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Just how illustrator and freehand do, but as of yet not on affinity. If I have a bunch of elements on the page and say i decide to switch typefaces in the evolution of the brand Identity, in affinity i have to do this one by one over and over again. Hopefully this will be a quick fix for you folks. Note the freehand implementation is of course better - it allows selecting any old thing(s) (text, group, mixture of elements) and there is still facility to change the font - whatever type is within that selection will get changed. Of course I could go on and ask for styles etc but will leave that for hit further down the road. Cheers!

I use my laptop at very different distances. Sometimes I use my trackpad, some times a mouse and sometimes my wacom, and the distances are different. It would be great to adjust the UI font size for when I push back the laptop and work on the wacom... thanks. I also have a non-retina, but hi-res MacBookPro, which has more pixels than the default model, but not quite retina DPI )they introduced that the following model, DANGIT!)

Hi, I've been trying out the demo version for a couple of days and wanted to applaud the team for a truly impressive effort in trying to bring the best of both (vector and raster) worlds. At the same time I couldn't help but feel greatly underwhelmed by user experience of Affinity Designer and would like to mention a few points and see both how users and the team feel about that. In short, I think by trying to so closely copy the UI of Illustrator and Photoshop, Affinity Designer is missing a fantastic opportunity to start fresh and IMPROVE on these programs. Great success of programs like Sketch show that users may not necessarily want *cheap* Adobe products, they want *new* kind of products that better adopt to their particular workflows. Hence I will use Sketch for example of what I'd call workflow-based UI and Illustrator and Photoshop as feature-based UI. Photoshop and Illustrator have evolved over decades and over 20 iterations, and with this long history comes a huge baggage of legacy where early GUI decisions need to be carried over from early versions for the sake of consistency (people generally don't like change if they are used to one way of doing things). Also each new version meant bunch of new features that kept piling up and needed to be squeezed into existing UI paradigm of panels and toolbars, and hence the product that is based around features is created, with each iteration being more powerful but also feeling slightly ever more bloated. By "bloated" I mean that everyone, especially creative people, want as little friction from the tools they use. Obviously one way to remove friction is to repeatedly use the product, but for example, even after using Photoshop for almost 20 years I still often cringe by the way I constantly need to shuffle between different panels, and toolbars: even if I can customize their position and what not, I am still forced to break my workflow in order to rearrange some panel, or click a certain button to open a subpanel with more options. In order to solve the problem of cramped UI Adobe has introduced, years ago, concept of Workspaces, which is kinda like GUI on top of the GUI, and while it does help ease the problem, Workspaces is a duct-tape patch and not a true solution, which is quite understandable given the size and legacy of a huge program like Photoshop (or Illustrator, or even worse example: Autodesk programs like AutoCAD and Max - compared to Autodesk's miserable efforts of managing feature bloat, Adobe is doing an excellent job!). On the other hand, a new program has opportunity to approach UI from different angle, and programs like Sketch (or similarly named Sketch Up, to continue analogy to Autodesk competitors) tried to focus on concrete task that user wants to perform and build a flexible dynamically changing UI around these tasks, rather than to simply group buttons into panels based on features. Now obviously it is ridiculous to compare Sketch to Photoshop, as it is a niche program that caters to specific target market and specific workflows (GUI design only), but there are a lot of lessons to be learned on how friction between the idea and the tool can be organically reduced if you start from clean slate and not by copying software behemots with over 20 years of GUI legacy: 1) Edit everything in-place to give more hands-on control over the effect. Example is the way Sketch gradients are edited directly on the object, vs. having to do it in a dedicated UI element separated from object. 2) UI adopts intuitively to users logical next action. You don't need to switch tools or modes if it's obvious what you will do next. For example: - one click at the object selects it and automatically turns into Transform mode. Double click will automatically turn into path editing (moving anchors around). - when you have a line selected and click on an anchor or bezier handle, you will automatically get into edit mode in Sketch because obviously direct click on a handle of a selected object means you want to move it around. Iin Affinity, you will stay in your present tool which means you are likely to start creating another line instead (althout there is a misleading PEN- pointer that leads to think that the following action will be anchor deleting). 3) Don't float feature-based panels around, but use several fixed positions for GUI. If you follow point 2) this means that GUI will adopt to what you do and you always intuitively always need to move your attention to the same part of screen when wanting to perform complex tasks. Another Sketch example is Inspector (a paradigm widely used by Apple products) which is a sole UI element that always adopts to whatever you are doing at the moment. So I know that whatever I plan to do, I only need to look to the right side of the screen and I will always have a RELEVANT tool set. 4) Modular and consistent functionality. By modular I mean the way different types of fills can be stacked one on top of another in Sketch, and controlled via extremely simple but powerful interface. Another excellent example of modular pproach is the concept of Modifiers in 3D Max, where you can basically start from a simple 3D cube and end up with a human figure just by applying a range of non-destructive modifiers (and a bit of skillful positioning of the points) and at any moment you can always go back to any step and modify it in a non destructive manner. By consistent I mean things like Styles which are common place in software packages to ensure consistency. Ok, hm... I'm sorry it's getting late here (2:30am) so I am starting to lose focus here. Back to the core point: I understand Affinity is going after Adobe users, but that really doesn't mean that all we want is cheap Illustrator + Photoshop. You can do much better by trying to approach the functionality from a new fresh perspective and I can assure you will get a faithful user base much easier by doing NEW thing than trying to copy everything 1:1 - because you know, making another Photoshop AND Illustrator in one software piece from scratch is HUGE amount of work. And people will ALWAYS keep comparing Affinity to Illustrator and Photoshop and be kinda pissed off because feature XYZ is misssing. By starting fresh, you can focus your efforts and be more effective in solving user problems with less actual work. Plus, don't underestimate your potential users: if you do things with fresh perspective, it may take us a bit of learning curve to get used to your product, but if early on we figure out that we are seeing a new better way of doing things, most of us will gladly spend some time to learn and adopt. Case in point: I liked Affinity demo very much, but it doesn't really solve anything that my Photoshop and Illustrator CS4 don't do (except dang retina screen support). Even if it's feature packed, and cheap, there is not very much incentive for me to buy, as it feels just too familiar to these two packages. Maybe I am minority here, but really would like to hear what other users thing on this. Good night :) N.

Hi, I've just had a short glimpse at the trial but these things would make this tool great for UI design (forget Sketch because of performance): Paragraph and character styles Automatic style updating or some easy-to-use alternative Different artboards in one view to design flows Easy-to-use symbols to complement the outsourced embedded files In the help it says: Am I missing something or text attributes are not part of styles? Please include this on the roadmap and the tool will finally destroy Adobe :P.

It would be great if AD had a Preference slider for UI saturation, that way we could desaturate the colorful UI icons... Sometimes less is more ;)

G'day, I have only looked at the trial version now for a few minutes after hearing great things, and it looks really good. However, I would like to suggest adding the ability to zoom with just the mouse wheel without needing any modifier key, and the ability to pan with just the middle mouse button, again without requiring any modifier key. XARA can do this, GIMP can do this, Inkscape can do this, even Anime Studio does something very similar, and one reason I don't like Photoshop or Illustrator is that they can't do this. Being able to pan and zoom using just the mouse feels so right to me that not having this feature is a crippling show-stopper. I will purchase AD if and only if this feature will be added. Cheers, Jules

https://dribbble.com/shots/1809240-Music-Player-UI-NCD2014 Just a project I did for NDC 2014. I don't have a lot of time to work on personal work, but I'm trying to find the time. Most of my work is internal, and private unfortunately. This was my first serious go at using Affinity Designer for a project. It was a decent experience, but I did miss a few key things.

There is a Mac OS feature implied in many programms to access some handling of the document file via the titlebar of the document’s window within a software. By cmd-click on the name you see the full path of the file’s location and you can drag and drop the icon shown just like you can drag and drop the document’s icon in finder. So you can grab it and b.e. drop it to a finder folder visible in the background or place it in another open document window (if the target software allows drag and drop placement). Even easier to handle when using in combination with the programm switch (cmd-tab) or mission control. Neither is possible in AffDes yet – no icon is displyed, and nothing shown by command-clicking onto the name. I’d be happy to see this feature implemented in future! (attachment shows pop up path display when document name is cmd-clicked in Text Edit)

Need arrows (or bullets, etc) at the ends of lines, curves, and open shapes (to draw flow diagrams, or other diagrams...) Also a bigger font in UI could be good to use it ergonomically better in screens with high pixel density (where literals are very small in size) E Luengo, MD

For the way I work, I need to have the layers palette expanded vertically as long as I can get it. This way I can "drill" down to the specific sub-sub layer with a minimum of fuss, i.e. scrolling. So is there a way to have a second column "docked" to the main palette column? This way the document window will be sized to fit the remaining area in fullscreen/attached mode. That's how I have my UI for Manga Studio setup and it works quite well. This way I can have layers and the transform palette in one column and Colors, Effects and the Navigator in the other column. I can see that on some MBP's this would take up way too much Screen Real Estate, but on my 27" iMac, I got room to spare. I'm posting this in Questions, because there may be something that I'm unaware of (some undocumented or buried method to to this second column docking). In which case, I'd appreciate know how to do it. If it isn't then I'll repost this in the Feature Request section. Thanks!

Dear Affinity team and users, I came recently across your product. I am currently looking for a product which covers my interests. I am more of a developer than a designer, but occasionally I have or want to do some design work my self. Most of the time I get asked to design a simple website, create a Flyer to print or a Logo. For my pet projects I would like to be able to create game assets for 2D development (e.g. Pixel Art) and UI-elements. I am also interested into digital painting and own a Wacom tablet. Until yesterday, I thought I am going to buy Pixelmator/Acorn and Sketch, then I saw your product. For the Flyer and Logo use cases, it seems that the Affinity Designer is the perfect solution. Is AD also capable to solve my other use cases? How does it compare to Software like Sketch which is focused on Web/UI? Is web and UI design a use case that you try to solve with your product? Thank you for answering my questions.

Hi all! I've been meaning to ask: do you have plans to make all the interface elements dockable (to screen edges, that is) *even* in separated mode like in CS? It's not a big deal having AD (and, I'm thinking, APub as well) in a single, consolidated window, but what about Affinity Photo, when it finally comes? Much like in Photoshop, I'm hoping you can drag and drop layers from one document to another and, as such, a unified, tabbed interface suddenly stops making much sense. However, not being able to maximize/zoom a window without it going behind the palettes, tools and toolbars (like in CS apps), could become a bit of a bummer. I am aware that many of the UI issues suffered by CS apps (ID CS6, I'm looking at ya!) come from badly implemented dockable palettes and its interactions with subsequent OS X versions and their functions (namely, Spaces), but… Are you taking that risk and thinking about it? It's just that I can't seem to find any specific mention to palettes and Separated Mode minutia in your roadmap. Oh, by the way… I know this is becoming a running theme, but… As much I enjoy at least being able to “window-shade” floating palettes into an horizontal strip, that is a bit '90s-ish. Adobe really nailed it with the iconized palettes in vertical, collapsed strips. That, alone, and the ability to dock them left *and* right (as you can see on the enclosed screenshots from Ai and ID), is a massive space saver. Are you planning anything along those lines?

Hi, Currently, there is multiple frictions in the App while trying to change colors to shape or text. - Right now the UI never remember what you did before. Everytime I click shape by shape, it's like the UI is showing a random tab instead of the last used one. - Not sure why you can't pick the text color directly with the text tool. You always have to go to selection mode to see the color option. - Not sure why the color picker doesn't change the current color after picking one. You have to click on the picked color to apply it. - Swatches are very tedious to use, esp with effect. Like the color overlay FX. The color drop down is very basic and doesn't let you pick any swatches. So everytime, I am showing the swatches in the App UI in the background and use the color drop on it to apply it to the effect. I think it will be a huge benefit if the swatches where available from any color pickup like the native OSX one. Thanks :)

I'm a big fan of most of how AD works and looks now, but there are some functions i'd love to see: Tabs in 'separated mode' windows. Sort of like browsers work: you can have any amount of windows, with any amount of documents/tabs in them. Fullscreen mode to maximise working space. Same for Hide palettes/UI shortcut, sort of like TAB in photoshop. Dark menubar for OS X Yosemite. Custom palette designer: put random icons into a new, custom palette. I'd love to combine most used toolbar, transform, align and boolean icons into a single palette. Keyboard shortcut remap: tools (!), functions etc. Updatable smarter embeds: place document A into a document B, edit A and it's updated inside B. And a really big one: Automation. Think actions in photoshop: record any buttons/shortcuts/canvas operations into a macro and play it any time using a shortcut. Could be only menus at first implementation, then add palette buttons and then canvas operations like drawing, transforms etc. Keep up mind-blowing work you've been doing on AD, going at this rate this is going to be a no-brainer first-day purchase for any graphic designer.

Currently the only way to change the appearance and size of the tools tool bar is to change the number of columns which restricts you on size of the overall tool bar. As many will set up their own individual workspace, especially when working in Separated Mode, the freedom to be able to grab and manually adjust the size of the tool bar would be useful, with the icons on the toolbar dynamically changing position to fit the tool bar. If the tool bar was too small for all the icons, then a fly out can appear containing the rest. As this would be done through user choice, I don't see it going against the surface level UI ethos of the program as it wouldn't be a default setting.