I really hope the company finds the right course correction that keeps the Affinity range affordable while sustainably funding development. My criticism isn’t entirely fair as Serif has also been occupied with launching Photo and Publisher during this time, but there’s no escaping the conclusion that Designer has stagnated. I don’t want to subscribe to Designer either, but there are other proven models: Look at Sketch, which has an optional, annual upgrade program, and has shipped vastly more functionality than Designer has in the same time period. I want to give Serif more money so they can bring Designer up to speed with Illustrator, as fifty dollars every 5+ years clearly doesn’t support the kind of development effort this requires. While it’s seen some valuable updates since then, the core promise of an Illustrator killer remains out of reach: Key features like blends, pattern brushes, distortion envelopes, and more have sat on the 1.x roadmap for years, and the marquee feature of 1.8, released a few weeks ago, was a years-in-the-making bugfix for the expand stroke feature.

I paid a mere $50 for Affinity Designer half a decade ago. Rather than get greedy and force users into renting their software as Adobe has, they’ve tried to stretch out a very low price of entry into a multi-year series of free updates – and it’s not working. They’ve erred on the other end of the spectrum from Adobe. How to use a tool but also when to use it, what problems you may encounter and, perhaps most importantly, why to use it.Affinity Designer is an excellent piece of professional creative software, but Serif’s business model is broken.

Things like selecting the right tool for the job because just learning a tool isn’t enough. What steps you should take and in what order. Also things like where to start when enhancing an image for your design work.

What tools work and what traps there are to catch you out. What clients want to see and what keeps them coming back to you. Over the years I’ve learned what matters when you are creating good design and what doesn’t. I’ve spent thousands of hours working in various design studios and now I’m bringing that experience to Affinity Designer for the iPad. I’ve been a designer for nearly 30 years. ‘How do I know when I’ve learned the really important stuff?’Įnrol on this course and find out just how well I can answer these questions. ‘There are so many tools in Affinity Designer! & the interface for the iPad is so different to the desktop version! As a beginner what do I need to know and what do I not need to know?’ How do I actually create good designs, start to finish?’ I’ve done some Affinity Designer iPad tutorials on YouTube, but they just cover one tool or technique.

Affinity designer demo