Dr_Zaszus

I'm either incredibly dense, or, there's no provision to open (or reopen) the Layers panel.
 
For example, under the 'Text' menu we see 'Show Character', 'Show Typography', 'Show Paragraph', etc.
 
Selecting any aforementioned menu item opens - with miraculous efficiency - the corresponding options panel, as one might expect.
 
It appears there's no such option available to open (or reopen) the Layers panel when looking under the 'Layers' menu.
 
Am I overlooking the 'Show Layers' option that should be in the Layers (or some other) menu?

For anyone else who might have the same problem (i.e., restoring the 'Layers' panel after closing it), you can re-open the Layers panel by going to:
 
View->Studio, then select 'layers' in the fly-out menu.
 
That should reopen the panel again.
 
I can only hope that UI/UX development on this software improves over time.
 
Burying so basic and simple a feature as restoring the Layers panel beneath such convoluted abstraction is - as best - unacceptable.
 
It's a well-understood norm of app development that - while wickedly-good software developers can indeed program wickedly-well - they often fail miserably in the delicate art of User Interaction and User Experience design.

You can also change the units from the Context toolbar when the View Tool (hand) is selected. Quicker than going into the Document menu.

Hi Susan,
Welcome to Affinity Forums,
There's no way to change the document background colour. Just do as FLOKK suggested. If you are referring to the pasteboard (the area around the canvas) go to Affinity Designer -> Preferences, User Interface tab and change the Backgroud Gray Level slider.

Hi Dr_Zaszus,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Click the Alignment icon in the main toolbar then the Align to dropdown to select the option you want (see image below).