PDF export to single page from Designer artboards with bleed

[Clayton King]

Project: Paperback book cover (SOTW Cover)
Artboards: Cover, Spine & Back
Program: Affinity Designer 1.90
Equipment: highly capable laptop Windows 10

I have been wrestling with this for two days now. Initially started in publisher with layers trying to create multipage spread (i.e., like InDesign) in which I had separate pages (cover,spine,back) lined next to each other - similar to how you'd produce a z-fold brochure. Learned that publisher can't have more than two pages per spread. Okay.

Switched to Designer using artboards of different sizes butted up to each other. Now how to export...

I've tried simple export of whole document WITH BLEEDS. I get a pdf with three pages.

I've tried the Export persona and choosing SOTW Cover and NOT selecting each of the three artboards separately. I get a pdf without bleeds and layers not rendering as laid out in the program.

I'm at a loss... This would have been a 2 hour process in InDesign; I'm now on day three...

Images attached: Designer pasteboard, screen grab of PDF export, export persona layers and export options

 

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, Clayton King said:

Project: Paperback book cover (SOTW Cover)
Artboards: Cover, Spine & Back  ....

This is where you are going wrong.

One Artboard because it is one piece of paper that is being printed. Mark with guides where the spine is.

[Clayton King]

Just now, Old Bruce said:

This is where you are going wrong.

One Artboard because it is one piece of paper that is being printed. Mark with guides where the spine is.

That's not a very effective or productive use of time given the spine could easily change size. This is a HIGHLY common practice, and one suggested by most larger American print houses - particularly when producing multifold brochures. Having to manually adjust guides each time your "page" size changes when that page is actually a panel (or, in this case a spine) is a huge time sink...

Ultimately I exported all artboards with bleeds to a JPG image and used Adobe Acrobat to create a the pdf. Good thing I keep Adobe around for some things...

[Dazmondo77]

41 minutes ago, Clayton King said:

That's not a very effective or productive use of time given the spine could easily change size.

I've been in the same predicament a few times and also tried the Designer workaround which doesn't work - yes it's a real pain we can't have multipage spreads which I find most handy for book covers, when you're given the go-ahead but the client has decided to go with a lighter stock for the inner pages which is a 2 second adjustment to spine page on a 3page spread - but a pain when you have to setup as one page - I've not heard any updates from moderators on the statement below:

On 8/30/2018 at 2:41 PM, Dave Harris said:

This isn't something we plan to change. We support one - or two-page spreads directly, and beyond that you can create a spread of any size, and demark nominal pages with guides.

Which is not good - it should be something they plan to change as there's a load of users that need this to do their jobs 😡

[Clayton King]

So, I just upgraded all my apps to 1.9. Curious about bleeds given this project requires them.

This is my Designer workspace. As you can see, there are a number of images which far exceed the working area, but which don't show up in the bleed. 

What am I missing?

[Dazmondo77]

The current problem with Designer is the bleed will only truly show on a single page document, as soon as you introduce artboards you only get a guide and only on the artboard you are currently on - I'm guessing that artboards in Designer are kind of like layer clipping masks - I think the only way you can view the other items is to drag them over the top of all your artboards to the very top of your layer stack, effectively it is un-masking them but then you have to remember where to place them back on the artboards, as items that don't reside within  artboards are omitted from any output