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I was just doodling with some shapes to try out the improved 'expand stroke', and this is what emerged. It started out as a coupe of cogs and an ellipse and a few Boolean operations, followed by a bit of inspiration and tweaking of nodes. When I was knee-high to a sketch pad, my grandfather -- a talented draughtsman -- told me to invoke inspiration by making a random scribble and seeing what it suggested. Good to see the technique still works in the digital age!

Designed to help you create balanced asymmetric designs and patterns, the third class in the Golden Ratio series has just been released on Skillshare. Note: Permission to use the Affinity Designer logo has been obtained. Premium Link: If you already have a Skillshare Premium account, use this link: skl.sh/2D0QUPx If you want to sign up to Skillshare Premium to watch any class, use the same link skl.sh/2D0QUPx. At the time of writing, sign up and receive the first two months membership free. Cancel any time during the first two months. Free Link: Alternatively, the first ten people to use the following link will have free access to this class: skl.sh/2SrPnX1 Note: This free-access link is set to expire at the end of November 2018. With an Affinity Designer file and examples included with the class, you can get up to speed with the golden ratio and learn how easy it is to introduce a sense of harmony and cohesion to your work; no matter how simple or complex. Learning to apply the golden ratio to your work couldn’t be easier. The class is 33 minutes in duration and an Affinity Designer template file is included. To make the creation of these patterns easy, we will be exploring Affinity Designer’s Donut and Pie tools. We will also play around with the Cog tool; one of Affinity Designer's parametric shapes. The cog tool is so versatile, you’ll be wondering why you haven’t been using it. So Now There are Three Want to know more about how you can make the most of the golden ratio, check out all three classes: – Asymmetrical Drawing & Lettering with the Golden Ratio skl.sh/2JZ4h2Y – Create a Vintage Style Logo from Concentric Circles and the Golden Ratio skl.sh/2P7B08J – Concentric Radial Patterns & Infographics with the Golden Ratio skl.sh/2D0QUPx Note: All three classes feature Affinity Designer.

I recorded a macro, which modifies the opacity of layers in 2 different steps like so: (FADE MACRO) -duplicate layer -opacity 50% (Shows Settings icon > Opacity) -duplicate layer -opacity 20% (Shows Settings icon > Opacity) I enabled the Eye Setting to show the sliders when running (What's the proper name for that eye BTW?) I run it and it works as intended, I get a dialog with 2 sliders and Opacity 1 and Opacity 2, which allow me to preview the macro. Here comes the bug: I record a macro containing the previous "FADE MACRO" like so: (COMPOSITE MACRO) -duplicate layer -apply filter (Shows Settings icon > "Filter") -make composite -Run "FADE MACRO" (Shows Settings icon > Opacity 1, Opacity 2) First, when doing this, the Eyes I activated on "FADE MACRO" get deactivated, so I go into the settings icon to activate them again, and change the each slider to its descriptive name, but BOTH sliders get the same name, the still act independently on the preview, meaning they don't change the same opacity but they can't have different names. It doesn't matter which I click to edit, all sliders of the same property (in this case opacity) get the same name.

I thought I'd give everyone a few samples of what can be achieved with some of our shapes. We've made the shapes available in Designer highly versatile. All of the shapes (apart from the basic Rectangle and Ellipse) can be customised, giving you a high degree of control. Certain shapes have carefully chosen snapping values for each of their control points which quickly allow you to find right angles, inline edges, mirrors, and other useful positions. You'll see what I mean when you try them out! The main reason for using our shape objects is that they remain fully editable in your document. They scale and resize with other objects, but they can maintain proportions, angles and sizes. You have the option to convert any shape to a regular curves object, but in doing so you will lose the unique dynamic properties of that shape. To kick off, the one shape I'm particularly proud of is the Cog. It may sound like quite a restrictive shape, but please look at the samples below to get an idea of the range of shapes that can be made with just the Cog. Here's the actual Designer document, so that you can see for yourself how these shapes were made with the Cog. CogSamples.afdesign