The Start screen: new sizes and recent drawings

Opening an app should take you straight to work, whether that means starting fresh or picking up yesterday's job. In Vectornation by Zaweba that is the job of the Start screen. It offers new drawing sizes and a list of recent drawings.

It is a small feature, and it saves a lot of small steps over a week.

New drawing sizes

Most new drawings are one of a few familiar shapes: a page size for print, a business card, a poster, a social media post, an icon. The Start screen offers sizes to begin from, so you click one and start drawing at the right size.

Starting at the right size matters more than it sounds. A layout made at the wrong size has to be scaled or rearranged later, and text, line weights and image resolution all suffer. One click at the start avoids that.

Templates go further, with layouts for print sizes, business cards, posters, social media and icon sets, and Document setup lets you change the size and colour mode of a drawing after it has been made.

Recent drawings

The list of recent drawings is the quickest way back into ongoing work. Instead of browsing through folders, click the drawing you had open yesterday.

It is also a quiet reminder of what is in progress. Glance at the list and you see the jobs that are still on the go.

Fitting the Start screen into your day

For people who work on one big project, the recent list does most of the work: open the app, click the drawing, carry on. For people who make lots of quick pieces, such as social posts or labels, the new sizes are the main use.

Either way, the aim is to remove the steps between deciding to work and working. That matters most on busy days, when a request for a quick change to a poster or a label arrives in the middle of something else. Open the app, click the drawing in the recent list, make the change and get back to what you were doing.

Other ways in

The Start screen is not the only door. Double-clicking a .vecz file in Windows opens it directly in Vectornation. File > Open and File > Place work as usual. And if the app closed unexpectedly, recovery copies offer to bring back your work when you start again.

Tips

Choose a size before you draw, not after. It is far easier to start at A4 or a square social post than to change later.

If the size you need is not in the list, start from the nearest and adjust it in Document setup.

Keep project files in sensible folders even though the recent list makes them easy to reach. The recent list is short and changes, while a good folder structure lasts.

Give drawings names you will recognise in a list. A recent list full of names like Untitled and Copy of final is little help, while names with the client and the job in them make the right file obvious at a glance.

And if you share a computer, remember that the recent list shows what has been opened. That is handy for you and visible to anyone else who opens the app.