A message from the Affinity team

As a way to lend support to the creative community during these difficult times, we’re once again offering a 90-day free trial of the Mac and Windows versions of the whole Affinity suite, for anyone who wants to use them (even those who have previously completed a free trial). We’re also bringing back the 50% discount for those who would prefer to buy and keep the apps, including our iPad versions.

Affinity publisher. Reply to this topic. Start new topic. Recommended Posts. Posted 17 hours ago. Designer and Publisher (apparently not Photo) launches slowly since MacOS Big Sur 11.1 (i.e. 45 dock icon bumps) in its first launch after Mac reset or after a while closed (versus 4 icon bumps when recently launched). 7 6 Cons 1 Top Pro. Works in the browser. Inefficient workflow.

In other news…

our apps are fully optimized for the next generation of Mac

Ready to go on Apple’s Big Sur and primed to deliver superfast performance on Macs with M1 chips, recent updates to the macOS versions of our apps mean huge performance gains.

Marianna Orsho

Marianna is a London based multidisciplinary designer and graphic artist specialising in graphic design, branding, typography and illustration. We were drawn to her beautiful use of vector to create striking scenery. We asked Marianna her thoughts on Affinity Designer and here’s what she said;

“I was super excited to learn Affinity Designer throughout the process of making this illustration as I had heard many great things about it—and I have to agree, it is a wonderful and very powerful program. I found it to be very user-friendly, intuitive and extremely light (it loads so fast!). I really enjoyed playing around with it and I absolutely love how the clipping masks function.

With this illustration I ended up only using the tools for vector art, but Affinity Designer’s ability to merge vector and raster is something I am really excited about and can’t wait to explore further with my next Affinity Designer illustration.”

Marianna’s work has been used as an in-app sample, in our 1.8 video and on our Affinity Designer for iPad webpage.

Visit Marianna’s website, Instagram and agent to see more of her work.

Kate O’Hara

Kate O’Hara is a freelance illustrator currently based in Reno, Nevada. Her work combines intricate nature drawings with decorative hand-lettering and rich colour schemes. We were drawn to her detailed style which combines traditional and digital art techniques.

“I found Affinity Designer a really intuitive program to work in, there was very little learning curve to using it for the first time. For this illustration I started by drawing it on my iPad with my Apple Pencil in the Affinity Designer app and I was impressed with the quality of the brushes in the app and the many ways I could manipulate them to get the exact type of mark-making I wanted for the piece. I colored the illustration in the Affinity Designer desktop app with my Wacom tablet which was also easy to use. I really like the system that Affinity Designer has for the raster layers panel and applying color affects to the illustration. I also like that it’s possible to switch between raster and vector, I’d like to explore that more. Overall, I found the process really natural and straightforward and I was very happy with how the piece turned out.”

Kate’s work has been used in our 1.8 video.

To see more of Kate’s illustrations visit her website, Facebook and Instagram.

Nick Liefhebber

Nick Liefhebber creates bold, fun and colourful illustrations inspired by patterns and rhythms. He created a series of three original designs for us using Affinity Designer. You can read more about his processes and his design career in our interview with him.

“The Affinity vector drawing tools on both desktop and iPad versions feel super fluid making it easy to draw my natural wobbly worlds while keeping everything editable.”

To see more of Nick’s work check out his website and Instagram.

Isabel Sousa

Isabel Sousa is a designer and art director with 13 years of experience specialising in UI and illustration. She has a love of vibrant visual universes, eye-popping colours and playful characters, and has had the privilege of working with brands such as Dove, Sony Playstation, Nespresso and Samsung.

We absolutely love Isabel’s work and was instantly drawn to her unique and quirky style. We also love that she’s a huge fan of Affinity and uses it exclusively!

You can learn more about the processes behind the travel icons series that she created for us in this short tutorial.

Isabel’s work has been used in our 1.8 video and on our Affinity Designer for iPad webpage.

Visit Isabel’s website and Instagram to see more of her UI and illustration work.

Secteur 19

Secteur 19 is a designer and illustrator based in Switzerland. A long-time Affinity user, his meticulous attention to detail in design is what drew us to his work. We asked Secteur 19 to create a piece of branding for a fictional toy shop and we were pretty wowed with the results!

“As far as Affinity Designer is concerned, this program is essential to my work. With the iPad version, the workflow is completely intuitive, and ideas take shape without any other intermediary. The responsiveness of vector drawing tools is incredible and Affinity Designer for me is the best of graphic design options on iPad.”

Secteur 19’s work has been used as an in-app sample and on our Affinity Designer webpage.

Graphic Design In Affinity Designer

To see more from Secteur 19 check out his website and instagram.

Pope Phoenix

Pope Phoenix is a self-taught, Bronx-born art director, illustrator, and motion designer. A father, a full-time digital mercenary and a mentor to designers on social media. As a long-time Affinity Designer user we were thrilled to commission this new piece of art from Pope. When asked about how he found working in Affinity Designer he said;

“Being a vector artist, my workflow has been tied to switching back and forth between two apps. One for drawing sketches and another for creating my vector illustrations. Since discovering Affinity Designer, my workflow has been streamlined by eliminating the need for a secondary app to create my concept sketches before switching to vector. I can do both in one app using the different personas that are provided by Designer. It has easily become my favourite drawing app over the last year.”

Pope’s work has been used in our 1.8 video and on our Affinity Designer for iPad webpage.

To learn more about Pope Phoenix visit his website, Instagram and Twitter.

Mathis Burmeister

Mathis is an illustrator whose work is all about colourful and abstract fun. He grew up in Karl-Marx-Stadt (which was in the German Democratic Republic and is now called Chemnitz again) but has lived in Berlin for almost 20 years now. He studied media technology at the University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig which allowed him the chance to gain experience in different creative disciplines like film, animation and illustration.

We asked Mathis to give us his thoughts on Affinity Designer and this is what he said;

“I discovered Affinity Designer and Photo just recently, in the beginning of 2019 I bought them for my Mac and iPad Pro and was instantly thrilled by both of them. It was pretty intuitive and a lot of fun to get going. Especially Affinity Designer I use almost every day now.

I love how I can switch between the vector and pixel persona without having to leave the app. It’s not only a timesaver but also allows me to play around with the artwork and makes it really easy to experiment.”

Mathis’ work has been used as an in-app sample and on our Affinity Designer webpage.

To see more from Mathis visit his website, Instagram and agent.

Trey Ingram

Trey is a designer and illustrator living in St. Augustine, Florida. He specialises in logos, branding, icons, packaging and illustration. We love how passionate he is about design and how he creates bold, illustrated badges that tell a rich story.

“I truly enjoyed getting the opportunity to work with Affinity, an app jam-packed with tools and lightning-fast speed. As an artist who builds with shapes and the pathfinder tool for 75% of my process, Affinity has everything I need at my fingertips. There were so many great discoveries as I explored the app, and it meshed quite well with the way I build illustrations!”

Trey’s work has been used on our Affinity Designer webpage.

To see more of Trey’s designs visit his website and Dribbble.

Rubens Scarelli

Rubens Scarelli is an illustrator, graphic designer and art director from São Paulo, Brazil. When asked about how he found working in Affinity Designer he said;

“Affinity Designer was a pleasant surprise. It’s amazing how the interface is simple and intuitive, and at the same time, there are so many features to explore. Throughout the work, each discovery was a great WOW, but one of the many things that struck me was how light and fluid the program is, greatly increasing the work performance.”

You can see more work from Rubens by visiting his website, Behance and agent.

Peter Greenwood

Peter is a UK based freelance illustrator living and working in the creative hub of Brighton. He works in a graphic style using vector-based imagery and has a keen interest in art, music, space, old cars and colour. He works across editorial, publishing and advertising to create bold iconic illustrations.

Peter’s work has been used as an in-app sample, in our 1.8 video and on our Affinity Designer webpage.

Visit Peter’s website, Instagram and agent to see more of his illustrations.

Affinity Designer Tutorial

Loch Ness

Loch Ness is a freelance artist and muralist based in Bristol, UK, specialising in psychedelic surreal imagery. His artwork playfully disorientates you to a place that oozes a twisted harmony and Zen.

“Affinity by Serif asked me to step out of my comfort zone and collaborate with them using the new Affinity Designer software. It was an exciting opportunity although I was a bit hesitant to venture into the unknown! Thankfully, it was a pleasant surprise with the same functionality and often better performance than other programs. The user interface was really easy to navigate and enjoyable to use.

Affinity Designer has some great extra features like the function to easily switch between vector and raster instead of switching between programs. There is a quick gradient and transparency feature which streamlines the process in the click of a button. The new shape tools were fun to play around with a feature I didn’t even know I wanted! I’ll definitely keep using Affinity Designer in future projects.”

Loch Ness’ work has been used on our Affinity Designer webpage.

Visit Loch Ness’ website, Facebook and Twitter to see more of his work.

Pierre Kleinhouse

Pierre Kleinhouse is an award-winning freelance illustrator and designer. Over the past few years he had the privilege of working with clients such as Broadway Theatre, HarperCollins, Stella Artois and more. He also makes artworks for exhibitions, gives talks and runs illustration workshops around the world. We asked Pierre how he found working with Affinity Designer and this was his reply;

“As an illustrator and designer who likes to use brushes and draw freely, but still needs the option to work precisely and sometimes create vector work: Affinity Designer meets all my needs in one app.

The fact that Affinity Designer has a great app version for tablets is a huge benefit, which allows me to work outside my studio without compromising the quality of what I do.

It feels like it was especially built and designed for designers/illustrators, it’s fast and clean, with no unnecessary features that slow you down.”

Pierre’s work has been used as an in-app sample, in our 1.8 video and on our Affinity Designer for iPad webpage.

Visit Pierre’s website and Instagram to learn more about his work.

Peter Henderson

Peter Henderson is an award-winning English illustrator and motion designer based in East London. Peter has worked with clients big and small from each corner of the world from the Wall Street Journal to The New York Times, Rolex and Siemens to name just a few. Peter enjoyed working with Affinity Designer and here’s what he had to say;

“As I work mainly in illustrator it’s nice to find almost all the tools I needed. It was quite easy to transition to Affinity and update my keyboard shortcuts. I quickly forgot I was using a new program. Something I love in Affinity is the Curve tool for rounded corners. It stays live as you edit individual nodes, so you can change your shape and the corner will shift with the new angle. I also experimented with the Fill tool for gradients, and although I don’t tend to use gradients in my work, it was so simple to change the gradient colours and positions.”

Peter’s work has been used in our 1.8 video and on our Affinity Designer for iPad webpage.

Affinity Designer Slow

Visit Peter’s website, Instagram and agent to see more of his illustrations and animations.

Moon Mane

Moon Mane is the alias of Italian graphic designer and illustrator Benet Zaganjori. Based in Florence, Benet’s background is in Design and Art History studies and he has been working as a freelancer since early 2018. Focusing on vector based illustrations he finds inspiration mainly through classical art, mythology and nature, but also through his passion for tattoos and music.

“The app is really intuitive and easy to use, and the fact that you can freely switch from raster to vector graphics at any time in the same app is just awesome. It is the perfect solution for those who are looking for a complete design app on iPad”.

To see more work from Moon Mane check him out on Instagram.

Chaaya Prabhat

Chaaya Prabhat is an independent illustrator and designer based out of Chennai, India. She has worked with numerous well-known clients such as Google, Facebook and Snapchat on a number of digital illustration projects as well as picture books. When asked about how she found working in Affinity Designer she said;

“Using Affinity Designer for the iPad was a smooth and intuitive experience. One doesn’t need to spend too long getting acquainted with the tools or the shortcuts, it comes naturally after the software is used for a few minutes. This is the first time I’ve used software that combines vector and raster workspaces, which I can see being incredibly useful for commercial projects—where I could create illustrations in the pixel workspace and switch to vector for typography. I continue to use Affinity Designer on the iPad for day-to-day work as well as commercial creative projects.”

Chaaya’s work has been used on our Affinity Designer for iPad webpage.

Visit Chaaya’s website, Behance and Instagram to see more of her colourful illustrations.

Ierko Radovancic

Ierko is a graphic designer and freelance illustrator living in Argentina. After following his work in Affinity on Instagram we loved this dragon piece and instantly decided to licence it. This amazing piece uses simple line art and shapes with the addition of effects like blur and noise to give it light and shadows. Believe it or not this was his first ever attempt at making a dragon which he claims he had a lot of fun with making the pattern of the scales. We’re looking forward to seeing more of what Ierko creates as he’s undeniably a big talent!

Ierko’s work has been used as an in-app sample, in our 1.8 video and on our Affinity Designer for iPad webpage.

Visit Ierko on Instagram to see more of his designs.

Dami Vincent

Dami Vincent is a lettering artist extraordinaire from Nigeria. Dami’s amazing work first caught our eye on Instagram and it was then that we realised he’s a regular user of Affinity Designer. We love the graffiti style lettering on the below piece.

“Lettering design was never this seamless for me before I discovered Affinity Designer. Normally creating my lettering designs takes me through multiple apps from sketch to vector which is stressful, but since I discovered Affinity Designer which is an all-in-one app, I no longer have to switch apps to complete my work and I can make my sketches right here and proceed to vectoring.

Working with Affinity Designer has been a touch of magic to my art. Another great thing about Affinity designer is exporting to different formats which enables me to continue my works on a PC.”

Dami’s work has been used as an in-app sample, in our 1.8 video and on our Affinity Designer webpage.

To see more of Dami’s lettering check him out on Instagram.

Weitong Mai

Weitong Mai is a Chinese-born Canadian freelance illustrator, currently based in London, UK. Being a multi-award winning talent, Weitong has worked with various prominent names both editorially and commercially. Each one of Weitong’s illustrations tell a beautiful story through her use of delicate lines and rich colours. When asked about her thoughts on Affinity Designer this is what she said;

“Affinity Designer is an amazing app which provides a wide range of tools. I really like the idea of combining the pixel and vector mode into the same desktop. It really supports me to express my imagination with no limits!”

Visit Weitong’s website and agent to see more of her work.