Text orientation inside text frame

[Toni H]

Hello everyone,

I recently moved from AI to Affinity Designer and while most of the functions I use on a daily basis are there and mostly better, I'm stuck with the text frame.

See, I am used to use text frames with character orientation. It looks like this in AI:

Is there any way to obtain this result in Affinity Designer? I need it to be a text frame with all inside rather than individual text frames because I usually get lists that I copy and paste from other programs (Excel, .txt, etc.).

Thanks!

 

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Toni H

You can Rotate and Skew (Shear) the Frame Text layer to get close to what you want but the text will look ‘italicised – see attached image.

As far as I know, there’s no way to rotate the text within a Frame Text layer, while keeping the layer itself as is, but someone else might have an idea.

(My example was done in Publisher but it’s the same in Designer.)

[Toni H]

Hi GarryP! Thanks a lot for the reply.

It is as you say, indeed, I'd like to keep the text format.

[GarryP]

Ah, I think this might work, use the Rotate and Skew (Shear) on the layer as I said before and then add a Shear to the text via the Character Panel. That looks a bit better I think.

[Toni H]

That's an awesome workaround! Thank you so much for you time and for solving the problem.

Now I think it is actually more convenient than AI!

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.

It looks like the ‘trick’, in this case, is to rotate the layer by 90 degrees minus the amount of Shear, and then use the same amount of Shear in both the Transform Panel and the Character Panel.

So to get your original example (or close to it), Rotate by 30 degrees (90 - 60) and Shear by 60 degrees.

[Toni H]

Yes, that is exactly what I have tried. So happy it works!!