Affinity Publisher

[WalterM]

Hi

when do you plan to bring Affinity Publisher ?

[Dave Harris]

Sometime next year. We are hoping to start the beta by the end of this year, but frankly there's a lot to do and Designer and Photo are taking up a lot of our time.

[jonaslismont]

Also eagerly waiting for this app! Good luck working on this.

[kbetters]

I am patiently awaiting this app as well! I hate the way Adobe has went about making people subscribe to use their products. I want to be done with them all together, but I can't until I have a good and affordable substitution for InDesign.

[kwiknip]

Love your product line thus far so please don't take any offense, this may come off a little negative but I really care to speak up regarding this app as a professional in the Graphics Design & Digital/Offset Print industry.

 

It's chosen name "Affinity Publisher (A.P.)" brings back a lot of unfortunate memories of "Microsoft Publisher (M.P.)".  The name in its self may turn away many future potential customers & veterans in the print industry because we've had to deal with so many headache files supplied by the latter over the years.  Since M.P. predates A.P. some may be led to believe that's the level of quality to expect from your app & pass on it without giving it a try.  I truly hope this makes sense.  Please consider an adjustment to the name "Publisher" as it stands to represent a subpar desktop publishing experience (in the professional Digital & Offset print industries).  Based on what's offered with Designer & Photo, I believe your page layout app should have a name that maintains your companies level of expertise.  I totally understand that "Publisher" by definition describes A.P.'s capabilities, however if you really want it to have a fare shot when production pros see it released to the market for the first time, I humbly ask for your reconsideration & passionate thought on its name.

 

Respectful regards.

[Quarian]

As a graphic design professional myself, I must confess to having the same concern stated in the above post about the name "Publisher". I just wrote it off to the assumption that many within the industry would, over time, just start referring to it by a nickname (such as "APub") or get used to stating the entire name (like "Quark XPress").

 

Not to try to change the name of your product, but--if you did--I would suggest three names that haven't seen use yet in the arena that describe what your software does yet are different enough to not be confused with another package. "Affinity Layout", "Affinity Multipage", or maybe--in keeping with trends today--"Affinity Multipub" (short for "Multipublisher") as hardcopy, pdf and ePub will be at least three of the end products output by the program.

 

As I stated earlier, these are suggestions IF you considered changing the name. At this point, the buzz around the upcoming package in the community is a dull roar, so I really don't expect you to, but options, I have found, are always a good thing.

[macmello]

I am waiting anxious to test the Affinity Publisher and to complete the Affinity package.

It would be great if they could also launch a software for web- design. Something like Dreamweaver or rather Blocs and Pinegrow . Are there any plans for this?

[MEB]

Hi macmello,

Glad to see people's interest around Publisher already  :P

Regarding you question, here's straight from our FAQ:

 

Do you plan to have Web site design/Digital Asset Management/animation/video editing products too?

We’re not sure yet! We will definitely get the first three products out the way over the next 12 months first before we start looking at other possibilities.

 

[macmello]

Hi macmello,

Glad to see people's interest around Publisher already  :P

Regarding you question, here's straight from our FAQ:

I fully agree with you. First three products running well and serving well.

 

I give more strength to the future something very interesting and easy to use web-design. = )

[peter]

Love your product line thus far so please don't take any offense, this may come off a little negative but I really care to speak up regarding this app as a professional in the Graphics Design & Digital/Offset Print industry.

 

It's chosen name "Affinity Publisher (A.P.)" brings back a lot of unfortunate memories of "Microsoft Publisher (M.P.)".  The name in its self may turn away many future potential customers & veterans in the print industry because we've had to deal with so many headache files supplied by the latter over the years.  Since M.P. predates A.P. some may be led to believe that's the level of quality to expect from your app & pass on it without giving it a try.  I truly hope this makes sense.  Please consider an adjustment to the name "Publisher" as it stands to represent a subpar desktop publishing experience (in the professional Digital & Offset print industries).  Based on what's offered with Designer & Photo, I believe your page layout app should have a name that maintains your companies level of expertise.  I totally understand that "Publisher" by definition describes A.P.'s capabilities, however if you really want it to have a fare shot when production pros see it released to the market for the first time, I humbly ask for your reconsideration & passionate thought on its name.

 

Respectful regards.

 

Sounds like a competition: rename Affinity Publisher.

 

Some suggestions from me...(although I do like Affinitiy Layout/AL)

• Affinity Bureau (AB)
• Affinity Output (AO)
• Affinity Pica (APi)
• Affinity ​Press (APr)
• Affinity Proof (APr)
• Affinity Pasteboard (APa)
• Affinity Quarto (AQ)
• Affinity Resolution (AR)

All comments welcome.

[Bobaffinity]

Affinity ProPublisher

[peter]

Affinity ProPublisher

 

...as against Microsoft's amateur Publisher :P

[exurbanite7]

I purchased Affinity Designer and have the Betas for the Photo Program. I'm impressed with both and now I begin the nail-biting wait for your layout/graphics sofware. I want you to rush, rush, rush, except that I know good things take time and a good product demands it. Not to put too fine a point on it - the the whole world is waiting for the complete alternative to you know who and what. Well maybe not the whole world but most of it anyway. I will be patient but it can't come too soon.

[kbetters]

As a graphic design professional myself, I must confess to having the same concern stated in the above post about the name "Publisher". I just wrote it off to the assumption that many within the industry would, over time, just start referring to it by a nickname (such as "APub") or get used to stating the entire name (like "Quark XPress").

 

Not to try to change the name of your product, but--if you did--I would suggest three names that haven't seen use yet in the arena that describe what your software does yet are different enough to not be confused with another package. "Affinity Layout", "Affinity Multipage", or maybe--in keeping with trends today--"Affinity Multipub" (short for "Multipublisher") as hardcopy, pdf and ePub will be at least three of the end products output by the program.

 

As I stated earlier, these are suggestions IF you considered changing the name. At this point, the buzz around the upcoming package in the community is a dull roar, so I really don't expect you to, but options, I have found, are always a good thing.

I like "Affinity Layout". It simply states what the program does. And if it is as good as Designer and Photo, it will be a wonderful addition. Looking forward to the Beta!

[JimGoshorn]

My vote is for Affinity Print or Affinity Press.

[LilleG]

I like Affinity Layout.  A totally unimportant benefit, :), would be that it would also make it easier to refer to each one by its initials, AD, AP, AL, something you can't do when you have both Photo and Publisher.

[peter]

Affinity ProPublisher

APr

[Framelynx]

Affinity Page

 

(Yea yea... I know it sounds like Apple's Page word processor)

[tiltowait]

While the name is probably set, I too like Affinity Press.

[edramsey]

As an IT but not Graphics professional when I heard of an upcoming Affinity Publisher I got excited. Having started with FrameMaker and then PageMaker and then, unhappily, MS Publisher I kind of know what to expect when I hear the "Publisher" moniker. My wife, a card/flyer/brochure/page designer, also got excited when she heard about it. I think the name is fine for the non- or semi-professionals out there, and we will just have to educate the professionals when they ask :-). That's the way it worked with the photo and design app for me. All the great professional comments overcame a ton of resistance on my part to another photo app, of which I have way too many :-).

[Petar Petrenko]

"Layout" or "Corpus" would be fine. And all three programs merged into one.

I don't like prefixes or sufixes like "Pro", "Ultimate" and so on.

[peter]

I like Affinity Layout.  A totally unimportant benefit, :), would be that it would also make it easier to refer to each one by its initials, AD, AP, AL, something you can't do when you have both Photo and Publisher.

 

Well actually...I use this:

AD=Affinity Designer=Vector and Raster: (Illustrator)

APh=Affinity Photo=Photo manipulation: (Photoshop)

APu=Affinity Publisher=Desktop publishing: (In Design)

 

This clears up any confusion and is a handy short cut. This copies Adobe's style of naming, which also copies the periodic table abbreviations. As seen in the current US TV series Breaking Bad titles.

 

peter

[KipV]

My thoughts on the name changes so far. ProPublisher sounds good and isn’t too specific like press or print is (since I am sure there will be tools for ebooks, web, etc.)  Layout is also a broad enough term. I wouldn’t do “Page” since not only does Apple have a Pages app but so does Facebook. This means that a lot of people would have three apps named Pages on their devices.

The publisher name reminds me a little bit of what they did with myspace a few years ago. They totally overhauled the site into a superior service but whenever someone says “myspace” we all think of that social network from 10 years ago that everyone stopped using.

[Seneca]

Just to add my proverbial 2 cents to the discussion about the name.

I think that the name Affinity Publisher is absolutely fine. All the suggestions so far are too restrictive in my opinion. I have no prior knowledge of what's in store but I suspect that the software will also tackle the epubs, web?, etc. So, words like, page, press, proof, etc are missing the point. :)

[Hokusai]

I personally don't care for the name Publisher either as it was mentioned earlier here (and I brought up this same topic a while back in another thread as well) that the word Publisher is to strongly associated with Microsoft Publisher, the bane of pre-press and professional designers everywhere! I don't know very many programs that are as detested as Microsoft Publisher. Don't get me wrong, little old ladies who have no business using a computer to design anything love Microsoft Publisher. They sit in their basements merrily churning out church newsletters and other "publications" not fully knowing that they are using software that was created by the devil himself. Who cares that Microsoft Publisher can't do separations, no problem the printer will sort it out! All of your type is 4 colour black, no problem! You used all RGB images, great our printer prints those out wonderfully! 

 

In addition to that, there are also some other "Publishing" programs on the app store already, "i Studio Publisher" and "Swift Publisher" just to name a few. The name "Publisher" just seems a bit overused. So for me, I think a different name would be better. I kind of liked the before suggested "Affinity Layout" myself but I'm sure that there is something out there better than the name Publisher. I'm sure that the team has already decided and are committed to using the name "Affinity Publisher" though and I doubt that they will change the name this late in the game (although I wish they would)!

 

I for one hope that the Affinity team doesn't add "web" capabilities to Affinity Publisher. Quark Xpress and InDesign have had those kind of "features" for years (they seem more like bloat to me) and yet I've never met or known of any professionals who actually use those features. Instead professionals hand code, or they use a dedicated web app, like Dreamweaver to create websites. I always felt that those web features in Layout programs were just added because they felt that they needed to add them but they were never really needed. I would much rather have features like great type setting features and anything that helps make designing and laying out brochures, catalogs, books, etc faster and more efficient than having the ability to generate web pages from a layout program. I'm sure that there are some people out there who use InDesign to make webpages or even websites and I'm sure that they will argue that it works great but in my opinion, they are just plain crazy. Not so different from those nutty little old ladies who use Microsoft Publisher in their basements!

 

In the end, even if the name is Affinity Publisher, I'm excited about seeing what kind of wonderful layout program the ever talented Affinity team can make! 

 

Hokusai