Affinity Designer - Textbox, background fill padding for first or last character (depending on left align or right align text).

[RSL Designs]

I've been an Affinity user since V1 and I've never been able to find a solution to this problem.

I have a text frame.  I have character styles and paragraph styles for certain text.

What I want is to be able to input any text and only have the background fill for that text (I don't want the entire textbox to fill - squared off if you wish).

Please see the attached image.

No. 1 - this is what I want to achieve. I can only do this by manually adding carriage returns to the end of each line and then adding a space at the beginning of each new line.
No. 2 - this is what I get if I just leave the text as is. No 'padding' at the beginning of each line.
No. 3 - this is what I get if I add a left indent for the text box. It doesn't fill the indented area.

There is one other method, but it's destructive... convert text to curves, merge the background boxes, edit the points and move them to create a background indent (see second pic).

Is there any way to achieve the look of No.1 ?

Thanks in advance.

Ricky.

[GarryP]

You can do that easily with Paragraph Decorations (in Publisher only though) – see attached image.

Make sure that you start each line as a new paragraph and set Combine Identical to OFF.

If you have to do this a lot then it might be a good idea to invest in a licence for Publisher as it has way more text-based functionalities than Designer.

[RSL Designs]

Thanks for the response GarryP. 

I have Affinity Publisher - wonder why this function isn't available in Designer?

[GarryP]

I think Serif decided that it was more of a ‘Publisher-thing’ than a ‘Designer-thing’.

Since you have both Designer and Publisher you can edit the document in Publisher and (temporarily) switch to the Designer Persona for most of the Designer functionalities.

[RSL Designs]

3 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I think Serif decided that it was more of a ‘Publisher-thing’ than a ‘Designer-thing’.

Since you have both Designer and Publisher you can edit the document in Publisher and (temporarily) switch to the Designer Persona for most of the Designer functionalities.

Might have to rethink our marketing pipeline then, as we setup all our artwork as artboards and then use the export persona to push out all the images into set dimensions. Then either post them as stills, PDFs grouped together, or carousels in After Effects (see the attached image).

Errrm. Time for a play, m'thinks.

Thanks again for your input.

[GarryP]

Ah, now that I know more about the set-up, it’s more complicated than I thought.

You could create one example using Publisher and then create an Asset from it.

Then you can drag the Asset into the Designer document and modify the text when needed.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Ah, now that I know more about the set-up, it’s more complicated than I thought.

You could create one example using Publisher and then create an Asset from it.

Then you can drag the Asset into the Designer document and modify the text when needed.

Couldn't you just create a Paragraph Text Style with decorations set in a Publisher document, Save it, and import the Text Styles into Designer, and set them as Defaults?

[GarryP]

Quite possibly.

[RSL Designs]

All great ideas. I will give them a go and post the results.

Thank you once again.

[GarryP]

You're welcome.

[RSL Designs]

Okay - the solution was indeed setting up the text in Publisher using the GarryP's suggestion. Then I copy and pasted the text frame into Designer and it brought over all the attributes. Save that out as a new paragraph style and then all character styles work with it.

However, you can't change the background colour anywhere in Designer, you have to go back to Publisher to change it and bring over a new style. 

Crazy workaround, but it'll do. 

Kudos to the pair of you.

 

[GarryP]

As the Paragraph Decoration functionality is a ‘Publisher-thing’ there’s no way to change the colour of such in Designer because Designer doesn’t have the Text Frame Panel (quite a few people have asked for one, but that’s not a discussion I want to get into here).

Good to know you’ve been able to do what you want, even if it’s not the most ‘streamlined’ way to do it.

(You might be able to change the colour in Designer if you use a Global Colour but that would change them all at the same time which might not be useful, and I’ve not tested it so it might not work anyway.)

[RSL Designs]

Yeah - that's another good point you've raised. Using Global Colours. Obviously the blues and oranges are our brand colours, so they stay true across the documentation, including web, socials, etc.

I'll give that a try later, but for now, it works and looks how I want it.