VectorCat
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Posts posted by VectorCat
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I see where you're going, Znak and I largely agree. The problem with picking a great name or a great logo is that, in a sense, there's a narrow aperture in the human mind where you can really slam it home. You have to speak to what a user can do with a software tool rather than limiting their understanding of what they can do.
here is what I mean. to me, software named "Photographer" tells me that it's meant for photographers...maybe lets them lightbox their stuff, export it for their client, etc. With a name like "Photoshop," I get the sense that that's a place, so to speak, where I can do whatever I want..thanks to the "shop" part of the name. Like...workshop, only it's for images. Now, you can do things with Photoshop having nothing to do with photos, but by now, the public so thoroughly knows "Photoshop" that it's like the words "Kleenex" or "Xerox." These names belong to go-to technologies applicable across a spectrum of needs. And that is what puts steak on the table.
So, the trick here is an easy-to-remember, easy-to-understand word or logo that tells a broad spectrum of users: "this is your horse."
It's too bad the words, "Illustrator" and "Photoshop" are taken, as they are pretty darn good. "InDesign," IMHO is weak sauce. It feels contrived...forced ingratiation...
I feel there are other words which Serif could make their own and convey the idea nicely. As more visual designers work in web and interactive, as opposed to Print, the metaphors and boundaries blur and change. Just look at how Affinity Designer integrates raster tools in a vector atelier. We don't need no steenkin' boundaries!
I think that naming solutions are to be found in there..somewhere...
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Confirm...just tried on another mac, new document, re-tracing my essential steps and while I can change flat color, fill with gradient tools are not available when more than 1 shape is selected. However, if you GROUP those objects, then fill/line tools appear enabling you to fill with gradient...I don't know whether that's good or not..I might want them grouped, but I definitely wanted to fill all 3 shapes with a gradient..
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I had done basically that last night and was un-able to affect the fill/stroke. neither fill nor stroke tools appeared in the toolbar. I wanted to fill with gradients; I did not try using just the color wheel for either.
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Right now, it seems that only 1 selected object may be filled/have its stroke modified.
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The AD app icon/logo is pretty detailed. I don't find it ugly; more like...capable...broad...exact.
if you want to go with simpler, I'll always line up at that window, but seriously, I interact with that icon maybe for 2 seconds at a time, long enough for my little brain to say, "THERE it is!!" so I am not studying it..I am using it for the quick recognition a good logo or icon should provide.
Maybe an evolution is in order? Overall I think they're more on the right track than not with that A-shape...that bit stands out in a galaxy of icons and logos..
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I am John, going here by the nick, VectorCat. I am a designer, art director and illustrator, and hoping to expand my career to front-end web development.
I remember the first time I played with vector illustration software years ago. At first, I didn't get what it did until I hit print...then the light went off and I was down the road. I like to offset the super-precise nature of vector with the looser aspects of raster, so I'm jazzed about the mix of those tools in Affinity Designer.
Looking forward to where this will take us all. I am very impressed with AD right out of the gate..its future looks very bright to me.
Cheers,
John
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Adam nailed it. I've been using Wacoms for years. I regard them as necessary to my work, but the software/hardware is weak sauce. And I don't know which is the culprit for some weird behavior..such as double-clicks registering when I didn't double-click, or scrolling in finder windows and document windows which are NOT in front.
I've contacted Wacom about this and some their people acted like they couldn't be bothered. If Wacom weren't the only game in town, their stuff might be less squirrelly.
I am currently using the Bamboo Fun tablet; bought at Costco, so the price was decent, but all of these things are simply priced too high in my opinion. Works fine 95% of the time, until it does something I didn't want, but..it's not the end of the world. More an annoyance. the hardware seems to hold up but beware of weak connections where cables enter the tablet (if the wired version) and the pens seem to have this tactile coating which gets nasty with use and eventually rubs off. Eww.
Maybe Apple will make a larger version of their magic track pad and throw in a pen for all us mac-using artists? That would obviate the whole weird wacom driver problem.
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Apologies as this is not an Affinity bug; I'll leave it to the mods as to where this should be. I tried installing my bamboo fun driver on my MBP, now running Yosemite.
The driver balked, saying it would not install into OSX older than 10.6.
Even though we see Yosemite as "ten point ten," the driver sees it as "ten point one"
It's on Wacom to rectify this, but anyone for whom tablets are mission-critical, holding off on Yosemite might be a very good move.
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I installed Yosemite this morning on this 2010 MBP. I began doing serious work in Affinity on this Mac about 2 hours ago. I have so far seen or exprerienced anything prevents my working or Affinity operating smoothly.
I wish apple would tone down the colors, but I feel that yosemite is production-ready.
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Are there any warping tools in the cards for AD?
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sometimes you need to zoom way in to see when/where to stop scaling an object. Often, zooming in means that one of the "handles" is not in view any more, yet you can still see the perimeter of the item being scaled.
It would be awfully handy to be able to grab anywhere along this perimeter to finish the scaling job whilst zoomed in on the area of concern.
thank you
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I'm talking about the zone where you can re-size widgets in the interface or where you can rotate a selected object on the artboard. The zone where the cursor changes indicating the thing you can do such as widget resizing or rotate versus move. It seems like the "zone" is very small. I see this on other apps, too..maybe it's a trend; often the zone is 1 px high!
People with that level of super-human manual exactitude have my eternal admiration. However, I don't have it. It feels like trying to grasp a very thin hair with tweezers and 8 hours of that can be wearing.
Could there be a bit more of a zone for these things..just a bigger area?
Thank you for any consideration on this.
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I have rulers visible but they appear transluscent...I have a layer clicked on/activated..and Show Guides is active.
I can't drag out a guide. I can place a guide using the guide manager, but I can't drag with my cursor.
anyone know what up with that? Am I in some kind of cant-drag-guides mode?
I'm in the Draw persona...
thanks
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I know what tabs are and how to set them in other apps, but in AD, I don't see how you see what you're doing...tab stops are relative to what?
thanks for any clues!
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We don't currently paste HTML, but if the browser you are pasting from provides RTF, we should get formatted text from that.
Usually, I use FF, fwiw...
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Maybe this is way out there, but with modern web-focused workflows, I think you could make a case for CSS support..this could help with wireframes - at least for text elements – or other types of web mockups...to see how the text would look using actual CSS, rather than an approximation.
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...or something like it?
Let's say I grab some text from a web page and I want to use that look (ie text styles, weights sizes) in some mockups..I'd like the text, once pasted to have those same weights and sizes..
Is this possible? I have seen *some* apps that can do this, but I'm not sure of the rock-hard details about which apps and under what circumstances.
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Hi,
1.) Turn on "Edit all layers", if it's not already on (bottom left of layers panel).
2.) Hold Cmd when you click to "dig" into containers.
3.) Use Option / Alt to cycle through click selections.
Hope this helps,
AndyS
Sweet! Oh, yeah, that helps muchly so!
Thank you
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OK..no, I get it and I wouldn't be hasty to chuck it..it's not a bad way to go, but might I suggest adding some other warning element to the situation, like maybe the text box could take on a different color, such as red, to help alert the User to what up?
I can appreciate the difficulty in choosing the warning method to use..I am accustomed to the one Quark and InDesign use...I've always found it mildly annoying, but...how else to handle it. I respect how you guys are approaching it.
The only danger I can see with the current method is that AD will allow overflow text to display (and print?) but maybe that's not the end of the world, either...
So, it's hide the text and User says, "Hey, where'd my text go...Oh, yeah...overflow." or show the overflow and User thinks, "Hey, why is that text behaving like that...ah...overflow."
Just thinking out loud here..
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I like to use that area to stash things I need to be out of the way, but within reach at the same time...perhaps others do, too?
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ah..that works...thank you !
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4.) Multiple strokes is on the cards - but we need to find a nice way to implement the UI - most other efforts I have seen are not good enough, imo.
5.) You *can* do gradients on lines! When using the gradient tool, select "Line" context from the context toolbar.
Sweet, and Sweet!
I am glad that you confirm that feature X or Y is on the way. I sure am enjoying the ride until then...
:D
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What is the idea behind having text that is in a box with other text, but which appears below the text box handles?
It is very difficult to select this text. You must first select the box above, then you can get to the text you want.
Why not make this text more directly accessible to selection?
Is there an underlying reason for the way it is now?
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Or, perhaps there is a different rationale in the way it works now..is there?
Thank you!
New Logo Please!
in Older Feedback & Suggestion Posts
Posted
I think this is very good reasoning....
What about the ppl who aren't doing a magazine, though? What is the commonality for what a layout app can be used for?