Affinity Publisher 2 walkthrough?

[Sunil Wu]

I'm looking for something that I can't seem to find:
A tutorial on Affinity Publisher 2 that walks a user through the steps of producing a document.

The official Affinity YouTube account has plenty of videos on using the individual tools within publisher.
But these are of limited value for people who have not used desktop publishing software before.

I have not used desktop publishing software before, so I'm a little lost in the documentation. It seems to be entirely produced for an audience that already knows what they are doing.

A walkthrough tutorial of a simply project - either video or text and images - would be very valuable for users new to desktop publishing.

If such a resource already exists, I'd love to know about it.

 

[carl123]

53 minutes ago, Sunil Wu said:

If such a resource already exists, I'd love to know about it.

I don't think there is an official Serif video that does what you want but YouTube may have something

This is for V1 so you may find some things are different in V2 but hopefully the basics are covered

 

[GarryP]

It would be difficult for someone to produce a tutorial so generalised as “steps of producing a document” as there are so many different types of documents and each type can be designed and produced differently.

For instance, a novel will be created differently to a fashion magazine, which will be created differently to a text book, which will be created differently to a sales brochure, which will be created differently to a CD case insert, and so on, and so forth.

There will be some things that are the same, or similar, but there will be other things that are needed for one document but which are not needed for another document.

The video which carl123 linked to might be a good start – I haven’t watched it myself – but if you can tell us what sort of document you are trying to make then we can probably give you advice which is more relevant to your needs.

I would recommend watching – and trying to follow yourself – the official videos which show you how to use the most-used tools in the software – such as the Move Tool, the Node Tool, the Pen Tool, the Quick Shapes, etc. – and the various most-used panels – such as the Layers Panel, the Colour Panel, the Character and Paragraph Panels, etc. (Other people will have different ideas about what is "most-used", these are just suggestions.)

By doing so you will learn a lot about how the application works at a basic level, and that should let you build your knowledge and experience to go on to other things. Start with the basics and then move on to the more-complicated things, otherwise the more-complicated things may seem too complicated. Learn to crawl → learn to walk → learn to run.

[Dan C]

Hi @Sunil Wu,

I'd also recommend checking our out 'Quickstart guide' as this covers the basics of Affinity Publisher 2 -

https://affinity.serif.com/learn/publisher/desktop/quickstart/

I hope this helps

[PaoloT]

At the university, I passed two massive exams on history of book and publishing. And they covered just some aspects of this long history. I can't figure a way to reduce those things into a single tutorial or two…

Paolo

 

[Old Bruce]

15 hours ago, Sunil Wu said:

I have not used desktop publishing software before, so I'm a little lost in the documentation. It seems to be entirely produced for an audience that already knows what they are doing.

The major difference between Desktop Publishing (DTP) software and Word Processing software is that in Word Processing software you make a new document and start typing, whereas in Desktop Publishing software you have to make a container to hold the text after you have made a new document.

I would start by getting some text in a Word Processor file and saving it as a Plain Text file, this will remove all formatting. Copy the text from the Plain Text file and paste it into a new Publisher document (size A4 or Letter(8 1/2 x 11 inches)). Look at the Word processor's styled text and the Plain Text in the Publisher document. Select bits of the plain text with the text caret and change the font, Family, Size, leading etc. Play about with stuff.

Pay attention to video's and or tutorials which teach about Text Styles.

Pictures and or graphic elements can be put into containers (Picture Frame tool) or just placed on the page all on their lonesome. The Layers Panel should always be open, it is your best friend, Text can be over top of a picture, you'll be able to see the text, or underneath it, you won't be able to see the text.

An Aside: Back in the day I would use pencil and paper to draw out what was going where on the page(s) before I started to layout the work. Publishers and Editors liked that, but I did it for me so I wouldn't get lost.

[jmwellborn]

@Sunil Wu  welcome to the forums!  There are also several useful written tutorials posted on these forums that you may wish to download regarding using Publisher.  They can be found in the forum section LEARN AND SHARE>Tutorials.  Look for the topic “Written tutorials to Download” by @Blueprint.  Start with page 4.  The Publisher tutorials will be interspersed with tutorials for Photo and Designer.  For people who learn more easily by reading, rather than videos, they are very helpful, because you can download the pdf’s and then practice at your own speed.  You might find them helpful.  With a little practice I predict that you will thoroughly enjoy Affinity Publisher!

 

 

[Catshill]

11 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I would start by getting some text in a Word Processor file and saving it as a Plain Text file, this will remove all formatting.

I think this is is key when dealing with APu. Even though I produce magazines rather than books I get my authors to adopt the above strategy typically using Google Docs.

[iconoclast]

There existed a Workbook for earlier versions of Publisher, that is very good. I purchased one shortly before Serif stopped selling it. I think it was an economic decision. Maybe you can get one somewhere. But I'm not sure if the downloadable content, that belongs to the lessons in the book, is still available. To be honest, I didn't really use it very often, because I learned layouting about 20 years ago with Quark XPress and also worked with InDesign for years, and Publisher is not so different. But I think the book is very helpful for beginners.

Edit: As I did a quick Google-search, I found at least some german versions of the book on eBay and Amazon. I think there should be some english ones somewhere too.

[Sunil Wu]

On 5/14/2023 at 2:46 PM, carl123 said:

I don't think there is an official Serif video that does what you want but YouTube may have something

This is for V1 so you may find some things are different in V2 but hopefully the basics are covered

This looks pretty good - I watched it about halfway through.

I've run into some differences already between the two publisher versions.
And I'm hitting some roadbumps importing a docx file. 
But I'll try to follow this video.

Thanks.