Affinity Designer 2 for iPad: How to Track and Kern Text

[@NikkiGlasgow]

Thank you for making this video! I appreciate your detailed explanation of how and why kerning and tracking are used. I, too, geek out about the beauty of fonts as an art form 🤓

[@FosterYourAffinity]

My pleasure! Thank you for watching! - Yes, Fonts are pretty incredible! If only I had more time to spend with them!

[@themesswascurly1]

Definitely off topic during the first segment of the video, but wildly helpful when you got to the meat of what the title suggests-thank you so much!

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Guilty as charged. I had a way of rambling about, and just - during this time there was so much I wanted to say I got a bit over excited and off topic for many of my videos! Sorry about that! Thank you for watching.

[@themesswascurly1]

All good! Thanks for a great video otherwise! 💯

[@smnaveen4816]

This is such a useful video... I even raised this question in the affinity forum- "where is this trackin and kerning option in v2?" One of the OG person in the forum too not aware of where is this tracking and kerning option... After watching you shorts i took screenshot and highlighted the navigation of these option and shared it on the forum..

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Thanks for suggesting such a great topic. I'm trying to make videos that others might be missing. I think a lot of people are really focused on how to use all the new tools etc. haha - Yeah, some of the Affinity guys even told me that it took them a couple of weeks to get used to the new UI and find everything. I think everybody is gonna have the same problem. It's a huge change!

[@susannebukatz4457]

Thank you! Just started with Affinity Designer 2 after a long and unhappy relationship with Adobe. Five minutes into it and I’m already super happy with how easy it is to work with. 🤩

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Hey! I'm so happy you enjoyed the video, and thank you for watching. Affinity life is definitely my best life at the moment. I hope they keep going! : )

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Hope this was helpful guys! What other things are some of you struggling with? Let me know!

[@Artrick.design]

Thank you

[@FosterYourAffinity]

My pleasure! Thank you for watching!

[@ihdaahafiz.333]

Thank you so much ❤

[@FosterYourAffinity]

My pleasure! Thank you for watching!

[@PaulM_aka_4c21]

Excellent as usual Robert !

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Thanks again!

[@Laura76393]

Thanks I was going insane trying to find this feature 😂😂😂

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Thank you for watching! I'm glad I could help. It's one of those things that drove me crazy to when they overhauled the interface. 🤣

[@slartibartfast7921]

Love these videos mate. Super useful with getting to grips with V2

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Thanks for the kind words and for giving it a chance. I hope it helped! Cheers!

[@jessekeith8529]

Great video, thanks for sharing! Is there a text vertical alignment tool or function in affinity iPad V2?

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Not that I know of, but then again, I am not yet fully versed in all that is possible with the text tools in the app! I made this video because people kept asking about it, and I happened to know where to find it 😅

[@ladyhollman9534]

Awesome, thanks!

[@FosterYourAffinity]

My pleasure!

[@rairon3131]

amazing voice and tutorial

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Thank you for watching, and for the kind words!

[@BethMarie]

Great! Thank you! 👍🏻

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Thanks for checking it out! 🍻

[@LOGOASSASSIN]

Cool except can you say how you got the right hand side panels (studio) to minimise into a stack of icons please, no one has done a video on this:(

[@kckdutton]

THANK YOU 🙏

[@FosterYourAffinity]

My pleasure! Thank you for watching!

[@KreeTerry]

Really appreciate these affinity 2 videos! I’ve been very impatiently awaiting publishers release on iPad so I’ve been spending a majority of my time there learning it but these AD vids help too. So many good improvements in these apps! Quick question. Am I correct in remembering you had a “quick vintage kit” or something along those lines for designer a few years back? I was looking for it again for a print workflow I want to try but can’t seem to find it. Thanks for your videos and your time 🙏

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Kree Terry, thanks for the kind words! I took it offline for a bit, I'm making some adjustments for V2. The brush engine and interpolation have been completely overhauled so some of my brushes transferred over with some wonky side effects/poor line qualities. I should have that up by the weekend.I will come back and post a link for you!

[@FosterYourAffinity]

!! Kree Terry !! Did you every purchase the Quick Kit Vintage? - If you don't care about the brushes I can make it available again for you. I'm mostly concerned with the brushes at the moment. I tested the macros this morning and they seem to be working fine. However, the context tool bar sliders are a little awkward as they no longer contain text labels. So it's tough to see what you're doing when you want to create halftone screens. That being said, - the color separations macro works perfectly. Let me know and I'll send you a link and a discount code. - Also, people have asked me about this in the past. - Think I should just put the separation macro up for download? Think people would be sour if I charged a dollar for it? - Most printers would already know the process, but few people wanna take the time to sit down and actually record the macro. I'd give it for free, but it seems unfair. So many people already paid for the kit and might feel slighted. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

[@jordyjcross]

On the blend mode my flyout only has the options 'Add to selection, Delete, Lock or rename layer'...

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Whoa! How'd I miss this?! - Yeah, I haven't been using my iPad for a while now and wasn't aware of the change till you mentioned it! I guess they changed it in one of the recent updates?! Go figure!

[@Cavmclaren]

How come you have the transparency tool & I don’t? 😢 I have designer & photo v2 neither have the wineglass icon

[@FosterYourAffinity]

It's not gone, it's now nested together with the gradient fill tool! Tap and hold that or swipe out on it and you'll find the transparency tool! Threw me off the first time too!

[@TommyRobinsoncat]

thanks i looked for hours and several videos thans .

[@FosterYourAffinity]

My pleasure! Thank you for watching!

[@mnellafishing]

I don’t have a keyboard, how can I type? I don’t see the apple pen keyboard

[@FosterYourAffinity]

It's a little different now. Now, once you've got your text box on the spread, you simply tap on the icon to open the Text Studio. Then the keyboard will pop up. You can also use scribble to simply write in the text. Thanks for watching!

[@hosseinrezapour251]

Hi . Good tutorial. Thank u. Pls do one on quick grid on ipad. If ipad have it. Im not sure. I think cool things can be done by quick grid and shapes . It isnt just for grid.

[@FosterYourAffinity]

I was playing with that yesterday. I'm not sure if iPad has the quick grid feature yet. I couldn't get it to work! I will check again.

[@doxdigitalartsandtattoo7234]

Nice! Now I know. Thanks for this. :)

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Happy to help!

[@ciskid23]

Super dumb question, if I purchase this v2 does it upgrade my affinity v1, or is this a separate app , cause I’m worried if I don’t like it I can’t go back to my original. If they both exist on the iPad then I can take my time learning it while still working with v1

[@FosterYourAffinity]

No dumb questions! haha - Always something to learn. V2 is a separate app. You can still hang on to your V1 and use them side by side. They are still working on V1 and will provide stability updates moving forward, but have stated that eventually, it will be phased out. Don't have a timeline on just how long that period of time will be yet. I hope this helped! Thanks for checking out the video!

[@ciskid23]

@@FosterYourAffinity thank you for responding, looking forward to learning from you, I was never that good with v1, I spent most of my time in procreate as I'm trying to make a picture book, hoping that publisher 2 can be used to put it all together, honestly both look very confusing. thanks again

[@FosterYourAffinity]

@@ciskid23 My pleasure. At some point I will do a few videos on Affinity Publisher too. Publisher for iPad is great, and the Affinity crew is pumping out some really great tutorials for it. Check out their playlist on the Affinity Publisher page in the mean time! It'll be well worth your time. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3ixn6lpi7GpaKM

[@dishub666]

Dang im still confused on clipping mask

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Hey, thanks for watching the video. Hmmmm clipping masks. Maybe I'll make a video on masking. Any question in particular you have?

[@alysonmcdermott8290]

This worked perfectly for Affinity Publisher, too! Thank you!!!

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Glad it helped! Thank you for watching!

[@djmtype]

There's still no optical kerning across the 2022 Affinity lineup. While the font creator may include instructions for kerning pairs, if there isn't any, typography can appear very lousy depending on the typeface, and especially more noticeable on large type.

[@FosterYourAffinity]

I imagine this is highly requested, but perhaps they felt the applications of optical kerning were generally limited compared to the metric which plays an important role in legibility of print media. Perhaps they felt it could wait. Your guess would be as good as mine! Thanks for checking out the video! Cheers! 🍻

[@nativeclan]

These changes has really screwed me up. So hard to find everything so far.

[@FosterYourAffinity]

I feel ya. It took me about a week to get comfy with it. I'm all good now though!

[@nomakslicer]

Are we able to make font like move… um… idk technical terms, but like if you have a circle follow the shape of it or do we have to do each letter character by itself😅? This was very insightful I didn’t realize there were two font option. Now makes sense why mine kept going so long… 😂

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Yes! 😆 You can do it! Here's how it was done in V1. kzbin.info/www/bejne/e4mVlqKdl6qSmsU It's very much the same in V2, but soon I will do a new video on that as well!

[@nomakslicer]

@@FosterYourAffinity Thanks so much!

[@stefanjohnsson5661]

Why would they bury the kern feature so deep? Affinity really needs a redesign.

[@FosterYourAffinity]

I'm not sure exactly, but it feels like they are now attempting to solve the problems that come with splitting a design suite into three seperate apps. All of them should work alone and together, so they are essentially all fighting for screen realestate. I'm hoping they impliment something like user defined personas etc in the future. That would be really cool, and would allow users to define their own studio setups within the app. It's one of the great parts of working on the desktop versions of the software. - We can define and shape our workspace as desired.

[@tpf1952]

It took you six minutes and 27 seconds to get to the point. L am grateful for the information, but please consider that you may de helping people on a deadline.

[@FosterYourAffinity]

Understood. As my channel has been getting more exposure lately, I've recieved a lot of similar feedback. Thank you for making it constructive. I will keep it in mind for my future videos. Thanks also for watching, and I'm glad I could help.

[@HMaxTube11]

Helpful, but boo to Affinity for burying the controls 3 layers deep. For professionals, that’s poor UI design.😵‍💫

[@FosterYourAffinity]

While, I'm super happy with V2 for the most part, this is one of those things that, admittedly I'm not too crazy about. I don't exactly understand the logic, but I think it had something to do with the on screen keyboard. It seems they opted to compact the text studio, specifically to make room for the keyboard when it pops up. This way, the studio and keyboard could both be visible and usable at the same time. If that's the case, - I get it, but - the text studio does suffer from the overly nested options.

[@peterplantec7911]

This was helpful. The new interface is far from intuitive. The learning curve is ridiculous. Clearly they have no human factors experts to help them design logical interfaces. It’s still a good value, but damn they could certainly design the interface better.

[@FosterYourAffinity]

When Affinity V2 first came out there were a lot of raised voices. I think the problems arise for them when trying to translate their desktop interface to the iPad size/form factor. The fact that they have been able to include as much as they have on the iPad versions of the apps is pretty incredible, but it comes with a substantial cost in both space and convenience. I have always hoped that they would expand the "personas" they have created. If they created different personas for all the items and studios they have currently tucked away in drop downs and hidden menus, I think people would be happier. Heck, they could even allow users to create custom personas. Who knows what they'll do in the future?! Thanks for watching the video!