naming guides

[jsampson45]

Allowing guides to be named as layers are - has been suggested previously.

[GarryP]

14 hours ago, jsampson45 said:

has been suggested previously

If something has already been suggested then it’s better to ‘add your voice’ to the existing thread rather than made a new one, as per forum guidelines.

[jsampson45]

I would be grateful if you would explain how to do this. I cannot find it in the guidelines. I am not sure if the post I saw referred to Affinity Designer v.1 or v.2.

Kind regards

John Sampson

[GarryP]

Since you said that you know that the issue has been suggested previously, I’m assuming that you have found an existing thread related to the issue.

All you need to do is add a new post to that thread in the same way as you did to this one.

It doesn’t really matter if the feedback thread was for V1 or V2, Serif (generally) ‘keep track’ of them all. (Someone might ask for you to cerate a new thread for V2 but it's usually better to keep all suggestions for the same thing in the same thread. That way, Serif can more-easily gauge how popular it is, at the very least.)

Here’s what the guidelines say:

[jsampson45]

Thanks.

[GarryP]

No bother.

I think the thread you found might have been this one: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/145609-naming-guides/

Since it’s only got one post in it, naming guides doesn’t seem to be popular (unless there are other threads about it), so adding a post to it will make it look (a tiny bit) more popular and bring the thread to the attention of more people, who might also like the idea.

(Ten threads each with a single post doesn’t say as much about the popularity of a suggestion as one thread with ten posts.)

[Evaluation complete.]

I don't find it particularly welcoming or professional to refer people to submit a business request into an archive (v1) and evaluate its value or demand based on the number of requests in a simple forum. This forum reflects a certain type of customer but not those who are absent from forums (typically the most professional and heavy weight customers) or those using social media for feedback. Furthermore, the forum does not account for the customers Affinity has never acquired.

There are several aspects to naming guides. Personally, I could benefit from being able to create groups of guidelines that could be named and assigned a color. Secondly, it would be helpful if they could be linked to a layer or something similar.

In many products, I’ve often seen professional templates, guides, and template explanations turn into a mishmash of guides and text layers. You can’t even designate a layer as non-printable in Affinity, which is incredibly frustrating. I think Affinity could be significantly improved to support more structured creation, management, and display of guides - assuming Canva is moving in a more serious direction.

And let’s just quote Steve Jobs again: “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” It's a quote I carry with me because it is truly, truly true. But it truly requires understanding and empathy, which is difficult in a world that doesn't listen.