Mr. Doodlezz

Just discovered FontBase myself and found the ability to access Google fonts so easily from within Affinity Designer is rather wonderful. 

Hey chrisk,
any new information on this topic?
Yesterday I contacted FontBase and asked if they got any plans for including Affinity products in their range, especially for the auto-activation. They said they have it on their roadmap – so that’s good news!
FontBase may be an alternative to be considered. Basic functions are free, but auto-activating and advanced features come with either a subscription model or a one-time-purchase for three machines (Mac/Win) – also I’d say right now it’s way more affordable compared to FontExplorer, though it lacks some comprehensive options.

FontBase.mp4 Now the important question that remains is: What are the requirements to get this to work with Affinity products? 
I guess plugin-support is a must, but right this moment I can't remember/check if Publisher and Designer have plugin-support at this time …
Greetings
MrDoodlezz

Hey guys, hey Mithferion!
Thanks for putting these together, it's quite the collection!
Not sure if everyone is familiar with it, but just yesterday I posted about FontBase in another thread.
FontBase is a basic font-management software wich offers a free version.
One cool thing I noticed is that right from the start it has the Google font library linked into it's code
or something like that, so you can activate them without even visiting the side.
I thought that's pretty clever!
Besides that, with a growing library like this you might want to organize the fonts more specific maybe
by topic, different projects, names or groups. Or maybe you don't need all the bazillion fonts activated
at the same time which may slow down you machine and is pretty distracting.
Well, I just thought I'd leave this here – try it, it's free! 

Fontbase.mp4 Have a nice day!
MrDoodlezz

Hey guys, just to put in my two penny worth.
 
Exactly the problem! There's a great demand for a permanent list or palette displaying any missing fonts if there are any.
 
Currently I've got a Designer-document with six different fonts which I disable between projects that distributed over several segments.
If I open the document later on I get the prompt in the upper right corner wich disappears after a just a couple of seconds
as already mentioned several times.

I would need to open the document several time or take a screenshot in order to see and activate missing fonts.
Although there is a Missing Fonts option in the Characters palette at the bottom of the first drop-down, it does not work reliably for me at all.
Some fonts are displayed to me after I come across and select the text segment that's been formatted with the missing font. Other fonts 
apparently get replaced with already activated fonts automatically – who thought this would be a good idea?
This creates more trouble than it tries to solve.

Sorry if I'm harsh, but I've got to say that's a pretty useless feature if you ask me – what kind of solution is this supposed to be?
Especially (professional) graphic artist and designers (maybe switching from Adobe products) don't leave the font replacement to a program by chance!
Full control or at least a notification or replacement dialogue before anything gets randomly replaced would be a better solution.
 
I also get this relating error working on an Mac: After activating missing fonts with the document already opened only some fonts get replaced, others stay a generic system font.
 
Hopefully some of this makes it into a future update or get fixed.
 
Greetings and thanks,
MrDoodlezz

Hey guys,
I agree, this function is very much needed.
Especially for sharing/working different machines that aren't connected via a server or else.
It's a very simple and convenient way to gather all the use materials in one tidy folder with
according sub folders like Images or Fonts.
And if you want – and you're like me – you can still add your own Drafts/Versions, Inspiration/Mood,
Exports or else folders and move the remaining, unlinked but related files and tying up the whole
project in one clean place.
Maybe there'll be something like a separate Package or Bundle Persona with different options,
or maybe it get's integrated in a Export Persona like the one we got in Designer? 
Anyway – count me in, I'd very much like to see this option in the (near) future!
Cheers and have a nice weekend
MrDoodlezz

Hey guys,
just a quick and clean Designer file: a round sticker mock-up for your … mock-upping needs.

You can change almost everything and layers are named accordingly to their purpose: rotation, colour, outline.

Also let me know if you need a rectangular version, so I’ll add one with the same style. 
Edit: Rectangular sticker added.

Sticker.afdesign
Cheers and have fun!
MrDoodlezz
 

Technical illustration of a carburetor from a small Subaru engine. 
The pressure profile for stroke widths makes thick/thin transitions easy.

Moving to the suggestions forum, thank you

Unless I am missing how Affinity does it, I see no way to package a file. This is a VERY important function in my opinion. Please add this as a priority along with bleed guides. 
There is no way I would work on a live job that I could not package and pull all the fonts and linked images into a neat organized folder. This has been around for ages with Quark and Indesign. 

I am surprised this is not there. Making packages is our best back up for filing projects in a right way, it speeds up the process and prevents errors and time searching for missing files. It is also a great way of cleaning up a messy image folder. This is not an option for the future, it is an absoluut MUST in a professional high speed design and DTP workflow. It is out of date to search for a missing links, copy files to a folder before or during lay-outing or searching it all together before a project is stored on a server.  Not only Indesign does it but also in 3D it a secure way collect linked textures . Each application that works with linked files has this option, if not, it should and I think it even should be an automated function to prevent human errors.

You are welcome!
And thanks for the recomendation, I'll give it a try.
Best regards!

Hey guys, hey Mithferion!
Thanks for putting these together, it's quite the collection!
Not sure if everyone is familiar with it, but just yesterday I posted about FontBase in another thread.
FontBase is a basic font-management software wich offers a free version.
One cool thing I noticed is that right from the start it has the Google font library linked into it's code
or something like that, so you can activate them without even visiting the side.
I thought that's pretty clever!
Besides that, with a growing library like this you might want to organize the fonts more specific maybe
by topic, different projects, names or groups. Or maybe you don't need all the bazillion fonts activated
at the same time which may slow down you machine and is pretty distracting.
Well, I just thought I'd leave this here – try it, it's free! 

Fontbase.mp4 Have a nice day!
MrDoodlezz

Oh, I see, thanks for the explanation!
It implies that you need to know the exact characters name or unicode? For the whole font, for all styles and width? For all fonts in my library? 
Wow, can it get any less intuitive and confusing?
Sure it could be worse … still.

From my experience I have found the search field searches in the name of the letter.  So searching for an A will return most everything as a name like LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z has an A in it  But a search for CAPITAL LETTER A will find the all the varieties of capitol A's.  Also a search can be done using the unicode seeing as that's also in the name.  But I get some weird results on that.  A search for an 09 gives the unicode f909 and fa09 but not all the other possibilities.  Typing in a u+0045 shows all characters but highlights the E.  But a u+004 just shows all characters.

The Glyph Browser works quite well for basic fonts, but it falls short if you're trying to search for alternates where the glyph names may not be obvious. And the 'Largest Size' option on the Glyph Browser panel menu isn't always large enough to let the user see the various glyphs clearly, especially with the dark UI mode which is currently the only one available in Affinity Publisher beta.

I have sent the developers of Font Explorer X a request to develop plugins for Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher but I need your help if we want to see this happen. Font Explorer is an application that auto-activates fonts for applications, and is a must have for designers who use hundreds of fonts.
 
Please contact Font Explorer and let them know you are interested in there being a plugin for Affinity products. They have developed plugins for Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop and they work really well. However, they will not develop a plugin for Affinity unless we show there is a demand for plugins.
 
The developers of Font Explorer X can be reached here:
 
twitter @FontExplorerX
web http://www.fontexplorerx.com/contact
email: info@fontexplorerx.com
 
Thanks everyone!
 
 

The current apps do have a Glyph Browser (View > Studio > Glyph Browser) or do you mean something else?

While the functionality of a grid in APub would be helpful, everything is already there to build your own custom grids. Use rectangles, style them, group them and put them in the background or on master pages. You can even save them as assets. See my two screenshots here (one with a layout grid on a master page spread and one with two different layout grids in the assetts panel):


 
I found I had to fiddle a little with the snapping settings to make snapping work. Preset 'Object Creation' together with 'Candidate List' seems to work.
I find this important, because it gives everyone who needs it an instant workaround, while other feature requests (e.g. data merge to name just one) can only be implemented by the Affinity programmers. That way we can take away some pressure from the ever so growing list of features that seem to be 'a MUST' 
I'm not saying the feature request is not neccessary. I just try to find a way to help myself and other forumster.
d.
PS: I would share the APub document but it has grown to a size of several megabytes and is too big to upload. File size is a different story...

A good grid system (like the one above) is absolutely necessary for professional layouts.

I was also somewhat dismayed that there was no grid system baked in from the beginning. Being able to set columns from within a text frame is nice, but really doesn't allow you to visualize the page as a whole, especially if you will have multiple stories and graphics on the same page... think newspaper, or the excellent example provided by 3joern above.
SDLeary

@Aammppaa Thanks for the tip with the rotated grids for angled layouts, I'll have to look into those options!
However, what I'm looking for in addition to these settings is a layout grid that allows me to set up guides for text columns and image positioning, such as six columns with an x mm gutter, similar to what InDesign has. It has to work in addition to the regular document grid. Just like the "Margins and Columns" settings in InDesign, but with the additional option to do the same thing also with horizontal divisions, not just vertical ones.
For instance, it would be common for a page layout to have 7 grid columns for a 3-column page. Then text frames, sidebars, image descriptions and so on would be created spanning one or more columns of the layout grid. This can be done manually with guides on master pages of course, but adjustments are rather time consuming.
 

Hey guys,
just a quick and clean Designer file: a round sticker mock-up for your … mock-upping needs.

You can change almost everything and layers are named accordingly to their purpose: rotation, colour, outline.

Also let me know if you need a rectangular version, so I’ll add one with the same style. 
Edit: Rectangular sticker added.

Sticker.afdesign
Cheers and have fun!
MrDoodlezz
 

Hey fellow Affinity friends!
 
Have some new styles – fresh of the press. :)
Played around with styles today and came up with
the idea of the letterpress effects.
 
A bit desdaturated, but these are just the presets. Obviously you can try different
blend modes, colors and backgrounds. This is how the four different styles look
like if you use them directly on text or vector layers.
Use on path-based layers recommended, the effect doesn't show off well on pixel layers …

 
And this is what they may look like after fiddling around with perspective and
some further effects applied.

 
Anyways, the afstyles are packed as a zip – have fun messing around! :D
 
Letterpress & Embossing.zip

Hey guys,
nice to read that you're enjoying the sticker. 
So in respond to Tinakr I updated the file and added a rectangular (1:1) sticker.
Have fun!
MrDoodlezz

Thank you so much, just what I needed. If you have the time and feel like it I would also like to have a rectangular one.