Ah, that Freehand example at the beginning of this thread! It reminds me of how much I lost when Adobe killed FreeHand.
Affinity has done a marvelous job at creating their apps from scratch, not as a mere clone of Adobe's offerings. The new workflow paradigms are one of the best features of Designer and Photo. But as is apparent in this thread, there are certain functions that need to be brought in to the programs in order to be fully competitive.
I came to Affinity (and am loving it) after abandoning Adobe over the whole "rental" model. But my favorite illustration program was always Freehand, not Illustrator. All these years after acquiring and killing Freehand, Adobe still has not added many of the features to Illustrator that Freehand had. There are still things that are impossible, or at least incredibly difficult to do in Illustrator that were a cinch in Freehand.
Please, development team, do not merely look to Illustrator for inspiration; take a good look at Freehand. You will discover many tools and techniques that, if brought in and given your unique polish, would give Designer a clear advantage over Illustrator.
I am also incredibly pleased to hear that integration with the Astute Graphics tools is at least being contemplated....