Quick Start

This guide walks through the complete happy path: sign up, answer one question about what you’re making, and follow the guided tour to your first rendered image.

Prerequisites

You need a Zandovi account. Create one for free — no credit card required.

1. Sign up at zandovi.com. You land straight in the app.

2. Answer “What are you making?” New accounts land on a one-question screen — pick Coupons & gift cards, Certificates & badges, Tickets & event assets, I’m integrating the API, or click Just exploring to skip it. Zandovi uses your answer to seed a matching sample project.

   Note

   Choosing I’m integrating the API seeds the sample project and then opens the in-app API quickstart page instead of the canvas. Create a key there in one click and the curl example below it is already pointed at your new template and its variables — copy it and run it. For the longer written version, see the API Quickstart guide.

3. Your sample template opens. Zandovi creates a project and a variable-ready template matched to your answer and opens it directly on the canvas — no project list, no empty canvas to configure first.

   Starting from scratch instead

   Prefer to build your own from nothing? On the full-page project list, click New Project, or click the project name in the header breadcrumb and choose New project…. Name it anything — e.g. My First Project — and click Create Project. It opens empty; click New template, pick a size under Choose a size (e.g. Social → Instagram Post, 1080×1080), and click Create template to add your first template. On the Free plan your one project is the sample project, so add the template there instead: New template on its Overview tab, or + New in the tab bar.

   

4. Follow the tour. A six-step guided tour starts automatically on the sample template — provided your browser window is at least 1024 px wide, the template is one you can edit, and you haven’t already finished or skipped the tour. It points out the canvas and side panels, then has you add a text element with the Text tool, change its text and turn it into a variable (those three steps wait until you’ve done them). The photo step is optional — search stock images or click Next past it — and the last step lands on Generate. Skip the tour anytime with the Skip tour button or Esc — replay it later from Help → Take the tour.

5. Add a text element and make it a variable. The tour above already walks you through this on the sample template; here’s the same thing done manually (useful if you started from scratch in step 3). Click the Text (T) tool in the toolbar (or press T). A text box appears on the canvas. In the Properties panel, type a sample value in the Text Content box of the Text section — e.g. First name. Then, in the Variable section at the top of the panel, switch Variable on. Zandovi turns the whole element into a variable named first_name (from your text) and keeps First name as its default value. The element’s entire text is what gets replaced at render — there’s no inline placeholder to type.

6. Add a shape for context. Press R to activate the Rectangle tool, draw a rectangle behind the text. Use the Properties panel to set a background fill color.

7. Generate your image. Click the Generate button (top right, ⚡ icon). The Generate Images dialog opens on its Single Image tab.

   • Under Variables, type a name in the first_name field (e.g. Alex).
   • Click Generate PNG image. Zandovi renders the image with your value substituted.
   • Click Download image.

   

8. Save your template. Press ⌘S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). The sample template is already saved, so this saves your changes straight away. A template you just created opens the Save as Template dialog first: give it a name and click Save Template.

What’s next?

• Interface Tour — learn every panel and control.
• Variables & Personalization — build templates that adapt to any data.
• Batch Generation from CSV — generate hundreds of images at once.