First day with Affinity Designer

[GrahamHCB]

I bought AP on the day it came out and love it, today I bought AD, trouble is I'm not a designer and have no experience with Photoshop.

 

What I want to do is create a logo to go on the rear of greetings cards etc. I watched the Text to Path video amongst others which were very useful but I can't work out how to proceed further.

 

This screenshot shows where I'm up to so far    

 

 

The name at the top is about right but how do I insert a word at the bottom of the circle on the outside and on the path?

 

Also I'd like to give the circle a gradient going from grey at the top to brown at the bottom, so far I've only been able to add a gradient as a single colour.

 

Sorry if this is basic stuff but I need some help.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Graham

[GrahamHCB]

So the attachment didn't work out I'll try again here.

[GrahamHCB]

Somehow the attachment only opens after right clicking and opening it in a new tab etc. 

 

Perhaps someone can teach me how to embed it, too.

 

Graham

[A_B_C]

Hi Graham,

 

here’s a recipe for your text:

• Create a circle and make sure it is selected
• Go to Layer > Convert to Text Path. This will convert your circle into a text path, and you will see a blinking cursor on the circumference of the circle.
• Now type the words that are supposed to be on the top of the circle, choose Center from the context toolbar, highlight your words and adjust font attributes as desired.
• Set the blinking cursor to the end of your phrase and hit Return
• Now type the words that are supposed to be on the bottom of the circle. To bring the bottom words out of the circle area, highlight them and adjust the Baseline Shift parameter from the context toolbar. You might also need to adjust tracking and / or kerning for the bottom words or letter pairs respectively. Open the Character Panel and adjust these parameters as desired (first screen shot).

I would create another circle for the gradient, just to keep things apart. Here’s the recipe:

• Create the second, smaller circle. Make sure that snapping is active (Snap to Object Bounding Boxes / Mid Points) and snap the (bounding box) midpoint of the second circle to the midpoint of the first one. Thereby you will make the circles concentric.
• Select the second circle and use the Fill Tool (Gradient Tool) to draw a straight gradient line from the top to the bottom of it (second screen shot).
• Now click the little ring (gradient stop) at the top of your gradient line and go to the Colour Panel. Adjust the colour of this gradient stop (third screen shot).
• Do the same for the little ring at the bottom of your gradient line. Alternatively you can use the gradient flyout panel from the context toolbar of the Fill Tool (fourth screen shot).

Hope that helps … cheers, Alex  :)

 

P.S. Your attachment is fine …

Graham_Brown.afdesign

[GrahamHCB]

Great Alex thanks for your quick and detailed response.

 

I'll go through your recipes over the weekend and see how I get on.

 

Thanks again

 

Graham

[A_B_C]

Feel free to ask, if there are any problems …  :)

[GrahamHCB]

Hi Alex I followed your recipes and got the result in the attached screenshot, which I'm quite pleased with. But I found it difficult to do this:

 

I would create another circle for the gradient, just to keep things apart. Here’s the recipe:

• Create the second, smaller circle. Make sure that snapping is active (Snap to Object Bounding Boxes / Mid Points) and snap the (bounding box) midpoint of the second circle to the midpoint of the first one. Thereby you will make the circles concentric.

I'm not sure if you meant to create another circle directly over the original one but then I couldn't see what size it was, or to create one in a blank area and drag it over. Either way I couldn't get it to snap in place despite using your recipe.

 

Anyway it worked out and I could probably use it as it is, although I think I could get it better with more help  :)

 

One attempt came out pixellated and I don't really know why, when I opened it just now it was good quality again when zoomed in. So who knows what happened there.

 

I want to get cards printed at Moo and one requirement I don't understand is, to quote:

 

Outline your text before saving (select all of the layers, click type in the menu, select "create outlines")

 

These are most probably instructions for Photoshop /Illustrator do you know what it might be in AD?

 

Thanks again for your detailed help. :)  :)

 

Graham

 

 

[A_B_C]

Hi Graham,

 

wow, that turned out pretty good … and it’s easy to get snapping to work. First off, let me link to a very good tutorial video by the Affinity guys that explains the snapping capabilities of Affinity Designer (I can only recommend watching these videos on vimeo … they are very instructive):

 

 

vimeo.com/macaffinity/

 

Now, in your case, you would want to go to the Snapping Options on the main toolbar, select Snap to object bounding boxes (these are the blue rectangles around your circles) as well as Include bounding box mit points. In my first video (“Snapping.mov”) you can see, how the midpoint of the green circle is snapped to the midpoint of the orange one. (The red ring is just there to indicate the midpoint of the orange circle.)

 

To make the second circle the same size of the first one, you could either use the Transform Panel and enter the values numerically or do the following, as shown in my second video (“Concentric.mov”):

• Set the snapping options as above
• Select the Circle Tool
• Hover over the midpoint of your text circle (snapping guides appear)
• Hold down Shift and Command, click and drag from the midpoint of your text circle to the circumference of that circle until your cursor snaps to the bounding box of the text path

Either method should work …  :)

 

Now, “outline your text before saving”: that means you have to convert your text to curves before saving. To do so, select the circle that contains your text and choose Layer > Convert to curves. Done. But be aware, this action is irreversible. So you might want to either keep two documents for further adjustments or duplicate your text path and hide the duplicate before proceeding.

 

Hope that helps …  :)

Alex

Snapping.mov

Concentric.mov

[GrahamHCB]

Hi Alex,

 

Thanks for your quick and again very helpful reply, I'll have a go at this later today.

 

I've watched all of the AP videos, and quite a few of the AD ones, including the one you linked to, and find them really instructive and helpful, just need to go back and learn the procedures fully.

 

I find your videos really great, you show exactly what's to be done in a concise way, also your step by step recipes are excellent.

Perhaps you should collate all of these as tutorials for AD/AP users.  :)

 

Thanks again.

 

Graham