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Hi, I'm trying to build a phone directory booklet with Affinity. Let's go so far as to say that I can export the data from a spreadsheet and/or database in just about any conceivable format, I'm wondering what the right was is to pull it into Affinity Publisher using styles. Say, for instance, that each entry should look like: Smith, John 123 Main St. Blankendale, MN 88304-0014 816.929.4030 https://johnisgreat.com/fake-url-for-example-purposes Without going through every single entry manually (I have about 500 of them) and setting the style, what's the right way to do this in Affinity? I'd love to hear from Serif. In the end, I'm trying to produce a two-column staple-together booklet that I can update the bulk of the data via automation. Advice, tricks, tips, and warnings welcome.

The new UX features in the 1.5 release are phenomenal, and bring Affinity Designer MUCH closer to a total solution for front end design. What I'd love to see in a future release is support for linking/importing data from external sources such as a JSON file, spreadsheet, or CSV. A great implementation of such a feature can be found in the Craft plugin for Sketch. If this were available natively in Affinity Designer, I think I'd be ready to make a full cutover to AD as my primary environment for all UX work.

I am a windows user. The Affinity designer beta arrived just in time. For a variety of reasons, I had become disatisfied with the Serif management systems such as organiser and photostack, and as I started using raw for shooting photos, I was advised to use photoshop elements. This turned out to be very satisfactory, and I have found that the photoshop elements organiser functions very well. Indeed I was at the point of considering upgrading to Lightroom when I was mailed about Affinity. Even the Windows Beta of Designer is exciting, and I have looked at the Mac tutorials on Affinity photo. I am impatient to try that too. But I understand that it is intended that there will be an effective Data Asset Management system. It is major operation to convert a large library of images (I have about 20000) So I hope that the Serif Affinity DAM will have the following features as a minimum. 1: Effective automatic stacking of images, especially adjusted versions of the same image (with copy taking only the top one, but move taking the whole stack) 2: Face recognition and marking 3: Mapping of photo locations 4: Event grouping 5: Tagging of images. 6: Effective backup (full and incremental) 7: The ability to import catalogs from other systems, especially Adobe standards, including transporting the features listed above. I am very amateur, though my flickr site will shortly pass 1 million hits. I am sure that these features and many more required by professionals have already been included in the spec, but I thought it worth putting my views across. Apart from using PS Elements to process Raw Images, I have been a loyal Serif user of the mainstream Plus products produced by Serif, including Photo-, Draw-, Web-, Page- and Movie-, Plus. Affinity has stopped me deserting, and I cannot wait to see the New Affinity products for Windows as they emerge. Regards Graham Rabbitts