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Advice Needed - Affinity Designer For Beginners


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Hey guys,

 

I've decided to create a guide for all those who (like myself) are starting with Affinity Designer and come from the Illustrator background. I've created first few pages and could use some advice:

  • do you think it's easily understandable for a beginner?
  • is there enough valuable information for someone starting out with Designer?
  • any other feedback would be much appreciated

Here's the link to the pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4EhouZW-YgVZF81c0RBRjdHWG8/view?usp=sharing

 

Have a nice design

Dawid

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You need pictures. (lots of pictures)

 

E.G. The paragraph below tells you what the Force Pixel Alignment does but not where the option can be found in the interface.  A beginner to Affinity Designer needs that sort of information.

 

Force pixel alignment – this option is selected by default and it allows you to create,

move or modify the objects that snap to whole pixels. Otherwise, your artwork can

occupy parts of pixels.

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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Pretty good. Well written.

 

Point out things that are similar across several applications. I'd add a few statements like "Moving objects to the front or back of the layer structure is common among many vector illustration tools." Or, "Under the View menu are the usual command for zooming in or out." For people coming to AD from other apps, it will help them more quickly orient. But then mention the "View menu also allows access to control panels for grids, guildelines, etc." Mention some of studio panels, and that not all of them are turned on by default.

 

I see that you mention the corner tool. I'd expand on that by mentioning that there are 4 different kinds of corner modifications, and that they are not just for the extensive built in shapes, but for any shape w. lines joining at an angle.

 

I'd also mention that when starting a new project/document, the document layout panel gives option to aid various kinds of projects, such as for mobile devices, web pages, print, etc.

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You need pictures. (lots of pictures)

 

E.G. The paragraph below tells you what the Force Pixel Alignment does but not where the option can be found in the interface.  A beginner to Affinity Designer needs that sort of information.

 

Force pixel alignment – this option is selected by default and it allows you to create,

move or modify the objects that snap to whole pixels. Otherwise, your artwork can

occupy parts of pixels.

There definitely will be pictures (and yes, lots of them :) For now I wanted to just focus on the text. I talk about Pixel Alignment in another chapter where I cover snapping in general, but thanks a lot for bringing it up!

 

 

Pretty good. Well written.

 

Point out things that are similar across several applications. I'd add a few statements like "Moving objects to the front or back of the layer structure is common among many vector illustration tools." Or, "Under the View menu are the usual command for zooming in or out." For people coming to AD from other apps, it will help them more quickly orient. But then mention the "View menu also allows access to control panels for grids, guildelines, etc." Mention some of studio panels, and that not all of them are turned on by default.

 

I see that you mention the corner tool. I'd expand on that by mentioning that there are 4 different kinds of corner modifications, and that they are not just for the extensive built in shapes, but for any shape w. lines joining at an angle.

 

I'd also mention that when starting a new project/document, the document layout panel gives option to aid various kinds of projects, such as for mobile devices, web pages, print, etc.

 

Thanks, gdenby. I forgot about adding a section comparing AD with Ai for instance. I will definitely add it! It's a good idea to add info on the menus. I think I'll incorporate it in the panels sections of the guide. As for the Corner Tool, I am covering it thoroughly in the Artwork adjustments section.

 

Thanks a lot, guys! Any other advice would be much appreciated!

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Thank you so much for this so well redacted  pdf  .Useful at ay time. I have already discharged and place it in my AD file!!

I am not a beginner but many times I have found that some of the specific things in the programm are forgotten..and then must look for the help tool in the bar. I am much of working and learning long the way and get bored with reading or looking for details, but love the tutorials and have learnt a lot with them. I am missing here the viweing and graphic look of them but understand that this is not a tutorial but a helpful information about "what is going on here". I can see that some of the people in the thread has really got into it and has intersting thing to say about some procedurals. I have had not time to get it into it so much, but I will use it as I have tyold before at any time and get really well informed about my problems. From now on I will keep on visiting this topic and see ho it is going.

Thanks a lot for your generosity.

Rosa

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Hi Dawid,

You have produced an excellent overview of Designer. I agree that the text is the part that takes the most time to prepare, once your priorities are in place. In fact, I would consider your text to be ideal for the speak/voice-over of a video showing each principle as you mention it. In my experience a lot of people find it hard work to read lengthy texts (even with copious amounts of illustrations), however well they are presented. They prefer a video explaining and showing. For the ideal solution it should be interactive, but that is a whole new project in itself, I know. 

 

Great work!

Nils

Lenovo laptop with Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, Windows 10 Home. Former user of most Serif software from PagePlus 3.0 through PagePlus X9, now enjoying Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher.

 

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Thanks @NilsFinken and @ BrianHermelijn I will definitely give this a thought. 

 

I know that there is a lot of people who prefer learning by reading, but I think there is much more people who prefer learning by watching (and repeating, of course). 

 

Soon I will have the second section ready and I will share it in this thread as well.

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I know that there is a lot of people who prefer learning by reading, but I think there is much more people who prefer learning by watching (and repeating, of course).

 

Those of us who prefer learning by watching are very well catered for, but for those of us who prefer learning by reading have rather fewer resources to drawn upon.

 

I think you've made a very good start, Dawid. I'm looking forward to seeing how your guide shapes up once you start adding the illustrations.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Those of us who prefer learning by watching are very well catered for, but for those of us who prefer learning by reading have rather fewer resources to drawn upon.

 

I think you've made a very good start, Dawid. I'm looking forward to seeing how your guide shapes up once you start adding the illustrations.

Yes, I've seen the official tutorials, but there is just the workbook for people who prefer paper resources.

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The Designer Workbook, while great (I assume...it's sitting, barely cracked, on my desk while I work my way through the video tutorials instead) makes you slog through a whole bunch of projects while hoping that eventually you will find the one missing bit of info you need for your own project.  A reference manual...with a decent Index!...would be heavenly. 

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The Designer Workbook, while great (I assume...it's sitting, barely cracked, on my desk while I work my way through the video tutorials instead) makes you slog through a whole bunch of projects while hoping that eventually you will find the one missing bit of info you need for your own project.  A reference manual...with a decent Index!...would be heavenly. 

 

:D I 've just uploaded my guide's table of contents if you guys are interested. Any advice would be much appreciated https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4EhouZW-YgVTi1XMFZiajZIQTg

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great effort!

I'd suggest to add links to the appropriate official video tutorials, this really makes use of the digital format you are in anyway
https://vimeo.com/channels/affinitydesigner (link embedded does not work)\

example video:

https://vimeo.com/191946998

 

cheers

I made an attempt to do a similar thing for Affinity Photo //for more tips, KLICK <<

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Any advice welcome, particularly abut the clarity of images.

 

The screenshots of the button groups on the main toolbar are not very sharp, but the rest of the screenshots look OK.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Try the attached, Dawid. The first one is the 'Customise Toolbar' dialog as it appears on my machine with a Windows display setting of 125%. The second one is enlarged by a factor of 1.6 to bring it up to 200%, using BenVista PhotoZoom Pro; the original PNG output was a whopping 1.35 MB, so I reduced the number of colours to 256 to bring the file size down to something sensible.

post-8358-0-28581900-1490962158_thumb.png

post-8358-0-06715800-1490962201_thumb.png

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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I had a look at the introductory text. Looks good, but will need more expansion.

 

I'm particularly curious/interested to know about cropping - and how it works. I seem to have problems right now in Designer with cropping, and I get a floating panel which I don't really know what to do with. I'm going to raise this as a question elsewhere.

 

Maybe real designers will find this obvious - or intuitive. I don't!

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Ok, so I got to a final stage of the guide. It spreads across more than 170 pages and along the way I learn a thing or two about inDesign ;) As a token of my appreciation I would like to share it with 10 first people so if  you are interested, just drop me a line -> dawid.tuminski@gmail.com

 

4 copies sent this morning - 6 more left! :)

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