Hi Lee,
Thanks for the response, I didn't see it before, apologies.
I don't think I explained myself, I can modify the width and colour opacity of a stroke, my problem is with the brush panel. If I draw a stroke and go to the brushes panel I can apply a brush, the texture is fine, but the Size Variance and Opacity Variance don't display at all. I have even tried to open the edit brush dialogue and tinker with the variances there with no luck at all.
But actually now I have bigger problems with designer. Since last week the app is not working very well at all. It crashes constantly just trying to move an object and when it doesn't it is so slow that I can't really work. Do you know what might have triggered this?
I am running the latest version on a OX El Capitan 10.11.6, the machine is a Mac Pro from early 2008.
Any help welcome (soon!) or I'll have to go back to illustrator since I have to finish projects, but I'm trying to avoid that because I was quite enjoying Affinity until now.
Many thanks,
Vanessa