Feature Request : Text Columns and Rulers in Affinity Designer

[parambyte]

I use Affinity Designer for Graphic Design.

this includes designing packaging. Where I have to create beautifully organised text, like ingredients, instructions etc. But the lack of a text ruler and text column support on Designer is frustrating. I was using these features in Aldi’s Freehand almost 25 years ago.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

You're free to ask for that, of course. And you're not alone in asking for that.

But I'll point out that if you need those functions you can get them today by using Publisher. And it also integrates very nicely with Designer via the StudioLink functionality.

And, tomorrow, will you want the other text-related improvements from Publisher? Find and Replace? Automatic hyphenation? Linked text frames? The Text Frame panel? Probably some others I've missed, and whatever comes in the future?

[Pšenda]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

But I'll point out that if you need those functions you can get them today by using Publisher.

... with a 50% discount, so it's definitely worth buying rather than waiting to see if they might implement it in ADesign in a few years.

[Sideshowlol]

I'll add my vote for column in text-boxes. I hope it's incorporated into Designer in a future release. It seems counter-intuitive to me that Designer only allows one to work with columns at multi-sized art-board level, whereas Publisher, which is a tool primarily aimed at same-sized, multi-page document design and layout, offers control over columns at text-box level.

Being able to incorporate text-boxes with more than a single column of text into a design is important to me. Over the years, I have needed to create designs that are nothing to do with same-sized, multi-page documents (such as magazine or brochure layouts) but that do require text-boxes with multiple columns. Having to create a text box in Publisher and then copy/paste it into Designer isn't convenient when Designer is evidently quite happy to receive the pasted text-box with columns. Designer also adds a "Remove Columns" button to the tool bar when a multi-column text-box is pasted in. So it can remove them but not add them.

My hope is that the guys making the decisions at Serif, on what functionality to include in each Affinity app, will see how useful it is to be able to add columns to text-boxes in Designer.

As the OP stated: this functionality was available in Freehand 25 years ago! It was very, very cool to have so much fine-grained control over text and have access to artboards with pages of various sizes in one document. Back then, it was mainly for print but now it would be ideal for a web design project—eg. for when a design has to be repurposed for multi-sized social media ads. Laying out multi-sized, multi-page projects in Designer is fantastic. Text-box column control would add another killer feature to this already great app. 

[prophet]

You can get the Text Frame panel in Designer using this little hack/loophole…

Quote

In short, with Type on a Path active, you will see this little guy in the context toolbar. Click it to get the Text Frame Panel. I even saved a Studio Preset so if I closed the panel on accident, I could get it back super quick.

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, prophet said:

You can get the Text Frame panel in Designer using this little hack/loophole…

 

That is only true on Mac, I think, and even there Serif have said that it's appearance is a bug which will be fixed at some point. I would not depend on it long-term.

[fde101]

On 8/31/2022 at 12:58 PM, Sideshowlol said:

I hope it's incorporated into Designer in a future release. It seems counter-intuitive to me that Designer only allows one to work with columns at multi-sized art-board level, whereas Publisher, which is a tool primarily aimed at same-sized, multi-page document design and layout, offers control over columns at text-box level.

In the meantime, if you have both, then within Publisher, switch to the Designer persona before creating a document.  If you leave it at one page and turn off "Default Master" you can then enable "Create artboard" to create such a document right from within Publisher.  You have access to the artboard tool from the Designer persona and to adjustments for multiple columns from the Publisher persona.  If you have Photo as well, then the Photo persona gives access to practically everything the pixel persona of Designer offers (and more); otherwise, or if you need access to the Export persona, it is simply File -> Edit in Designer.

If you frequently work with a specific columns configuration and want to do so within the Designer app, you can create and set up the text box in Publisher, File -> Edit in Designer, and save the text box as an asset (View -> Studio -> Assets) that can then be reused directly within other documents in Designer.