from a connected node.
• Text placeholder. A text block that gets filled with text from a connected node.

Creating placeholders

1. Select an element

   Select any image block or text block on the canvas.

2. Mark it as a placeholder

   Use the Placeholders panel or the context menu to mark it. A visual indicator appears on the element.

You can also add placeholders directly from the Placeholders tab in the sidebar.

Linking placeholders to workflow connections

1. Connect nodes to the Designer

   In your Spaces workflow, connect an Image Generator or Text node to the Designer node's input ports.

2. Open the editor

   Click the Designer node to open it.

3. Check the Inputs tab

   You will see cards for each connected node showing their current output.

4. Link a placeholder

   Click a placeholder and choose which connection fills it. Or drag a connection card from the Inputs tab onto a placeholder.

When the workflow runs, connected nodes generate their content, the Designer fills linked placeholders automatically, and the finished design exports as the node's output.

Good to know about placeholders

• Placeholder copies stay in sync. If you copy-paste a placeholder, the duplicate shares the same content source. Updating one updates all instances. Useful for logos or repeated elements.
• You can unlink at any time. The current content stays, but it will not update on the next workflow run. You can re-link to a different connection later.
• Placeholders accept content from many node types: Image Generator, Text nodes, Assistant, Upload/Media, List nodes (first checked item), and even video nodes (start or end frame).

Workflow integration

The Designer node accepts images and text as inputs and outputs images (one per page) to downstream nodes.

Typical workflow

1. Connect upstream nodes (Image Generator, Text, Assistant) to the Designer's input ports.
2. Open the editor and design your layout using the connected content.
3. Create placeholders and link them to specific connections.
4. Close the editor. Your design saves automatically.
5. Run the workflow. Placeholders fill with the latest content and each page exports as an image.

Node card features

On the Spaces canvas, the Designer node card shows a preview of the current page with page navigation thumbnails. You can toggle grid view to see all pages, browse previous renders with the arrow buttons, and access actions like open editor, duplicate, download, and export as group.

Export as Group creates separate creation nodes on your canvas for each page. Extract Page pulls out a specific page as a standalone creation.

Exporting

Click the Export/Download button in the toolbar, choose your format and quality settings, and download. Single-page designs download directly. Multi-page designs download as a ZIP file with one image per page.

You can control output resolution with the pixel scale setting (1x, 2x, etc.) and adjust DPI for print designs.

In Spaces, use the grid view on the node card to toggle which pages are included in the export. Only checked pages are rendered when the workflow runs.

Collaboration

The Designer node supports collaborative editing with an editing lock. Only one person can edit a Designer document at a time. The first person to open the editor becomes the Editor, and others who open it enter Viewer mode (read-only). When the Editor closes, the lock is released and someone else can take over.

Check who is editing before opening. Their name appears in the header. As a Viewer, you can still browse pages and see the full design.

Keyboard shortcuts

Canvas

Editing

Arrangement

Text

Shortcuts use Cmd on macOS and Ctrl on Windows/Linux. In Spaces embedded mode, some shortcuts may be intercepted by the Spaces canvas. The Designer modal captures most shortcuts when focused.

Tips and best practices

Connect content before o