How do I warp text in Affinity Designer?

[John Rostron]

14 hours ago, Jowday said:

“We’re building world leading professional creative apps, striving to inspire the creative industry to think bigger, work faster and create better.”

This quote is rather unhelpful without any indication of the source or the date.

John

[Alfred]

29 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

This quote is rather unhelpful without any indication of the source or the date.

It’s undated, I’m afraid, but I found it here: https://affinity.serif.com/careers 

[Jowday]

1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

This quote is rather unhelpful without any indication of the source or the date.

Agreed: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/careers/

[John Rostron]

As a matter of getting your point across, I would suggest that you would have been better to put it like this:

On their web page [link] Serif has claimed that

Quote

We're building world-leading professional creative apps, striving to inspire the creative industry to think bigger, work faster and create better.

John

 

 

[Jowday]

4 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

As a matter of getting your point across, I would suggest that you would have been better to put it like this:

On their web page [link] Serif has claimed that

John

I assumed that the inspired, professional, creative and fast users of Affinity would put two and two together, and if not, ask Google.

[Kenix73]

Whew, I just dodged a bullet! I was about to buy a copy for windows and mac, but wanted to just double check that it had the very basic features I needed (text on a path, text warp, distressing) and found this forum post.  I can't believe I only made it to the 2nd criteria before stumbling over something Affinity designer couldn't do, and I'm by no means and advanced user of graphic design tools. I already knew inkscape could do this, and I use it in illustrator all the time, so I thought it was a foregone conclusion that there would be some way to do it.  I'm disappointed because I was liking the software. 

[Mike W077]

Well, I tried Corel Draw for the Mac and it definitely is NOT ready for prime time -- slow -- buggy -- ugly. Crashed. I have never been able to grok Illustrator, must be a mental block or something. So staying with AD despite not having text warping and bulleting, numbering at this time. AD is fast, slick and the features it does have work well. Hope those other features arrive soon. 

[v_kyr]

Warping text and vector objects etc. is something I'm also often highly missing from AD, since I then always have to export or take over (exchange) drawings to other solutions which do support to make such modifications and then go back. In other words, using more time consuming rerouting to other tools as workarounds. On Win I often use Xara/Magix or Inkscape for such things. On the Mac side Amadine or Inkscape do support warping too.

Since I often do beside handcoding in SVG, I sometimes also use some Javascript based solutions for that like Warp.js  (github project page) or things like this ....

• Above image interactive tryout on JSFiddle
• Html/SVG using JS Code and tryout result

[Jowday]

I created a LOT of artwork, brochures, logos, posters etc. for a huge global healthcare company 20 years ago, especially in 2002. I could pick software freely unless I had to continue on previous work made in fx Illustrator. I used a lot of software, mostly Illustrator and CorelDRAW, but preferred CorelDRAW. Whatever I did it just was more fun and my workflow much faster in CorelDRAW. I certainly didn't suffer from a lack of features back then.

20 years later somebody claims they are "building world leading professional creative apps" and we are having this discussion because they are not there yet and 20 years ago I would have said the same about Affinity Designer 1.7. It makes me laugh. Serif is still trying to sell as many copies they can, did you experience their aggressive sales people before the Affinity line? Flies on the phone. "Create jaw dropping blah blah". Pile it high, sell them cheap. But they really should find and accept their niche - and it certainly is NOT in the advanced vector illustration business. 

Tone down the rhetoric, Serif marketing, attract a segment you can actually fully serve. Save the big words for when you have the pro features in the products. Or focus on young artists with iPads making brush based artwork. Or, lets face it, small companies, people with a limited budget etc. It is great for them to have a cheap alternative. But it is not "world leading".

I am a curious guy who purchased and tried a lot of software (and did a lot of mansplaining to my wife who did not see the need), also every open source alternative there is. I like and prefer the user interface in the Affinity line, and I make a lot of doodles in it during brainstorm sessions. But the next step is always to launch Illustrator. So for now I call it Affinity Doodle.

[Helmuth Pandora]

Waiting for this feature

[BLKay]

Look up TYPE STYLER. It's amazing. Far more powerful than any other warp tool and fairly easy to learn. Reasonable price. 

[Joel_Cory]

6 hours ago, BLKay said:

Look up TYPE STYLER. It's amazing. Far more powerful than any other warp tool and fairly easy to learn. Reasonable price. 

I looked. It's MAC only. It also looks like the early 90's. ..and. It's more expensive than Affinity Designer and it only styles text.

[Kiarian]

8 hours ago, Joel_Cory said:

I looked. It's MAC only. It also looks like the early 90's. ..and. It's more expensive than Affinity Designer and it only styles text.

I was expecting to see some indie vector text warping software for a tenner. $60? I purchased both Affinity Photo and Designer combined, for not much more.
I'm only just starting to use Affinity Publisher, looks like it does vector text on a path, but haven't experiemented with it yet. The golden question is - can it do the Netflix logo?
Affinity Publisher full product being released today - rubs hands. It's been nestled in my pre order account for weeks.

[LarrySunshine]

All I can say is... WOW.

Since 2015 Affinity couldn't implement this tool. I'm honestly speechless. You cannot seriously say that AD is a real alternative for Adobe Illustrator. Hell, even InkScape can do a Netflix logo.

[000]

On 10/30/2018 at 8:37 AM, firstdefence said:

I liked CorelDraw, They should have made a Mac version.

They returned to MAC earlier this year with version 2019 ... take a look at www.coredraw.com (it's available without a subscription on the AppStore and on their website).

I haven't tried it yet, but will give it a good spin when I have some free time.

[TonyO]

I used Corel for like 18 years before I dropped it for the first release of AD. I really liked it but using my old windows pc as a secondary device for illustration was getting old. 

So of course I had to give it a spin. Did a whole illustration as a test, and... it’s ok. But just ok.

I was hoping for a fresh Corel experience, something newly coded for Mac and some serious performance increases. What I experienced is an app that feels like it has a 30 year old rendering engine and some tools that could use some serious refinement. It felt like the Corel I used years ago... but with literally nothing changed. 

After the buttery smoothness and speed of AD, going back to huge, slow, bloated design programs like CD and AI is rough.

The pricing is still stuck in the early 2000s also, there’s no excuse for a design program to still cost half a grand in 2019.

All of the workspace and customization options are also missing as well as lots of the deeper tools that you could add. Corel had the most customizable workspace on windows, on Mac it’s more of just the core experience.

If the most important thing in your workflow is envelope distortion and you really hate Adobe, and you have a few hundred dollars to waste, ya... Corel is pretty good.

But I see no real reason to go back to it. I feel kinda guilty saying that since I used to be a super dedicated user, but ya, they’re Mac return was too late and the experience just feels tired. They needed a ground up recode and a new fresh interface, all we got was a tired port.

 

 

[LarrySunshine]

27 minutes ago, TonyO said:

If the most important thing in your workflow is envelope distortion and you really hate Adobe, and you have a few hundred dollars to waste, ya... Corel is pretty good.

InkScape has it and it's free. There is no excuse for AD not to have this tool since Affinity advertise it as a complete software capable of everything.

[LarrySunshine]

Simply put - if you have to design a vintage/stamp style logo, you're out of luck. I didn't have any doubt that AD has such tool before buying it, because it doesn't make any sense for modern software NOT to have such a mandatory tool.

[LarrySunshine]

7 minutes ago, ErrkaPetti said:

Yet another Adobe staff that join Affinity Forum to point out that Adobe is superior to Affinity Suite...

Yeah, that’s true, but, give this company another year of development and another million or two will left Adobe subscription jail...

LOL. Nah dude not only that but we're also aliens.

Someone points out obvious shortcomings of software that markets itself as a complete tool for professionals, they must work for Adobe. It's just cute.

You noticed people pointed out that InkScape (which is free) and CorelDRAW can to that, right?

[TonyO]

As far as "professional design software" is concerned, you use what works for you. I rarely bend or distort my text so I'm personally fine waiting until envelope distort gets onto the road map, which it will. 

But seriously, Adobe Illustrator doesn't even have a fully functioning Node Tool... you need to combo up 4 different tools (white arrow, anchor point tool, plus pen and minus pen) and constantly switch between them to draw even the simplest shape, and even then none of them work the way they should. Call it what you want, but if you can't even properly draw with Bezier Curves on a program called "Illustrator", I'd rethink calling it the professional's tool. 

And don't get me started on how cruddy Illustrator's selection tools are... if you have to implement a full "isolation mode" just to be able to select points on a single shape without selecting every point on every overlapping shape on 20 different layers just by drawing a selection box...

You cant put a gradient fill on text in AI, you cant make a document over 227 inches in AI...

Uhg, i need to stop, i could write a novel about how awful illustrator is. 

 

[LarrySunshine]

20 hours ago, ErrkaPetti said:

Pretty easy to workaround many of the tools that still is missing in Affinity Designer...

It’s a vector drawing program, so, use your imagination and you easily edit the object to become perspective or distorted... 

 

You seem to be missing the point completely. I expect Professional Software to save time, not to eat it up. I could just as well use InkScape then.

[TonyO]

So use Inkscape to distort your text, copy paste it back into Affinity and keep working. 

It's still better than paying your left arm to Adobe every month. 

[LarrySunshine]

15 hours ago, TonyO said:

So use Inkscape to distort your text, copy paste it back into Affinity and keep working. 

It's still better than paying your left arm to Adobe every month. 

This is not a bad idea, but again it's just totally weird that AD still doesn't have such a tool, whether you use it or not.

[CLC]

On 5/21/2019 at 5:35 PM, Jowday said:

Agreed: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/careers/

They're still not looking for an ux expert.
That kinda explains a lot

[TonyO]

In defense: It is technically still version 1 software. Adobe illustrator is like version 29 or something like that, the features will come, give it time.

In not-defense: I find it weird that they implemented a bunch of complicated but overly niche isometric perspective tools that maybe 1 in every 100 designers will even experiment with, before fixing expand stroke and adding envelope distortion and a vector eraser...

But it’s their roadmap... and nobody is forcing us to use their apps, so it’s probably just best to nicely keep drawing attention to it, versus getting hostile. You’ll  catch more flies with honey than vinegar, haha.