Up and Running with Affinity Designer: A practical, easy-to-follow guide to getting up to speed with Affinity Designer

Length: 458 pages
Edition: 1
Language: English
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Publication Date: 2021-09-29
ISBN-10: 1801079064
ISBN-13: 9781801079068
Sales Rank: #2090911 (See Top 100 Books)

Add Affinity Designer to your creative skillset while creating innovative designs and illustrations, building a solid foundation for your future

Key Features

Understand Affinity Designer’s interface and setup, discover its capabilities, and develop an efficient workflow
Harness the power of an easy and flexible vector and pixel workflow in one application
Learn practical skills and gain the confidence to power your own creative projects

Book Description

Affinity Designer is a relatively new creative application and, in a reasonably short time, it has quickly become a powerhouse 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 introduction 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. Complete with straightforward explanations and supporting hands-on exercises, this easy-to-follow guide will help you gain a solid foundation in Affinity Designer and form 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.

What you will learn

Explore the interface and unique UX characteristics of Affinity Designer
Discover features that allow you to manipulate and transform objects
Apply color, shading, and effects to create unique compositions
Employ layers to organize and simplify complex projects
Use grids, guides, and snapping features as design aids
Adapt to Affinity Designer’s custom workspaces and keyboard shortcuts
Explore the workflow and design best practices for more predictable and successful outcomes
Identify potential stumbling blocks in your design process and learn how to avoid them

Who this book is for

This Affinity Designer book is for graphic designers, artists, illustrators, and hobbyists. Anyone curious about Affinity Designer’s unique toolset and vector and pixel workflows or looking for cost-effective alternatives to the Adobe suite will find this book useful. Experience in working with other similar tools will be helpful, but not necessary.

Getting Familiar with Affinity Designer’s Interface
Getting Familiar with the Three Personas of Affinity Designer
How to Customize Your Affinity Designer Workspace
Document Setup and Modification
Main Studio Panels and Managers
Tools – Designer Persona
Tools – Pixel Persona
Tools, Panels, and Process – Export Persona
Workflow: Layers and Objects
Workflow: Symbols, Assets, and History
Creating a Professional Logo
Creating Astronaut Ricky and Sidekick K9
Rocketing into the Pixel Cosmos

Up and Running with Affinity Designer 
Contributors
About the author
About the reviewer
Preface
    Who this book is for
    What this book covers
    To get the most out of this book
    Download the example code files 
    Download the color images
    Conventions used
    Get in touch
    Share Your Thoughts
Section 1: Getting Familiar with Affinity Designer's Interface and Layout
Chapter 1: Getting Familiar with the Affinity Designer's Interface
    Technical requirements
    What is Affinity Designer?
    Understanding the user interface and its menus
        The menu bar
        The Persona toolbar
        Toolbar
        The context toolbar
        The Tools panel
        The document view
        The Right Studio
    An overview of the menu bar
        The Affinity Designer menu
        The File menu 
        The Edit menu 
        The Text menu 
        The Layer menu 
        The Select menu 
        The View menu 
        The Window menu 
        The Help menu 
    Main tools – Tools panel overview
    Toolbars – overview
        The Persona toolbar
        The Toolbar
        The Context Toolbar
    Studio panels – overview
    The document view and artboards – overview
        Toggle UI 
        New View 
        Window modes
    Navigation tools – overview
        Panning
        Zooming
        Rotating
    Summary
Chapter 2: Getting Familiar with the Three Personas of Affinity Designer 
    Vector and Raster –  the power behind the Personas
        Separate but equal
    Designer Persona – embracing the control and precision of a powerful vector workflow
        Designer Persona workflow 
    Pixel Persona – expanding your creative options with a built-in raster studio
        Pixel Persona workflow
    Export Persona – a dedicated exporting environment
        Normal exporting
        Export Persona workflow
    Summary
Chapter 3: How to Customize Your Affinity Designer Workspace
    Affinity Designer preferences
        The Preferences panel – at a glance
        General preferences
        Color preferences
        Performance preferences
        User Interface preferences
        Tools preferences
        Miscellaneous preferences
    Keyboard shortcuts – a closer look
    Workspace customization – Studio panels
    Workspace customization – the Tools panel and toolbar
        The Tools panel 
        The toolbar 
    The Clip to Canvas feature
    Summary
Section 2: Deeper Exploration of Affinity Designer's Documents, Tools, and Workflow
Chapter 4: Document Setup and Modification
    Technical requirement
    Registering Affinity Designer and the welcome panel
    New document setup and editing your current document setup
        The New Document dialog
    Using Artboards
        Working with Artboards
    Summary
Chapter 5: Main Studio Panels and Managers
    Panel behavior 
        Resizing and hiding Studio panels
    The Color panels
        The Color panel
        The Swatches panel
        The Stroke panel
    The Effects panel 
    The Styles panel 
    The Brushes panel – Designer and Pixel Personas
    The Type panels – Character, Paragraph Typography, and Text Styles
    Manager panels – Guides, Grids, Snapping, and Resources
        Guides manager
        Grids Manager
        The Snapping manager 
        Resource Manager 
    Summary
Chapter 6: Tools – Designer Persona
    Designer Persona tools
        The Move Tool 
        The Artboard Tool 
        The Node Tool 
        The Point Transform Tool 
        The Contour Tool 
        The Corner Tool 
        The Pen Tool
        The Pencil Tool
        The Vector Brush Tool
        The Fill Tool
        The Transparency Tool
        The Place Image Tool
        The Vector Crop Tool
    Shape tools
    Text tools
        The Artistic Text Tool
        The Frame Text Tool
    The Color Picker Tool
    The View Tool
    The Zoom Tool
    Summary
Chapter 7: Tools – Pixel Persona
    Pixel Persona tools
        The Move tool 
        Selection Tools 
        Painting Tools 
        The Dodge Brush tool and Burn Brush tool
        The Smudge Brush tool
        The Blur Brush tool and Sharpen Brush tool
        The Color Picker tool
        The View tool
        The Zoom tool
    Summary
Chapter 8: Tools, Panels, and Process – Export Persona
    Export Persona tools
        The Slice tool 
        The Slice Selection tool
    Export Persona panels
        The Layers panel
        The Slices panel
        The Export Options panel
    Summary
Chapter 9: Workflow: Layers and Objects
    The Layers panel and the types of layers
        What are layers and how do they contribute to a good workflow?
        Creating a layer stack plan and taking advantage of Sublayers
        Setting up and managing Main and Sublayers
        Layer Context menu
        Moving or repositioning layers 
        Clipping
        Artboards and the Layers panel
    Objects in Affinity Designer
        Finding objects
        Grouping and ungrouping objects
        Duplicate and Power Duplicate
        Compound objects
        Isolating object layers
        Rasterize
        Converting shape tools or text objects into curves
        Copying, pasting, and inserting objects
    Summary
Chapter 10: Workflow: Symbols, Assets, and History
    Symbols
        Creating symbols
        Using symbols
    Assets
    History
    Summary
Section 3: Bringing It All together
Chapter 11: Creating a Professional Logo
    Prerequisites and expectations
    Let's get started – downloading the sketch
        Document setup
    Summary
Chapter 12: Creating Astronaut Ricky and Sidekick K9
    Prerequisites and expectations
    Let's get started – downloading the sketch
        Document setup
        Placing the reference sketch
        Creating the layer stack hierarchy and adding a background color
        The steps we will be following
    Summary
Chapter 13: Rocketing into the Pixel Cosmos
    Prerequisites and expectations
    Let's get started – downloading the sketch
    Document setup
        Placing the reference sketch
        Creating the layer stack hierarchy
        The steps to create this illustration 
    The process in brief
        Steps for painting in the Pixel Persona
        Pros and cons – a win-win situation 
    Summary
    Image copyright
    Why subscribe?
Other Books You May Enjoy
    Packt is searching for authors like you
    Share Your Thoughts

Donate to keep this site alive

To access the Link, solve the captcha.

How to download source code?

1. Go to: https://github.com/PacktPublishing

2. In the Find a repository… box, search the book title: Up and Running with Affinity Designer: A practical, easy-to-follow guide to getting up to speed with Affinity Designer, sometime you may not get the results, please search the main title.