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Shapes and Custom Shape Styles

12th December 2022

2:22

Mac | QuickTips

| Freeform
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Jacob Woolcock

12th December 2022

Jacob Woolcock

192 views

2:22

| Freeform

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Description

Shapes and Symbols can really bring a Freeform Board to life – especially once you know how to Copy + Paste Styles and change the Default Style for new shapes. That means you can quickly and easily create great looking graphics that’ll help you better organise your Freeform Boards and hopefully enhance your productivity.

Transcript

Now we’ve added some text and sticky notes to our Board it’s starting to take shape quite nicely.

But let’s add some symbols and some images to make this a little bit more interesting to look at and easier to organise our thoughts.

On the top toolbar I’m going to press onto the Shapes button.

Now if you’ve used Keynote or Numbers or Pages before you’ll be very familiar with this: there are hundreds of different shapes that you can use and customise on your documents.

Of course I can filter by category or I can simply use THE search box at the top.

I’m going to search for a symbol of a camera and then click on that to put it on my page.

I’ll move that to above the Things I Want to See header.

I’m also going to add some other symbols to my other subheadings, so I’ll go back onto that button and I’ll get a picture of an airplane for the Travel Arrangements section and then to finish off we’ll get a picture of a shopping bag to go on our Things I’d Like to Buy section.

Of course we can change how these shapes look (because I don’t really want them to be that plain blue color).

So when I click on that on my floating pill shaped toolbar I’ve got the option for the fill color and the line around the outside.

We’ll do the fill color first, and we can choose any of these colours (or any of the more color options as well) and then when you’ve chosen your fill color you can go along to the line section.

Now on here you can change how thick your line is, you can change the color of the line, and you can even change the style.

Do you want a solid line, a dotted line, a dashed line, or a hand drawn style?

I’ll spend a few moments tweaking how this looks and now I’m pretty happy with how this graphic symbol looks on my Board.

Just like with the text in the last video I can right click and go to Copy Style – and then I can like click and Paste Style.

But if I know I’m going to have lots more shapes on my Board there’s actually a quicker way, rather than copying and pasting every time.

So if I right click on one of the shapes that I have customised I can then select Save As Insert Style.

Then whenever I add a new shape it will automatically have that same fill color and the outline.

Let’s quickly test that by getting another airplane from our shapes library.

And look, just like that we’ve got the red and the black plane!

That now means of course I can delete the old airplane symbol safe in the knowledge that anything else I add will have this same theme.

While you’re clicking on the next video, maybe tap that Subscribe button down below?

As well as a complete course on Freeform for Mac I’ve also got loads of other videos to help you make the most of your MacBook, iMac or whatever device you’re currently watching this on.

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About Freeform
The Freeform app is a versatile digital canvas developed by Apple, designed for creative brainstorming and collaborative projects. It allows users to freely sketch, write, and organise ideas visually and supports real-time collaboration.
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Additional Information

The content used in this video is intended for educational and informational purposes only. All rights to the images, music, clips, and other media used belong to their respective owners. I do not claim ownership over any third-party content used. This video has not been authorised, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc.

iPhone, iPad and iPadOS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions. iOS is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems Inc. Whilst I have done my best to list all applicable trademarks for this video, in the (hopefully unlikely) event that I have missed any you can find a full list of trademarks registered to Apple Inc. here.

Finally, please note that whilst every effort has been made to ensure the information contained within this video was correct at time of publication, please be aware that as future updates and software changes occur some or all elements of this video may become outdated. I will endeavour to remove videos which are completely obsolete so as not to cause confusion!

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