[designer] How do I handle my ‘badges’?

[Grimofdoom]

I made up these badges, where the only difference between them is some color changes, some text changes, and some text that appears or doesn’t. They are currently in separate files for each specific badge (bronze, silver, gold, platinum) with 1 layer containing text that i manually turn off/on to export.

 

How can I handle these better? I would love if there was a way that I could make a single change that modifies them all instead of going manually through each one and making a change- such as adding a new shape or adjusting an outline thickness.

[firstdefence]

Colour changes could be handled by live adjustment layers, having text changes would be having multiple layers you can turn on or off, outline thickness could be done by creating styles and applying those styles.

 

Take a screen shot of your document and upload it showing the layers layout, there are a lot of knowledgable people with good workflow tips.

 

You don't say which app you are using and what Operating System you are on?

[Grimofdoom]

Is that something that can be automated with export persona? So that I just press "export slices" and all the badges will be created with the one click? I have been searching around for a way to simply make a slice ignore a layer or make a slice from a group of layers- however, it has only come to making selected layers into individual slices.

[MEB]

Hi Grimofdoom,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

Another option you may want consider (i don't know if the badges are complex or not) is to use Symbols. You can create a base (basic) one for the most common shapes/elements then drag it to the canvas to create several instances of it where you can change/adapt some specific attributes individually for each instance - like changing the fill colour of one of the shapes -. For this you have to turn sync off for that specific instance, change the attribute you want (for example the fill colour), then turn sync on again in the Symbols panel (menu View ▸ Studio ▸ Symbols). If you now edit of one of the instances, the rest of the attributes of the instance you have changed will remain in sync except the fill colour attribute which is now specific to this instance only. Here's a video tutorial that may help: Symbols. They may be a little confusing initially but can be quite useful in certain circumstances. Note the badges must be all on the same document (they can be on different artboards - no issues here) if you decide to use symbols since they don't work across different documents.

 

Regarding the second question (export persona), if you place each badge on its own artboard, Affinity will generate slices for all artboards automatically and will only export what's currently visible on them (layers/objects). Have you checked our video tutorials about exporting? They cover quite a few different cases/needs:

• Exporting: Layers
• Exporting: Slices
• Exporting: Continuous
• Exporting: Automatic Directory/Folder Creation
• Exporting: Multiple Outputs from a Single Slice
• Exporting: Transparent and Coloured Backgrounds
• Exporting User Settings and Keyboard Shortcuts