The Affinity Designer for Beginners eBook takes everything from the video course, and converts it into a written guide. You can read at your own pace, and easily follow along in Affinity Designer. There are over 100 lessons, spanning 800+ pages. Learn the Essentials: Moving at a steady, step-by-step pace, you will learn how to use Affinity Designer's various tools and features to create stunning vector graphics, starting with a study of common graphical and illustrative terminology before moving on to more advanced topics, such as Selecting and Manipulating Vectors using the Affinity Design Interface, and Illustrating your first character drawing.
Affinity Designer is a vector or raster app. It’s a competitor to Adobe’s Illustrator and allows you to design various elements for print or digital publication.
It’s part of the Affinity package of design tools made by Serif. Use it to do anything from making a business card to mock up an app. Affinity Designer is made for Mac iOS, Windows, and the iPad.
Here, we’ve collected some of the best for everyone from beginners to more seasoned pros, a mix of video and written tutorials. It’s a great place to start for upskilling with your first steps in Affinity Designer!
With a record number of creatives signing up to our 90-day free trials of Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher, we thought now would be a good time to shine a spotlight on some of the top learning articles for Affinity newcomers.
Affinity Designer UI Overview
If you are new to Affinity Designer or just want an overview of the tool and what it looks like before making a purchase, this UI overview is the place to start. The video lasts less than 5 minutes and walks through the user interface, highlighting a few key elements of the software.
Affinity Designer: The File Menu
Another beginner tutorial, this video takes you through the file menu and looks at each option and how to use it. Rory Townsend, who made the video, also has similar video tutorials with each of the other menu options to help you really get a good hold on all the things you can do with Affinity Designer and where each individual tool or option is located in the menu.
Affinity Designer: 10 Basics
This is the ultimate getting started video guide for Affinity Designer, with all the basics in one video. You’ll learn how to get started with a new document, use premade and custom shapes, work with colors, see how layers work, combine shapes, work with vectors and the vector brush and pen tools, add text to a file, and save and export. Download semc japan usb devices driver. It’s all in an easy to follow video and you can get all this information in less than 20 minutes. Plus, the video host Jesse Showalter, has plenty of energy so this tutorial anything but boring.
Affinity Designer Basic Logo Design
Affinity Designer is a tool that allows you to work with vector or raster images. That means you can create logos that can be scaled for any use with the software. In this tutorial, you walk through all the steps to create a simple vector logo using tools in Affinity Designer.
How to Create a Flat Vector Illustration in Affinity Designer
Because of vector functionality, Affinity Designer can also be used to create illustrations. This tutorial takes you through the steps to create a flat illustration, such as the example above, that you can apply to full-scale illustrations, logo, or icon design. The tutorial includes step-by-step instructions and plenty of screenshots that you can use to follow along on your own.
Using the Layers Panel
Using layers and groups is a powerful function that can help keep files organized and a lot easier to manage. Using them in Affinity Designer is fairly easy. Learn everything you need to know about layers and groups in this short video from the makers of the software.
How to Create an Icon in Affinity Designer
Icon design is something almost everyone comes across at some point. Affinity Designer is the perfect tool for creating all manner of icons. This tutorial takes you through the process step-by-step, and even includes some bonus information such as how to choose the right size when designing an icon and how to use various tools. Every step includes screenshots to make understanding easy.
Symbols in Affinity Designer
Using symbols as linked objects allow you to edit one element and it impacts everything in the design. (This is an awesome feature.) This tutorial shows you how to use symbols as intelligent linked objects for great global editing capability. (Learn this pro trick in less than 5 minutes!)
Using Text Effects
Text manipulations can be somewhat controversial. Purists say you should never mess with a typeface, but sometimes you have to use certain effects to make it work for your project. This Affinity Design tutorial shows you how to do just that. You’ll get an introduction to text effect manipulations in this easy to follow video.
How to Create Patterns in Affinity Designer
Patterns have a lot of practical use from website backgrounds to the main artwork for a poster or brochure. From subtle repeating shapes to something a little bolder, there are a few different ways to create a pattern in Affinity Designer. This tutorial explores three options. Note there are a lot of steps here, but the instructions and screenshots are easy to follow. Don’t let the depth of the lesson intimidate you.
Affinity Designer for iPad
The recording of a live session provides an overview of everything you need to use Affinity Designer effectively on an iPad. You’ll get an overview of tools and the software as well as creating specific things (a playing card, book cover, and poster) using tablet-based tools. The tutorial lasts over an hour and is comprehensive.
Pen Tool Masking in Affinity Designer
Use the Pen tool in Affinity Designer to create a dynamic mask of a selection of an image and apply modifications. This is a cool feature that can take some time to learn and this tutorial gives you a jumpstart.
Shapes Around a Curved Line in Affinity Designer
In less than 5 minutes, you can apply shapes to a curved line. You’ll learn how to create a brush from a shape and use that to apply to any shape or size of curved line. The tutorial explains this function clearly and shows how to apply this highly functional feature.
Advanced Color Features in Affinity Designer
You can create, save, and store colors and fills in Affinity Designer. This is great for palettes that will be reused so you don’t have to manually renter color mixes every time. Using these advanced color features is easy to learn if you know the tricks offered in this video tutorial.
Everything You Need to Know About Affinity Designer Brushes
Brushes can help speed workflows and allow you to create custom stroke styles. This tutorial shows you how to use the tool including basics of the brushes panel, how to set up vector or raster brushes, how to create your own brushes, how to install brush packs, and how to use brushes from Photoshop or Illustrator.
Affinity Designer Point Transform Tool
Use the point transform tool to change the look of a geometric shape in Affinity Designer. This tool lets you change shapes and alters the look of objects.
Advanced Axonometric Grid Setup
An axonometric grid shows a three-dimensional object at a skewed angle so you can see multiple sides in the illustration. Affinity Designer allows you to set up an axonometric grid for projects. This tutorial takes you through creating the custom setup.
Affinity Designer Templates
We're covering the basics of Affinity Designer, helpful tutorials, comparisons with other apps, and the best templates and assets to use.
Affinity Designer is a vector art creation and manipulation software, it’s an affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator, the software is very capable and it’s a worthy contender for Illustrator. The software is currently developed by Serif Labs.
Learning Affinity Designer is very important for graphic designers, UI designers, and any digital artists whether you’re currently using Affinity Designer or looking for an affordable yet capable alternative for Adobe Illustrator.
The aim of this post is to present and compare between free online sources that beginners can rely on to learn Affinity Designer, the sources stated here are full-structured courses that beginners can follow along.
Design Bundles
Design Bundles is the first free online outlet where beginners can start learning Affinity Designer through a text-based tutorial, you don’t have to register to have access to the training.
Structure: The training is divided into 8 lessons, each lesson covers a certain tool/technique in Affinity Designer.
Interface: The interface is very simple, just click on the lesson you’re interested in and you’ll be directed to the page where the lesson resides.
Now the pros and cons:
Pros
- Free.
- The training covers the basics beginners should be familiarized with in order to start using Affinity Designer
Cons
- The training doesn’t cover every aspect of the software.
Verdict: This is the best free online outlet where beginners can start learning Affinity Designer through text based tutorials.
Affinity Vimeo Channel
Affinity Vimeo Channel is the second free online outlet where beginners can start learning Affinity Designer through video tutorials.
Structure: The training is divided into 94 video lessons, each lesson covers a certain aspect of the software.
Interface: Standard Vimeo interface.
Now the pros and cons:
Download tools & software for Samsung SSDs. Download Samsung Magician, Data Migration Software, Firmware, Driver, Data Center Toolkit, Activation Software.
Pros
- Free.
- The training covers most of the aspects of the software.
Cons
- The training isn’t well-organized for complete beginners.
Verdict: This is an excellent free online outlet where beginners can start learning Affinity Designer through video tutorials.
AmpAffinity YouTube Channel
AmpAffinity YouTube Channel is the third free online outlet where beginners can start learning Affinity Designer through video tutorials.
Structure: The training is divided into 24 video lessons, each video lesson covers a certain topic beginners should be familiarized with in order to start using Affinity designer.
Interface: Standard YouTube interface.
Now the pros and cons: Example of web scraping tool.
Pros
- Free.
- The training is well-organized for complete beginners.
Cons
- The training doesn’t cover as many topics as the above outlet, though that won’t be a problem for complete beginners.
Verdict: This is the best free online outlet where beginners can start learning Affinity Designer through video tutorials.
MixMediaSalad YouTube Channel
MixMediaSalad YouTube Channel is the fourth free online outlet where beginners can start learning Affinity Designer through video tutorials.
Structure: The training has a learn by doing style, so you’re going to learn using Affinity Designer through creating an actual project, the training has 14 video lessons.
Affinity Designer Download Windows
Interface: Standard YouTube interface.
Now the pros and cons:
Pros
- Free.
Cons
- The training doesn’t cover the latest release of the software, though that won’t be a problem for complete beginners.
Linkedin Learning Affinity Designer
Verdict: This is a very good free online outlet where beginners can start learning Affinity Designer through video tutorials.
Bottom Line
The recipe for learning to use Affinity Designer:
- AmpAffinity YouTube Channel is the best outlet for beginners to start learning to learn Affinity Designer through video tutorials.
- Design Bundles is the best outlet for beginners to start learning to learn Affinity Designer through text tutorials.
Remember that the first step is always the toughest step, and the aim of this post is to provide you with resources that will help you take your first step in learning to use Affinity Designer.