Affinity Designer iPad Tutorial

Affinity Designer for iPad is an affordable Adobe Illustrator alternative. It is a full featured vector program with plenty of options to edit and design images. In this tutorial we’ll cover the basics you’ll need to get started.

How To Open A New File in Affinity Designer

Here we will focus on creating a brand new document on Affinity Designer for iPad, including choosing your settings for the document.

Step 1. Open the Affinity Designer App on your iPad

Upon opening the Affinity Designer App you will see the following screen. If you already have documents created you will see them here. If it is the first time opening the app you will just have the two optionspictured. Clicking on Tutorials will link you to the Affinity Designer Tutorial page and clicking on Samples will open several preloaded sample designs.

Step 2. Creating A Document

Tap on the plus icon in the top right of the screen and another screen will pop up. From this screen you can choose to open a new document or template, or you can open an already created Affinity file or import a file from the cloud.

Step 3. Creating a New Document

For this Affinity Designer tutorial we’ll focus on opening a new file. Tap on New Document and another window will pop up.

Step 4. Choosing Document Settings

Here is where you can set the size of your document, resolution, color profiles, page orientation and whether you want a white or transparent background. For vector design you can keep your resolution at 72dpi but for raster design you will want at least 300dpi. Once you have your ideal settings, tap OK and your document will open.

Menu Icons

Affinity Designer has three different modes. The programcalls these modes personas.

Designer Persona

Here you can use the pencil and brush tools to draw vectors. There are a multitude of tools from basic shapes, to gradient tools and node editing. You can add text with custom fonts, change colors and add strokes.

Pixel Persona

Here you can draw and edit raster graphics. Great for adding shading and effects to your artwork.

Export Persona

This is designed for exporting your graphics with your saved settings.

Help Menu

Long tap on the question mark symbol in the bottom right of the screen in any persona and labels will pop up next to the menu icons so you can see what each one is.

Importing an SVG file

This part will cover importing an SVG, from locating the file to editing it.

Step 1. Importing the file.

Tap on the document icon in the top left of the screen and select “Place image”.

The design I'm using in this tutorial is Summer Gomes SVG

Step 2. Locating the file

elect Open From Cloud and navigate to the folder you have your SVG file saved. Tap on the file you want.

Step 3. Placing the file in the document

Use your fingers or stylus to drag out the SVG to the size you want it to be. you can always resize it later if your needs change.

Step 4. Editing the image

Double tap on the image to edit the layers. Here you can change thefill or stroke color on any element of the design. You can also move layers around and change sizing.

Exporting a file from Affinity Designer

Step 1. Exporting from the Document Menu

Click on the document icon in the top right of the screen and tap on Export.

Step 2. Export Settings

This will bring you to a second screen where you can change the export settings. Here you can choose what format to save your file and change the name of it. When you have made your desired changes click OK. Your file is now saved.

What other type of files can Affinity Designer Open?

Affinity can import and export EPS, PDF, PNG, TIFF, JPEG, PSD, HDR, TGA, EXR, and GIF.

If you enjoyed this tutorial and want to learn more you can visit our other Affinity Designer for iPad Tutorials like how to use clipping masks, and how to use the pen tool.