Book Image

Up and Running with Affinity Designer

By : Kevin House
Book Image

Up and Running with Affinity Designer

By: Kevin House

Overview of this book

Affinity Designer is a widely adopted creative application, and in a reasonably short space of time, it has become a leading design and illustration application. Affinity Designer, along with Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher, is part of a suite of award-winning creative software applications developed by Serif Europe. Built on the latest technologies, which make it fast and smooth, Affinity Designer is quickly becoming the go-to professional creative application for vector drawing and pixel-based painting. Up and Running with Affinity Designer is a comprehensive hands-on guide to the Affinity Designer software. Whether you're new to the creative industry, a seasoned professional looking for a proven alternative, or an enthusiastic hobbyist, this book will help you get up to speed in no time. You’ll learn how to create documents and explore workflow best practices while working through practical exercises using the knowledge and skills developed in each chapter to solidify your understanding of the fundamentals. Finally, you’ll bring it all together with real-world practical applications by building a fun logo and professional illustration, forming a base for in-depth exploration in your own projects. By the end of this Affinity Designer book, you'll have gained the knowledge and confidence to use Affinity Designer as part of your creative toolset.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Familiar with Affinity Designer's Interface and Layout
5
Section 2: Deeper Exploration of Affinity Designer's Documents, Tools, and Workflow
9
Chapter 7: Tools – Pixel Persona
12
Chapter 10: Workflow: Symbols, Assets, and History
13
Section 3: Bringing It All together

Chapter 1: Getting Familiar with the Affinity Designer's Interface

Welcome to the first chapter of Up and Running with Affinity Designer.

Success when learning any new software application is to know enough to be able to get it to do what you need it to do. Starting out, you don't necessarily need to know every aspect of the interface, just enough to help you to take that next step. The goal of this chapter is to get you comfortable with the layout and location of Affinity Designer's main interface panels, toolbars, and menu items. Later, we will be discussing each of these areas in more detail, either in a dedicated section or as part of the three practical exercise chapters.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

  • What is Affinity Designer?
  • What's new in 1.10.x
  • Understanding the user interface and its menu
  • An overview of the Menu bar
  • Main tools – Tools panel overview
  • Toolbars – overview
  • Studio panels – overview
  • The document view and artboards – overview
  • Navigation tools – overview