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

Panel behavior

Most, if not all, of the panels in Affinity Designer share the same basic behavior. In Chapter 1, Getting Familiar with Affinity Designer's Interface, we were introduced to Studio panels and I laid out a few of them in Figure 1.47. In Chapter 3, How to Customize Your Affinity Designer Workspace, as part of our discussion of setting up our UI, we talked about moving around, repositioning, docking, and closing Studio panels and I gave an example of my default customized setup in Figure 3.19.

In this chapter, we won't repeat what we've already covered, but we will perhaps add a little bit to that knowledge as we take a closer look at specific panels.

Affinity Designer's Studio panels can be found by going to View | Studio; they are listed alphabetically:

Figure 5.1 – The Studio panels dropdown

When a panel is active or visible in the UI, it will have a checkmark in the menu list indicating that it is onscreen somewhere...