The Affinity Designer Manual A Step-by-Step Beginner's Guide

432 Pages·2021·30.942 MB·English

by  Frank Walters

The Affinity Designer Manual
A Step-by-Step Beginner's Guide
Frank Walters
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my family. Recently we all went through a very
distressing situation and how each one of us reacted is a testament on the
tightness and loving care our family holds true. The event was very
unpleasant and in the heat of the moment, never once did anyone cause any
stress for the other but were instead readily available for the others. I knew
our family was good, and this situation reinforces my commitment to
everyone in my family. Each of you are so special to me and are simply
awesome.
I feel very blessed to be in such a family. I want to say thank you to someone,
but I guess I can only say it to God.
I love you all,
XXXX
This work is copyrighted material
©KuhlmanPublishing
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S.
Copyright law. All images and text in this book have been used with
permission from their original sources. All logos and depictions of the UI are
copyright of Serif (Europe) Ltd., and this book is not endorsed or supported
by Affinity.
We are a self-publishing company employing several authors. We take our
books very seriously and try our very best to publish high-quality books that
deliver the expected results we advertise in our book descriptions. If there is
ever an issue with syntax, content, or book layout, please don't hesitate to
contact us before you leave negative comments. We promise we will address
your concerns as quickly as we can. Software develops quickly and when we
publish our books, we know in a short time there will be new updates. We
promise to try to keep up with updates in all of our books as the software
updates.
For permissions, questions or to submit your own artwork, contact us at
[email protected]
ISBN: 979-8452-0291-20
Who is the book for?
This book is specifically written for beginners of Affinity Designer and those
curious about how to use this awesome software.
Please don't buy the book if you're a professional graphic designer. If you're
coming from the Adobe architecture of programs, then maybe this book is a
good starting guide for you as an introduction to the Affinity architecture of
programs.
How is the book structured?
We'll guide you through the first 10 basic skills new users need to learn how
to use when starting out with Affinity Designer. Then, we'll continue teaching
you how to do 20 vector graphic techniques (and skills) in our unique step-
by-step method.
What makes our teaching style unique?
We try to boil every step down to its most basic form so that complicated
steps become simple. We pride ourselves in trying to take a complex effect
and make it accessible to anyone.
We also use our own method of italicizing action words and bolding
objective words. This makes it very clear what you should do.
For example: Press the Refine button and then press OK.
The images in this book
We only use license-free images we find on Pixabay, Unsplash, and Pexels.
You can either email us and we'll send you all of the images used in this book
in an email attachment, or you can click on their hyperlinks at the beginning
of each lesson. Just know that sometimes the hyperlinks don't work. If you
contact us by email, we promise to reply within 24 hours - but, usually within
30 minutes.
If you buy this book in digital format, please use a color screen. The images
in the book will not looks so great on non-color screens.
A note about redundancy
Learning new skills take a lot of repetition. We know this, so we structured
this book with lots of the same ideas and shortcuts. This is done so you learn
as fast as possible. We'll consider we've done our job if when you are done
going through this book, you're able to retain most of the skills you learnt in
this book.
Comments on this 1st Edition
As a self-publishing company, we pride ourselves on designing the most
high-quality books we can create. But we also know there may be some
grammatical errors we might have missed. Therefore, we'd like to offer you a
deal. If you find any errors in this book, please tell us and we'll both fix the
issue immediately and we'll send you a free tutorial. We'll do anything we
can not to receive less-than-perfect reviews of our books.
Positive Reviews
Positive reviews really make a difference! It shows our writers that they are
doing a good job. If there is ANYTHING you don't like about our book,
please contact us at [email protected] and we promise we'll
help you as fast as we can or address the situation you are not in favor with.
We are here for you 110% and are almost always online in some form to help
you.
Table of Contents
Basics 1: How to Open a Document
Basics 2: How Designer's Screen is Organized
Extra: How to Add Two Columns to the Tools
Basics 3: How to Use the Shape Tools
Basics 4: How to Navigate Inside the Document
Basics 5: How to Use Colors in Designer
Basics 6: How to Use Layers
Basics 7: How to Use the Text Tool
Basics 8: How to Combine Shapes Using the Boolean Tools
Basics 9: How to Use the Pen Tool
Basics 10: How to Save, Share, and Export
Extra: Color Theory, Modes and Codes
Lesson 1: How to Add Fonts to Designer
Lesson 2: How to Create Your Own Brushes
Lesson 3: How to Use the Color Picker Tool
Lesson 4: How to Make a Modern Logo
Lesson 5: How to Create a Customized Retro Wallpaper
Lesson 6: How to Create Neon Text
Lesson 7: How to Create a Shadow for an Object
Lesson 8: How to Duplicate Any Object Around Another Shape
Lesson 9: How to Create a Beautiful Flower Design
Lesson 10: How to Create a Shirt Mock-Up
Lesson 11: How Remove the Background from an Image
Lesson 12: How to Create a Sunburst Background
Lesson 13: How to Put a Picture in a Text
Lesson 14: How to Create 3D Text
Lesson 15: How to Create a Flat Design Character with Shading
Lesson 16: How to Create a Landscape Design
Extra: How to Save a Document with its History
Lesson 17: How to Colorize a Vector Object and Add it to an Existing Document
Lesson 18: How to Steal Colors from Any Source
Lesson 19: How to Make a Cool Blended Theme
Lesson 20: How to Create a Sacred Geometry Design
Basics 1: How to Open a Document
In this introductory chapter, we're going to show you the many ways you can
open a new document and get started in Designer. The creators of Affinity
Designer have made starting in this program quite simple. Now, it's our job to
show you how.
There are three ways we can open a new document in Designer and six
additional methods of starting a new project. We'll first list these for you and
then walk you through on how to do each.
The first three in this list are how to open a new document and the following
six are how to start a new project after a blank document has already been
opened.
1. Press New Document from the opening screen
2. Go to the Menu bar - File - New
3. Press Ctrl/Cmd+N
4. Go to the Menu bar - File - New From Clipboard
5. Go to the Menu bar - File - Open...
6. Go to the Menu bar - File - Open Recent
7. Right click on an image to open in Designer
8. Click on the Stock Images tab.
9. Click & drag from computer or website
Now that you've seen the list, let's start the lesson.
The simplest way to open a new document is found on the opening screen
when you first start Designer. You'll be greeted in the center of the screen
with Serif Affinity Designer's official company's introductory page. This
page highlights the most recent updates and features for the current update
the software has to offer.
1. Press New Document from the opening screen
To open a new document, click on the New Document button in the lower
right corner of the below image (see yellow rectangle).
When you click on the New Document button, you'll be shown the New
Document page. We'll show you that after we tell you the 2nd and 3rd way to
open a new document.
2. The second way to open a New Document is this...
Go to the Menu bar - File - New. This is the way we write in order to keep
this command as short and sweet as possible. Here is a screenshot showing
you what to do. When you click on the New button (image below), you'll also
be greeted with the New Document page.
3. The third way to open a New Document is our favorite because it's so
simple.
Press Ctrl/Cmd+N. We write it like this for both Windows/Mac computer
users.
If you have a Windows computer, you'll press Ctrl+N.
If you have a Mac, you'll press Cmd+N.
Done. Those are the three ways you can open a new document in Designer.
Now that we've told you the three ways to open a New Document, let's look
at its pop-out window. We've added some colored rectangles to the parts of
this page that are important for this book.
As you start new lessons in this book, we'll ask you to open a New Document
with specific properties. Here is an example of what you'll typically see:
Create a New Document with these specifics (Ctrl/Cmd+N is the shortcut):
Web - CD Digital Release
Transparent Background (checked)
Let's explain. We'll be using the above screenshot to explain what we want
you to pay attention to.
1. Click on the Web preset (yellow rectangle). There are seven
presets to choose from. Each has its own preset types. Take some
time and click on each of these to learn about them. The most
important two to know about are Web and Print. The Web preset