Help needed with Affinity Design

[StephBradley]

Hope someone can help me! I’m an old school CS4 user - moved on to a new Mac and I couldn’t transfer my old system and can’t afford the new Adobe package, so my dad got me Affinity.

I’m really struggling to create a logo - I copied the old version using various shapes and text but I can’t get it to become one shape so I can change the colour if needed. I’ve grouped it, I’ve tried to create a mask.. I’ve even put it into the affinity photo editor and tried to select the shapes and edit. I’ve looked online and YouTube.. can’t find anything. Attached is my version of the logo.

[dutchshader]

Select all the black shapes and do a boolean add

[firstdefence]

Couldn't resist having a play.

WMVWM.afdesign

Used to have a VW LT32 (Mercedes Sprinter in all but name) but a cracking van.

[StephBradley]

3 hours ago, dutchshader said:

Select all the black shapes and do a boolean add

Ok I’ll give it a go but I’ve not heard of Boolean Add.

[StephBradley]

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Couldn't resist having a play.

WMVWM.afdesign

Used to have a VW LT32 (Mercedes Sprinter in all but name) but a cracking van.

Very nice.. now how did you do that! I’m so useless

[Alfred]

34 minutes ago, StephBradley said:

Ok I’ll give it a go but I’ve not heard of Boolean Add.

Affinity Designer Help: Joining objects

[JimmyJack]

9 hours ago, StephBradley said:

I copied the old version using various shapes and text but I can’t get it to become one shape so I can change the colour if needed. I’ve grouped it,

Not sure why a Boolean is even necessary .

Can't you just select all the black parts and change the color (fill and/or stroke)?
If you want a gradient across all, then just a group should be fine....gradient applied to the group.
(a group would be easier to change all to a solid color as well)

[StephBradley]

22 minutes ago, JimmyJack said:

Not sure why a Boolean is even necessary .

Can't you just select all the black parts and change the color?
If you want a gradient across all, then just a group should be fine....gradient applied to the group.
(a group would be easier to change all to a solid color as well)

I think because this has been made with a mixture of lines and shapes it won’t let me - when I’ve tried I’ve ended up with bit filled where I don’t want them.. I’ll have to do it and take a pic

[StephBradley]

Ok I’ve tried to do this Boolean add and this is what happens!

[gdenby]

Hi, StephBradley,

The .mov goes by pretty quick, but it seems you have everything selected. Select only the black items and add those. The white items, if placed above the added layer, will continue to show. Those can also be added, and changed as one.

[firstdefence]

You're not Useless, apologise to yourself for saying that 
 You are on a learning curve and will ultimately become smarter and more skilled, that's called a win win. 

 I think this is a cool design, you just need to apply a few more steps to get what you want. The colouring is done with fx you can find them on the layer Panel you will see a small fx on the top layer if you click on it, it will open the fx panel, you will see some fx with a tick against them, if you click on them it will show you various settings, this is how I applied the colouring.

As for how I joined it all together... I recreated your design.

You have strokes as the arm and fork these will not be boolean added so you have to convert them to filled objects, this is very simple to do once you know how. 
You use Layer > Expand Stroke to convert them to curves so the stroke becomes a filled object.

 

[StephBradley]

4 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

You're not Useless, apologise to yourself for saying that 
 You are on a learning curve and will ultimately become smarter and more skilled, that's called a win win. 

 I think this is a cool design, you just need to apply a few more steps to get what you want. The colouring is done with fx you can find them on the layer Panel you will see a small fx on the top layer if you click on it, it will open the fx panel, you will see some fx with a tick against them, if you click on them it will show you various settings, this is how I applied the colouring.

As for how I joined it all together... I recreated your design.

You have strokes as the arm and fork these will not be boolean added so you have to convert them to filled objects, this is very simple to do once you know how. 
You use Layer > Expand Stroke to convert them to curves so the stroke becomes a filled object.

 

Thank you I will try this!

[Jowday]

@StephBradley Watch these and learn step by step

 

[firstdefence]

File saved with history: Colourable logo.afdesign you can move back and forth in the history panel so you can see roughly what I did

I originally wanted to make the logo with the VW headline font but in the end I found a 1960's VW logo and traced over it, then imported it. Hopefully you'll get the idea and how I recreated your logo.

Try making the fx I did in the first file I uploaded, or just play around with the fx to see if you can get something you like.

Volkswagen_1.svg