New to Art Board concept

[jhmdigital]

i have been using Photoshop for some thirty years and switched to Affinity Photo when it was available. I also bought Affinity Designer, basically I suppose, to play around with and see what it could offer that wasn't available in AP.

 

I must confess that the use of Art Boards has me puzzled. I've watched the tutorials, read the Help notes and see the broad aspects of how they work.

 

But why do you use them? What is the benefit over Layers? OK, I'm not a designer; just someone playing around with the software; Doodling, if you like. 

 

Obviously they are an important part of a designer's tools and I would be grateful if someone could explain what I am failing to understand.

 

Please set me wise.

 

 

[Chris_K]

Hi jhmdigital

 

Artboards have multiple advantages. They can be used to have multiple document sizes on display, without having to create a new file for each size, so you can have the same design sized corrently for A4 Paper and an iPhone for example. Like it to the ability to spread multiple sheet of paper out on a table so you can see them all at once.

 

They also allow you to have pages for things like PDFs, each page being it's own artboard. You then have the option to export all the artboards or individual ones.

 

You can also get creative with document cropping using the artboard tool

 

Obviously this differs from the use of layers which restrict you to the single document working area.

 

Hope hat sheds a little light on it for you, best option is just to try it out and see what they do for you and you're workflow :)

 

Cheers

[R C-R]

jhmdigital,

 

You might also find the four Artboards video tutorials listed on the In-house Affinity Designer Video Tutorials page helpful. They are:

Artboards: Basics (1.4)
Artboards: Exporting and Printing (1.4)
Artboards: Colour and Opacity (1.4)
Artboards: From Content (1.4)

[jhmdigital]

Many thanks Chris_K; I'm getting a glimmer now.

[tpdesigns]

I am aware this is an old post but for those(like me) who have just obtained the program and have no idea about the artboards...(instead of automatically loosing your collage of concepts when you CTRL+N and POOF..GONE!) and wondering about artboards...

Artboards in my opinion of this fabolous software is the reason the name has been given "Affinity" - a similarity of characteristics suggesting a relationship, especially a resemblance in structure .   

Think of the artboards from a designer standpoint, artboards in tangible aspects is the blank white or black canvas Bob Ross buys and draws on.  But he also has other concepts of the same design so he pulls the translucent paper of his first artboard, sketches over it and grabs another artboard and lays his concept with updates "artboard2".. and so on and on.

I have found artboards to be very beneficial.  I no longer lose my designs concepts from the new document itself.  For some reason, when you start a new document and you have a current document and you never saved... it's a goner.  So I just start a fresh document and select the artboard tool and draw a nice size box to work in and create a few artboards just to put different designs on and I save it.  NOW I have multiple concepts under one roof.

Within each artboard pertains it's own dedicated projects and layers and so on that you would have with just a normal document.  So everything you do in "artboard1" stays within that artboard. Same for artboard2...3...4...etc.  So if you are designing a logo for a client and you have a mere 5-6 concept designs, you can design on one, copy and paste to the other and change it styles and so on and ALL of the artboards have their own independent projects pertaining the layers and everything.  I personally love it to death!.  I promise i never knew about it and was totally lost on the reason, until I kept losing my design projects with no way to recover.  So artboards are like mini "Affinity" apps running within itself.

I surely hope I made some sort of sense lol

[Steadman]

On 7/15/2019 at 4:23 AM, tpdesigns said:

I am aware this is an old post but for those(like me) who have just obtained the program and have no idea about the artboards...(instead of automatically loosing your collage of concepts when you CTRL+N and POOF..GONE!) and wondering about artboards...

Artboards in my opinion of this fabolous software is the reason the name has been given "Affinity" - a similarity of characteristics suggesting a relationship, especially a resemblance in structure .   

Think of the artboards from a designer standpoint, artboards in tangible aspects is the blank white or black canvas Bob Ross buys and draws on.  But he also has other concepts of the same design so he pulls the translucent paper of his first artboard, sketches over it and grabs another artboard and lays his concept with updates "artboard2".. and so on and on.

I have found artboards to be very beneficial.  I no longer lose my designs concepts from the new document itself.  For some reason, when you start a new document and you have a current document and you never saved... it's a goner.  So I just start a fresh document and select the artboard tool and draw a nice size box to work in and create a few artboards just to put different designs on and I save it.  NOW I have multiple concepts under one roof.

Within each artboard pertains it's own dedicated projects and layers and so on that you would have with just a normal document.  So everything you do in "artboard1" stays within that artboard. Same for artboard2...3...4...etc.  So if you are designing a logo for a client and you have a mere 5-6 concept designs, you can design on one, copy and paste to the other and change it styles and so on and ALL of the artboards have their own independent projects pertaining the layers and everything.  I personally love it to death!.  I promise i never knew about it and was totally lost on the reason, until I kept losing my design projects with no way to recover.  So artboards are like mini "Affinity" apps running within itself.

I surely hope I made some sort of sense lol

Thank you for taking the time to explain how you see the use of Artboards. I found your post helpful and good. I am a newbie with AD and I like the way you described your view of the topic. 

[tpdesigns]

Thanks Steadman! glad i could help out

[Wasp11b]

Hi Tpdesigns,

When you say, "For some reason, when you start a new document and you have a current document and you never saved... it's a goner", what you are perhaps missing is that  when you have more than one document open they are on different tabs just above the ruler referenced as <untitled> until you save with a file name. Try clicking on the tabs when you create a new document when working on an existing document - you should be able switch between the two documents. It means you can load up multiple files and easily switch between them.

When you close the programme, at least on Windows, it asks whether you want to save files that you have been created or amended but not yet saved so you shouldn't be losing anything.

Hope that helps but sorry if I've misunderstood what the problem is.