[How do I learn to ”thinking in vector”]

Hi, 

Sorry about the late response – just had one of THOSE weeks... 

But gdenby – wow...  You just did exactly what I was trying to, only way better than I thought possible (after my own fumbling attempts...). And using the cog? I didn’t even think of that... I’ve fiddled a little bit with your image to figure out how you did that, and it’s just a beautiful solution. Thank you! 

I guess I have a long way to go learning vector drawing (and thinking) in general and in Affinity designer specifically – it certainly takes some getting used to...! :-)

One thing – IF I should want to fill the fields of this model, how do I go about doing that? Can I merge the layers to get ”closed” shapes to fill with colours? Or would I then have to start over and ”think again”...   

Also: your model has the smooth, perfect lines I thought were THE thing of vector design. But in some of the documents I’ve been playing around me, I get lines that look like a saw-blade. What am I doing wrong...? I’m guessing it has to do with the document setup, but I still can’t figure it out. See enclosed image for exampla of ugly lines – they look like too-low resolution pixel graphics, but this is supposed to be vectors... (Never mind the image itself, I’m just playing around trying to trace/vectorize whatever paper sketches I have lying around...!  )

Again, thank you for the image you sent, gdenby. It’s most appreciated! 

//Jenny

[How do I learn to ”thinking in vector”]

Hi all,

Thanks for your responses – all interesting, although I really like the collage metaphor gdenby offers. I think I figured out last night that my ”thinking problem” has been thinking in lines when I need to think in shapes. I haven’t had time to read the whole article you posted, but it looks interesting and I look forward to reading it. Thank you!

This is both inspiring and a bit... overwhelming. There’s so MUCH I need to learn and figure out to be able to do the stuff I want...! Where do I even start...?

Anyways. An other question: Given that vector graphics requires shapes which can be rendered in different ways - how would you experts go about vectorizing the enclosed model...? (Crappy shot, but you get the picture...) I ended up actually doing it with the donut-shape, but it acts kind of weirdly, and don’t even get me started on the layer-weirdness... 

But is there a ”smart way” to make a model like this? How would you do it? *curious*

//Jenny

[How do I learn to ”thinking in vector”]

Hi,

I’m trying to learn vector design from scratch by learning Affinity Designer for iPad. I guess this is a good thing and a challenge: I don’t have any prior knowledge that I need to ”unlearn” (except years of photo editing in Photoshop), but then again – all the tutorials and resources I can find are very focused on explaining the Affinity Designer software features, whereas I hardly know how vectors work in the first place. (I do, but only to a certain, insufficient, degree.) 

Now, I started out trying a design I thought was really simple – a line based, circular process chart I’d sketched out on paper, and figured I should be able to vectorize and then use as it is and develop further.  But after experimenting I found I can’t merge layers, and realized that somehow I’ve managed to create pixel layers instead of vector layers – without even knowing. My conclusion: This is me, not knowing how to ”think in vectors”.

I am taking an online course on Affinity Designer for iPad, through Udemy, but it’s very tool-oriented, and I don’t think it’s going to cover the ”thinking”-part that I need. So my question is... Could anyone give me some tips on resources for basically understanding vector graphics. I think I may have gone about breaking down my paper-sketch to vector-shapes an ”inefficient” was - thinking in lines rather than shapes.

(Optimal for me would of course be if the Serif team would make a series of general tutorials for vector beginners – how to think USING the affinity designer interface.)

I hope this question makes sense - and that I can have some tips on how to learn from scratch using the Affinity Designer - I am still confident that I will be able to do everything I want. I just need to get over this threshold...!