Affinity Designer for Beginners | Updated for Version 2

Discover the foundational skills of Affinity Designer and start from the very beginning. Work up to completing a simple design together.

Open a brand new document in Affinity Designer, customize size, units, color format, and background, then save your work as an Affinity file and export as PNG for sharing.

Discover Affinity Designer's workspace, including the central document area, left tools, right studio panels, and the top context and permanent toolbars; learn to customize and reset the studio.

Explore mac vs. pc setups for Affinity Designer, including panel placement and keyboard shortcuts using command/control and option/alt.

Learn to navigate Affinity Designer using trackpad, zoom with keyboard shortcuts, pan with the spacebar, and enable mouse wheel zoom in preferences, then open the exercise file to follow along.

Learn how to manage layers in Affinity Designer, including stacking, visibility, renaming, opacity, locking, undo shortcuts, and grouping to organize complex designs.

Group layers to keep the layers panel organized and move multiple items as a single object. Open the group to edit individual layers, relocate shapes, or ungroup when needed.

Master the move tool to move, resize, rotate, and duplicate shapes; toggle snapping on or off and use shift for straight lines and proportional scaling.

Explore creating and customizing shapes in Affinity Designer using rectangle, ellipse, trapezoid, and donut; tweak with the context toolbar and scrubby sliders for opacity and angles, and resize using nodes.

Explore fill and stroke colors in Affinity Designer using the color wheel or sliders. Learn to adjust stroke width and always select the correct layer to apply changes.

Learn how child layers let you nest one layer inside another, making visibility depend on the parent and enabling group-like movement and multi-level nesting.

Create a sunset mountain scene in Affinity Designer by building a layered background, mountains with shadows and snow caps, sun, and simple clouds, using shapes, duplication, and grouping.

Explore curves in Affinity Designer for beginners, learning how to create custom shapes by connecting dots and transforming prebuilt shapes into your own designs.

Learn the pen tool in Affinity Designer, switch between polygon mode for straight lines and smart mode for curves, then use fill, stroke, rubber band mode tips, and node edits.

Learn to use the node tool to manipulate vector shapes in Affinity Designer, moving, adding, and deleting nodes, converting between sharp and smooth nodes, and using shortcuts to switch tools.

Turn shapes into curves by converting them to a curve layer with convert to curves. Then use the node tool to edit, add, or convert nodes for smoother, rounded shapes.

Explore how the corner tool rounds sharp edges and inner areas on shapes and pen paths, converts shapes to curves, and lets you adjust radius with multi-node selection.

Combine shapes using geometry operations in Affinity Designer to create and edit compound shapes, convert to curves, and build examples like a house with add, subtract, intersect, and divide.

Learn to create a cute character in Affinity Designer for beginners by combining shapes, using the corner and crescent tools, layering, coloring, and adding a shadow.

Explore applying color beyond the color panel in Affinity Designer for beginners, discovering different and unique ways to use color with confidence.

Learn to create and customize gradients with the fill tool in Affinity Designer. Adjust color stops, midpoint, and gradient type (linear or radial) to enhance shapes.

Discover how to use the stroke panel to adjust stroke width, choose join styles, align strokes inside, center, or outside, and enable scale with object for consistent resizing.

Use the appearance panel to add and manage multiple strokes on an object, adjust color and width, and reorder strokes like layers.

Learn how to use the color picker in Affinity Designer to sample colors from your design and apply them to fills or strokes, with a quick note on swatches.

Learn to save and reuse colors with swatches in Affinity Designer, create document and application palettes, apply global colors, and import or export palettes for consistent designs.

Explore color resources with Color Hunt palettes, import colors into Affinity Designer via swatches, create document palettes, and apply gradients and strokes using the palette.

Explore adjustment layers in Affinity Designer, using the HSL adjustment to tweak hue, saturation, and luminosity, and learn how to apply changes to either a single layer or all layers.

Create a cute monster in Affinity Designer by importing a color palette, building the body with shapes, eyes, and limbs, adding shadows, highlights, and a gradient background.

Explore a mix of fun, unique design tools essential to learn and master powerful tools to elevate your designs in this engaging chapter.

Master the move tool: resize from center with cmd/ctrl, rotate around a movable rotation point using the crosshair, and snap to 15-degree increments.

Learn to flip objects with the move tool, creating horizontal and vertical reflections, and apply the transparency tool to adjust opacity stops for a gradual fade.

Master snapping in affinity designer by adjusting screen tolerance, candidates, and limiting snaps to two visible objects. Use alt or option to temporarily ignore snapping for precise placement.

Learn power duplication in affinity designer by pressing command/ctrl J to create repeated copies with the same distance, size, and rotation, then break the chain when needed.

Apply and customize layer effects in Affinity Designer using the FX dialog, including Gaussian blur, outer shadow, and outer glow. Adjust radius, intensity, offset, and color in the FX panel.

Explore how to use the text tool in Affinity Designer, create and edit text, adjust color, font, size, and kerning, and position text for polished designs.

Discover how to add and install new fonts for Affinity Designer, including finding fonts on a font site, previewing with sample text, and choosing 100% free fonts for commercial use.

Discover free photos and vector graphics from Pixabay for commercial designs in Affinity Designer. Learn to download, open, place, resize with scale with object, and group layers for clean results.

Create an adorable adventure poster in affinity designer for beginners by building a paper-like layout with trees, a sun vector, and centered typography featuring 'adventure' and 'explore the great outdoors'.

Affinity Designer introduces the Pixel persona workspace, a separate toolset like photo editing programs. Keep only the layers, brushes, and color panels, and use window to reset the studio.

Master the paintbrush in Affinity Designer to add texture to designs by creating a pixel layer, adjusting width and flow, selecting colors, and exploring watercolor and spray brush textures.

Learn to add texture in Affinity Designer by painting on a pixel layer, using the brush tool, and keeping edges crisp with child layers, plus color tweaks via HSL.

Create a cute orange creamsicle ice pop in affinity designer, using shape tools, shadows, textures, and a radial gradient background for the final chapter project.

Complete three hands-on affinity designer projects in a final project-based chapter, showcasing everything you've learned. Create a monkey head, an explorer badge, and a rocket ship to demonstrate your skills.

Create a playful monkey head project by combining shapes, using the ellipse tool, add operation, and facial details, including eyes, nose, mouth, and shadows.

Design a rocket ship using shapes and a prepared color palette. Import swatches, convert to curves, subtract for details, add wings, window, shadows, and smoke.

Design a Sunset Mountain badge using shapes, the pen tool, and the appearance panel. Add snow-capped mountains, a sun with multi-stroke sunset, a banner, stars, and a radial gradient background.

Celebrate completing the course; you've learned designer skills that empower you to create your own projects. See you in the next Affinity Revolution tutorial.