Mark Oehlschlager

@Sean P Not an app developer, so always surprised when fixed or stable features are "broken" by updates. Does this happen because the lines of code for the various features and tools within the app are interdependent – intersecting with code for newly introduced features?

@Dazmondo77 Ah. Thanks for the reply. I was wondering whether or not you had discovered the equivalent of Illustrator's Blob Brush in Affinity Designer. That would be ideal and the most direct route. Anyhow, great work!

@Old Bruce Ah! Yes, I see that now. Thank you.

@Dazmondo77 Nice illustration. How are you getting the woodcut look? Is there a brush option that produces vector shapes, or are you simply expanding strokes and then merging them into unified vector shapes?

I would like to request a vector brush like that of the so-called "Blob Brush" found in Adobe Illustrator. Brush strokes with such a brush would result in merged vector shapes rather than stroked paths. For some illustration tasks, this would save the trouble of expanding and then merging the current vector brush stroked paths.

Just got the auto-update for Designer 1.7.0.7. Love the Arrowhead additions to the strokes, and love the Appearance Panel with the ability to build vector objects with multiple fills and strokes. I noticed the ability to apply transparency to the fills and strokes of multi-fill/stroke objects, but could not find the ability to apply blend modes on an individual fill or stroke. Have I overlooked something? If not, would you consider adding this capability to a future release?

@petriknz What Serif have in Designer is the equivalent of Adobe Illustrator's "Art Brush". What's missing is the equivalent of Adobe Illustrator's "Scatter Brush" and "Pattern Brush". Essentially, what I'm requesting above is for the equivalent of Illustrator's Scatter Brush.

@fde101 Interesting. It looks like Affinity's original architecture has created a cul-de-sac here. Solving the problem would appear to require rethinking both the definition of artboards across the suite (as interchangeable units of composition) as well as the definition of spreads in Publisher.

@fde101 I concede that I have no expertise in coding or app development, but if artboards can be defined as pages (which seems logical and self-evident: a page/canvas upon which to compose), and this conceit is implemented across all three apps in the Affinity suite, then the definition of what constitutes a page in all three apps would be consistent, and Publisher could then define a master-page spread as a special grouping of independently sizable "artboard/pages", and multi-panel fold-outs on either side of the spine could be constructed of grouped "artboard/pages".

@fde101 It may be that the solution lies in the way that Serif define artboards in Designer. Designer makes it possible to group separate artboards in order to create a multi-panel document. Not really sure about that from a coding point of view, but from a laymen's point of view it seems that treating the facing pages of a master-page spread as independently sized artboards, with the ability to group two or more artboards on either side of the spine would be the way forward. CC: @MattP @AdamW

@Old Bruce Not sure I follow your dimensions there. A typo perhaps? At any rate, Publisher forces perfect symmetry in its facing-pages documents. I don't know how one could achieve the asymmetry required to specify a fold-out. If you've got a work-around in mind, could you illustrate it with a screen shot or video?

@Seneca Currently, how would you set up a gate-fold in a book/magazine in Publisher? Going in, one has the asymmetry of a 1 vs 2 page spread; then a 2 vs 2 page spread; and finally a 2 vs 1 page spread. I haven't yet figured it out how to accomplish this in Publisher. As for an internal half-page, I suppose one could draw a dashed line on either side of a leaf to indicate the narrower trim size for the page.

Unless I've overlooked something, I don't see that it is yet possible to define a vector brush with the same jitter and scatter dynamics available to pixel brushes. Have you considered adding the ability to define a vector brush from vector art with the same jitter and scatter dynamic parameters of the pixel brushes? If not, I would like to formally request this as a feature in the next available upgrade to Affinity Designer.

Under what circumstance would one want to shift the alignment of an arrowhead away from the stroke it's meant to finish?

@Patrick Connor Thank you for your honest reply. Naturally, Serif would like for their product to be successful. But you can also imagine how desperate many people are for there to be an affordable alternative to the Adobe suite of apps and their onerous subscription pay model. This, in concert with Apple forcing migration to all 64-bit apps in the next 6-9 months, has many freelance designers and small creative agencies, who have been clinging to the last available perpetual license to the Adobe suite (CS6) for as long as possible, in a mild state of panic. It may be more than Serif can deliver on within the year, but I, and I suspect many creatives, are desperately clinging to the hope that Serif will provide the escape route from having one's work and finances trapped by Adobe and their subscription model for "renting" tools. It's no mean feat, but means achieving feature parity with the Adobe suite, and breaking through Adobe's virtual monopoly enforced by an "industry standard" proprietary file format. All of my hopes and best wishes are with Serif and their ability to pull this off.