Nazario

Here is a golden ratio template I use as a starting point for all my projects. Ive converted this to Affinity for you guys. It's a template file so double clicking will create a new document and leave the template untouched. Use it to build graphics with a little extra 'can't put my finger on it magic'.
My 'Nz' avatar is angled at a specific angle to attract the eye for example.


Golden Ratio Template.afdesign

Here is a golden ratio template I use as a starting point for all my projects. Ive converted this to Affinity for you guys. It's a template file so double clicking will create a new document and leave the template untouched. Use it to build graphics with a little extra 'can't put my finger on it magic'.
My 'Nz' avatar is angled at a specific angle to attract the eye for example.


Golden Ratio Template.afdesign

Here is a golden ratio template I use as a starting point for all my projects. Ive converted this to Affinity for you guys. It's a template file so double clicking will create a new document and leave the template untouched. Use it to build graphics with a little extra 'can't put my finger on it magic'.
My 'Nz' avatar is angled at a specific angle to attract the eye for example.


Golden Ratio Template.afdesign

This is one reason why i keep saying any new document should open a new document palette and the colours should be added automatically to the palette when either created on the paste board or pasted onto pasteboard from elsewhere.

I too find this annoying and distracting. It appears as if things aren't lined up correctly. I believe it's the bleed outline. If you have bleed set to none It shouldn't be there in my opinion. You can turn it off by clipping to canvas '\' key, or move it out of the way by adding bleed. However I like to see my paste board as its very useful and not have the outline when bleed set to zero but it seems you can't do this, unless I'm missing something.

I too would like larger Quicklook previews from Affinity Suite in MacOS. Currently they are too small to accurately determine content within and lead to loading up the full file.

I just realised this myself last night. I found myself constantly changing 12pt type with default 12pt leading to 14 pt leading so the type is displayed with a semblance of how it would be set manually by a professional in the real world.
One of the first lessons you learn when you study typography is always set leading at least 2pt above the type size for legibility reasons. If you are purposely going for a style where legibility is not the priority then obviously set it accordingly. But as a default for legibility no less than 2pt. Typefaces and fonts are generally but not always designed with this in mind. 
Over compact leading leads to heavy looking boxes of type, the visual weight of which will break a design quite easily while also making type hard to read. The same is true of too wide leading. This can lead to text being read as individual lines and the story feeling broken and hard to follow as you have to consciously try harder to follow each line.
I too work similar to kanihoncho whereby you try to get a feel of the design first before you start creating styles. This is why i have an issue with how the current colour palettes work whereby its implementation requires you to set your colours first before you even start anything (as they are not added automatically) which is impossible if you are 'creating' because creating is by its very nature making something from nothing. You can't choose colours from nothing to start your project but I digress.

I agree with most of these points to get Affinity to a usable state. The duplicate point is a big one for me. You end up destroying your layout to get to the thing you want to duplicate then have to put it all back together again. Even in the layers panel its a pain in the ass. If you could drag an element first then you'd know that you have the right piece and you're already halfway to having a duplicate where you want before you even press option to confirm the duplicate on release. It's little things like this that REALLY make a difference in a workflow.
I created a thread in feedback section about sorting out the colour palettes and posted a video of a guy taking nearly 4 minutes to add 5 swatches to a palette. We need to be able to drag and drop colour swatches from the builtin colour books into a SEPARATE document panel. It would then probably take 6 seconds not 4 minutes!

I agree with most of these points to get Affinity to a usable state. The duplicate point is a big one for me. You end up destroying your layout to get to the thing you want to duplicate then have to put it all back together again. Even in the layers panel its a pain in the ass. If you could drag an element first then you'd know that you have the right piece and you're already halfway to having a duplicate where you want before you even press option to confirm the duplicate on release. It's little things like this that REALLY make a difference in a workflow.
I created a thread in feedback section about sorting out the colour palettes and posted a video of a guy taking nearly 4 minutes to add 5 swatches to a palette. We need to be able to drag and drop colour swatches from the builtin colour books into a SEPARATE document panel. It would then probably take 6 seconds not 4 minutes!

Not sure if its me doing something wrong but im unable to edit a layer mask using the black and white paint brush?!
Ive created a mask and now need to amend small areas of it so was expecting to paint white and/or black on it to adjust accordingly. But all that happens is I get is the mask being erased no matter what colour I use.
 
Any one else have this issue?
 
1.8.4
movie.mov

Please can we have a separate panel for the document colour panel and the swatches panel. Using colours in Affinity Publisher is a nightmare!
How do you get a spot colour from the swatches book to your document panel without needlessly applying the colour to an element on the canvas first, then having to click back to your document panel (that you have to add manually) and then clicking 'add colour to palette'. As an aside in 1.8.4 on MacOS Add global colour to palette doesn't work so I have to jump through the hoops above then change it to global colour.
Thats 6 clicks to add one single global colour to the document palette. Not including setting up the document palette in the first place and undoing the colour change to the element on the canvas just to help get the colour from one panel to the next. Having the panels all hidden behind a drop down menu is not efficient at all.
We need panels side by side so we can simply drag and drop swatches between the colour books to the document panel.
Ideally it would be beneficial if we could (if we wanted to) have all the colour books in their own panel all out at the same time.
I have linked a YouTube video below to show just how poor the implementation is. This doesn't cover getting a colour from a colour book into the document palette but it shows getting 5 colours from a colour strip imported into Publisher. It takes him 3 minutes (with the video sped up!!!) to add 5 colours to the document panel!
 

Im a brand designer but also work in publishing. There is a fantastic book by Marty Neumeier called The Brand Gap. Its about bridging the creative and corporate sides of a business and is full of brilliant quotes and anecdotes that shows just how important it is that the corporate side understand the creative process and vice versa. It also touches on how important it is to understand the end user and what perceptions they have of said brand. Its a great read and you could probably read it in a couple of hours. 
https://www.martyneumeier.com/the-brand-gap/

Im a brand designer but also work in publishing. There is a fantastic book by Marty Neumeier called The Brand Gap. Its about bridging the creative and corporate sides of a business and is full of brilliant quotes and anecdotes that shows just how important it is that the corporate side understand the creative process and vice versa. It also touches on how important it is to understand the end user and what perceptions they have of said brand. Its a great read and you could probably read it in a couple of hours. 
https://www.martyneumeier.com/the-brand-gap/

Im a brand designer but also work in publishing. There is a fantastic book by Marty Neumeier called The Brand Gap. Its about bridging the creative and corporate sides of a business and is full of brilliant quotes and anecdotes that shows just how important it is that the corporate side understand the creative process and vice versa. It also touches on how important it is to understand the end user and what perceptions they have of said brand. Its a great read and you could probably read it in a couple of hours. 
https://www.martyneumeier.com/the-brand-gap/

Im a brand designer but also work in publishing. There is a fantastic book by Marty Neumeier called The Brand Gap. Its about bridging the creative and corporate sides of a business and is full of brilliant quotes and anecdotes that shows just how important it is that the corporate side understand the creative process and vice versa. It also touches on how important it is to understand the end user and what perceptions they have of said brand. Its a great read and you could probably read it in a couple of hours. 
https://www.martyneumeier.com/the-brand-gap/

View > Assistant Manager

I totally agree but try and think of it like this. 
You're an artist. You've got a nice new blank canvas ready to paint on. All your paints are stored in a multitude of draws all around your room. You rummage through some draws and find the colour you want. Only thing is you don't have a palette to put it on. So you go into another room to procure a palette. You put a bit of paint on your palette. Now you want to add another colour so you put your palette down and go rummaging back through the various draws in the other room. Find a new colour take it to the room with the palette in and add it to your palette. Now you want a third colour and so back to the draws again in the other room. Keep repeating that until you have the palette of colours you need. This is what's happening in Affinity at the moment.
I propose you have one draw with the paints neatly arranged in boxes and your palette already to hand. You could hover over the draw and pick as many as you like in one go. With colours on your palette and full view of the draw full of paints you can easily choose complimentary colours to add to the palette. That to me is better preparation.
I'll leave it there because I've made clear my ideas and don't want to keep flogging it. Just hope some of it gets taken into consideration

Its taken me 5 minutes to figure that out! That just proves my point how convoluted things are currently. All that does however is EDIT one colour already in your palette does it not? I want to choose four or five quickly from a colour book to add to my palette so I can then begin working with them whilst viewing both the swatch book and palette for comparison.
Also to get all that information available you already have to select the spot colour book to get the 'edit global/spot colour' button so you've already opened up the book you want, to go past it to then edit only one colour. Thats a heck of a lot of clicks to just see two panels side by side or edit a colour. I appreciate you showing me that though as I had no idea you could.

I misread Jowdays post and responded as I thought how he/she had tagged me they were unloading on me lol. Ive since retracted my original response to that. Thanks.

I've always had trouble working with colours in Affinity. I believe in its current state it's a very clumsy and inefficient way of doing things. Not to mention frustrating. Im writing this post after posting a 'bug' which Sean P was quick to respond to, however I now believe it was ultimately my error in using the swatches/palettes panels. I do though, also believe that if the way swatches and palettes are implemented in Affinity were refined it could be much easier to work with colour not to mention much faster.
Ive attached some screenshots of a way that, I believe (and feel free to pick this apart), Swatches and Palettes could/should work, for better clarity and efficiency.
First of all the current implementation merges both swatches and palettes and they are almost treated as the same thing when I believe this should not be the case. You will see in my attachments that I believe Swatches are individual colours in a collection you can choose to work with and a Palette is the place to keep all the colours you are indeed working with. While this is essentially true in Affinity there is quite a bit of overlap between 'swatch' and 'palette' and both are hidden behind one drop down. At the moment it's all a muddled mess that hides information and slows down the user.
I believe there should be 3 colour panels. One for a collection of Swatch books so you can choose 'Pantone Coated V4' for example and then choose a coated Pantone from that list to add to the (separate) Palette. There should be a colour mixer panel to mix colours with the usual sliders etc from there you can add to the separate Palette and then there should be the Palette itself. This will contain any and all colours within the document (raster images excluded unless you choose to add them from an image).
As an aside, if you have an item selected on your pasteboard and you choose or mix a colour the item on the pasteboard will change accordingly and the swatch should also auto appear in the palette as it is now in use on the pasteboard. Also with these 3 panels being separate you are able to glance at your working palette useful while mixing another colour or choosing a complimentary spot colour from a colour book but the biggest benefit of all is being able to quickly drag and drop colours between each panel.
I hope that makes sense when looking at the attached diagrams but let me know what you think. Also note the more consistent layout of the panels. Notably the search bar and Opacity. How do you find working with colours at the moment?
 
 
 
 

I've always had trouble working with colours in Affinity. I believe in its current state it's a very clumsy and inefficient way of doing things. Not to mention frustrating. Im writing this post after posting a 'bug' which Sean P was quick to respond to, however I now believe it was ultimately my error in using the swatches/palettes panels. I do though, also believe that if the way swatches and palettes are implemented in Affinity were refined it could be much easier to work with colour not to mention much faster.
Ive attached some screenshots of a way that, I believe (and feel free to pick this apart), Swatches and Palettes could/should work, for better clarity and efficiency.
First of all the current implementation merges both swatches and palettes and they are almost treated as the same thing when I believe this should not be the case. You will see in my attachments that I believe Swatches are individual colours in a collection you can choose to work with and a Palette is the place to keep all the colours you are indeed working with. While this is essentially true in Affinity there is quite a bit of overlap between 'swatch' and 'palette' and both are hidden behind one drop down. At the moment it's all a muddled mess that hides information and slows down the user.
I believe there should be 3 colour panels. One for a collection of Swatch books so you can choose 'Pantone Coated V4' for example and then choose a coated Pantone from that list to add to the (separate) Palette. There should be a colour mixer panel to mix colours with the usual sliders etc from there you can add to the separate Palette and then there should be the Palette itself. This will contain any and all colours within the document (raster images excluded unless you choose to add them from an image).
As an aside, if you have an item selected on your pasteboard and you choose or mix a colour the item on the pasteboard will change accordingly and the swatch should also auto appear in the palette as it is now in use on the pasteboard. Also with these 3 panels being separate you are able to glance at your working palette useful while mixing another colour or choosing a complimentary spot colour from a colour book but the biggest benefit of all is being able to quickly drag and drop colours between each panel.
I hope that makes sense when looking at the attached diagrams but let me know what you think. Also note the more consistent layout of the panels. Notably the search bar and Opacity. How do you find working with colours at the moment?
 
 
 
 

This option ensures that the starting position Y.xxx remains Z.xxx again after the move. Therefore, it is correct to use only "Force Pixel Alignment" because it will secure the position at Z.000
Edit: Unfortunately, it is not at all clear which option has priority. But the current behavior is logical, because otherwise both choices at the same time would be meaningless.
For interest:
https://www.google.com/search?q=move+by+whole+pixels+site%3Aforum.affinity.serif.com

So I've just downloaded the Beta and it finally does seem to work (even though its not listed as being fixed?).

Anyhoo...
I can now see that the implementation of Document Resize is completely baffling to say the least (as I feared).
You have to set the units to Pixels. If you use any other unit it simply resamples even when you untick resample. This is just stupid and confusing! Something that compounds the confusion is the UI whereby you are unable to see the what the changes you input will be, so you have to go through with the operation you might not actually want by clicking resize, then open document resize again and then choose another unit to see the changes. If it simply showed the pixel dimensions in the window along with the chosen units and it updated live without having to click resize and then reopen document resize, it would then be just about bearable to use. WAY too many clicks are involved in a needlessly complex implementation. The same as the colour picker tool and the tab order in the Transform palette.
The UX seriously needs looking into in my opinion and the UI in parts.

As an end user working in the professional pre-press environment our only concern is that AP should be able to interpret embedded fonts and has a reliable pdf passthrough. The technical issues as to why this is not working are of no importance. Workarounds, third party software etc. are just a distraction. Serif need to fix this problem before lasting damage is done to their reputation as a serious developer of professional design software (Description from their website ‘The Next Level of Professional Publishing’)
This dialogue has been ongoing for over two years, so they are well aware of the importance of this issue. One can only conclude, that at present, they either do not have the inclination or the ability to resolve this.
As a consequence I have contacted the MD of serif directly to say how important I (and many others) feel this problem is and that it prevents the use of AP as an alternative to indesign. I hope that he hears our collective plea and is able ensure the team dedicate the required time, and necessary expertise, so that this can be resolved. (As yet no response)
I believe the development team at Serif are doing their upmost to create a viable alternative to adobe and I am sure we all wish them to succeed in this endeavour. All we ask is that they listen to the professionals trying to use their apps.

This has nothing to do with Affinity but I thought it worth sharing...
Today (23/10/20) Apple updated its Xprotect anti malware list in macOS Catalina and as such has rendered many HP printers useless. MacOS now determines many of the frameworks within the HP software to be malware and pops up with a warning every tens seconds or so until you delete the offending files. Problem is you need the files to be able to print correctly and/or check on the status of your printer etc.
There's a post over on HPs support website that is rapidly growing which only started today.
Luckily I have a wireless printer (7110 Wideformat) with no scanner etc, its just a pure A3+ printer. As such I was able to uninstall ALL of HPs software and use the AirPrint driver to print. If you have printer with a scanner and email etc then the AirPrint driver is only going to allow you to print and nothing else.
Apparently the HP software is still running on an old verification certificate which apple now deems invalid and untrustworthy so is blocked from operating. It looks as though until HP update said certificate many people will have issues with using HP printers on MacOS. Hopefully it won't be for long.
Just thought id let people know and give a possible workaround until its fixed. Hope it proves useful, if not and it becomes redundant feel free to delete.