#Affinity designer workbook english pdf full

How did you bring together so much content?Īndy: Like publishing projects we’ve been involved with in the past, the key was to keep the component chapters and projects independent of each other for as long as possible. Thanks to StudioLink, these were all non-destructive to the screen-captured panels, so if we wanted to revisit them after reviewing early hard-proofs etc., everything was easily editable. There are literally hundreds of them in the book, and they all have live filters ‘unsharp mask’ applied, along with some white balance adjustments to improve sharpness and colours for print. Ian: StudioLink was a massive help to us. How much StudioLink functionality did you use? StudioLink’s integrated vector design and photo editing capabilities within Publisher has been a big game changer.

So a lot of files were prepped ready to accept the actual content. Once we decided on the orange Pantone® colour used throughout the book, we were able to template a lot of the pages like the chapter and project front covers. We did early tests and decided this approach worked well.įrom the previous workbooks, we already had a ‘house style’ established in terms of size, colours, layout and fonts etc.

#Affinity designer workbook english pdf full

A lot of full screenshots are cropped by flowing in from ‘off the page’ and then supplemented with more captions and zoomed in areas. The approach I decided to take was to try and illustrate the final objective instead of breaking down each step. We knew that most of the projects for Publisher would be multi-page, with potentially a lot more ground to cover than the projects in the Designer and Photo Workbooks. Ian: I had to give the art direction a lot of thought. What was your process for designing the Workbook? As we’re focused on quality, the book was subject to rigorous Quality Assurance checks as you’d expect both for its written content and all the downloadable files to follow along with the projects. This kept development distributed until we brought the Workbook together into one file. By using JIRA task assignment, chapters and projects were owned by authors or designers.

How easy was it to multi-author?Īndy: The core team was about five people-a mix of technical authors and graphic designers working in a DropBox cloud environment. We had three main stages: Planning-Development-Book Assembly/Publishing. using internal and external commissions, all at different stages of development, the project and chapters were developed as independent Publisher files. How did you plan out and manage such a huge publication?Īndy: Because of the nature of the projects, i.e. We would also like to thank Fernando Martins Ribeiro for shooting some of the product photography and images for the cover. Ian: We also worked with some amazing designers, illustrators, and publishing experts from all over the world to bring you the rest of the projects, and we would like to say a big thanks to Eleni Debo, Roberta Burattini, Rosa Maglione, Steve Simpson, Sandi Dez, David Hussner, and our in-house graphic designer James Bates for their inspiring contributions. Emily Goater, our in-house Affinity Publisher product expert provided the Page Design Principles chapter, and we were also very pleased to commission Adam Banks, former Editor of MacUser, so he could share his 30 years of magazine publishing experience. You’ll see his design skills in action in the Workbook’s brochure and poster projects. Who was involved in its creation?Īndy: For starters, Ian brought many years of graphic design experience to the table, especially with page layouts. It’s packed with projects, tips and tricks, all supported by our Interface Tour and Core Skills chapters, as well as a DTP-specific Page Design Principles chapter. Tell us a bit about the Workbook.Īndy: Well, I think the most important point to make is that the Workbook was published entirely in Affinity Publisher! It is our largest book yet (544 pages) and has the same high production values as the already available Affinity Designer and Photo Workbooks. In this article, we speak to two key members of the team: our Head of Documentation Andy Capstick, who edited and co-authored the book, and our Creative Projects Manager Ian Cornwall, who directed the overall look and contributed three hands-on projects, to gain an insight into how it was created. It comes in both English and German language, and is now available to purchase on the Affinity Store.