25+ best Affinity Designer tutorials & videos

Affinity Designer is a powerful design tool that combines both vector and raster editing capabilities. It is available for Mac, iPad, and Windows.

Whether you’re new to Affinity Design software or have some experience under your belt, this collection of the best Affinity design tutorials will give you everything you need to learn and improve the skills you already have.

Some are offered as written Affinity tutorials, and others include a video.

1. Adobe vs. Affinity: A comprehensive guide

Let’s kick things off with this terrific guide, which will help answer your questions like “What is the difference between Affinity software and Adobe?” This will help you understand the key differences and benefits of the Affinity suite vs. the Adobe suite.

You can read the Adobe vs Affinity guide if you’d like a companion to the video.

2. Affinity Designer quick start course

What is Affinity Designer used for? This design tutorial is what you need to dive right into the Affinity software to understand features like brushes, tools, shapes, and more.

For a written companion to the video, here’s the Affinity Designer quick start course.

3. Affinity Designer for beginners

When you want to learn all the nuts and bolts of the Affinity software, this thorough Affinity Designer 2 tutorial should be your first stop. It covers everything you need to know about the app, from its interface to dealing with layers, color, texture, and more.

Below you’ll find a comprehensive written tutorial to go along with the video. It’s broken down into sections to help you skip right to the feature you’re most interested in.

Affinity Designer for beginners guide

Introduction

Basic tools

Layers and Shapes

Color

Shadows and Highlights

How to Use the Flood Fill Tool in Affinity Designer

Texture and Detail

Export

How to Use the Export Persona in Affinity Designer

Text

Final tips

How to Use the Resource Manager in Affinity Designer

4. A to Z of Affinity Designer: Tips, tricks, and hacks!

Sometimes, you just need to know all the little tricks and shortcuts that make using an application oh so easy. That’s exactly what this design tutorial is for. The video and its written companion A to Z of Affinity Designer: Tips, tricks, and hacks are perfect when you want to learn Affinity Designer’s standout features, unique strengths, useful tools, and tips & tricks.

5. A beginner’s guide to grids in Affinity Designer

A beginner’s guide to grids in Affinity Designer is both a text and video tutorial that will help you learn how to make a grid in Affinity Designer, how to add a custom grid, and how to change the grid size.

6. How to add brushes to Affinity Designer

Have you collected or found a gorgeous set of brushes and want to know how to add them to Affinity Designer? Well, you’re in the right place. This Affinity tutorial will explore brushes in both the Designer Persona and Pixel Persona in Designer and show you how they work.

7. How to make a neon text effect in Affinity Designer

Trying to figure out how to make a neon text effect using the Affinity Design software? In How to make a neon text effect in Affinity Designer, you’ll discover how to make a neon light text effect, how to apply layer effects in Affinity Designer, and best of all, how to recreate the Beat Saber logo.

8. How to convert a stroke to a shape in Affinity Designer

In this Affinity tutorial you will learn everything you’ve ever wanted to know about how to expand simple strokes in Affinity Designer, how to expand multiple strokes, and how to turn text outlines into shapes that you can further modify and distort as you need.

9. How to create an Affinity Designer greeting card template

Creating your own gorgeous greeting cards is simple with this easy design tutorial focused specifically on creating greeting card templates in Affinity Designer. You will learn how to create the Affinity Designer template, how to add text and flair to your design, how to design the back of your card, and more.

10. How to crop in Affinity Designer

The great thing about Affinity Designer is that it can handle raster image editing just as well as vector shapes, and one of its most useful features is the Vector Crop Tool. Learn how to use this essential tool, how to manually adjust the crop of your image, and then how to copy and paste the cropped image as a new document.

11. How to create a layered text effect in Affinity Designer

Affinity Designer is a great option for creating an editable text effect. In this tutorial, you will learn how to add text in the software, create text effects, warp and distort text effects, add texture, and more.

12. How to remove a background in Affinity Designer

When you want to create the perfect composite design, removing the background from an image is an essential skill. Watch the video to figure out how to remove a solid colour background, and then check out the written tutorial How to remove a background in Affinity Designer to discover how to remove a more complex background in a few easy steps.

13. How to merge layers in Affinity Designer

With an application that allows you to work in both vector and pixel layers, how do you merge the two? That’s exactly what this tutorial aims to teach. You will learn everything you need to know about how layers work and how to merge vector and pixel layers.

14. How to make 3D text in Affinity Designer

Want to know how to make 3D text using Affinity Designer? This tutorial on How to make 3D text in Affinity Designer will show you just how it’s done. First, you’ll learn how to make editable 3D text using the Symbols panel, and then you’ll learn how to use Layer Effects to customise it.

15. How to install fonts in Affinity Designer

Fonts can be an essential part of design work. If you want to know how to add fonts in Affinity Designer, this tutorial will walk you through everything you need to know about Affinity Designer fonts that you have installed on your Mac or PC.

16. How to curve text in Affinity Designer

Discover how to curve and stylise your text with this short and sweet Affinity Designer 2 tutorial.

17. How to create a cartoon text effect in Affinity Designer

When you want to know how to create a cool cartoon text effect using Affinity Designer, use this tutorial for an easy-to-follow process. The tutorial covers how to create lettering from scratch, how to modify paths, how to add gradients, and how to export multiple versions of your design.

18. How to create an Affinity Designer icon

Create your own icon for your website from start to finish with this in-depth Affinity Designer 2 tutorial.

19. How to create a lettering design in Affinity Designer

Design a vibrant poster using Affinity Designer in this step-by-step tutorial drawing inspiration from Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. You’ll focus on bringing her famous words to life: “The stars don’t look bigger, but they do look brighter.” The tutorial moves you from the sketch stage through to a stunning piece of digital art.

20. How to use Affinity Designer to design a logo

Need to design a terrific logo? Well, check out this tutorial where you’ll learn how to create your very own logo in Affinity Designer, as well as best practices for exporting and using logos and vector art.

21. How to create a lightning bolt logo design in Affinity Designer

Learn how to create a lightning bolt logo using Affinity Designer. Watch the video or follow along with the written tutorial, How to create a lightning bolt logo in Affinity Designer, and discover how to set up a grid in Affinity Designer, how to create a lightning bolt symbol, and how to create a logo featuring a lightning bolt in a circle.

22. How to draw an arrow in Affinity Designer

Use these simple steps to learn how to draw an arrow in Affinity Designer using the Stroke panel, how to draw an arrow using the Arrow Tool, and how to draw a round arrow.

23. How to create patterns in Affinity Designer

We all love patterns of one sort or another, and what better way to learn how to create your own unique patterns than with this terrific tutorial: How to create patterns in Affinity Designer. You will learn three different methods of creating patterns, so you can choose which you’d like to work with going forward.

24. How to make a warped checkerboard pattern in Affinity Designer

Create a cool warped checkerboard pattern with this fabulous Affinity Designer tutorial. In it you will learn how to make a checkerboard pattern and then see three different methods for turning it into a wavy checkerboard pattern.

25. Everything you need to know about Affinity Designer brushes

Brushes are one of the coolest tools to work with, and it is indispensable to learn not only how to use them effectively, but also how to create and install your own brushes.

26. How to make a custom guilloché-type brush in Affinity Designer

Now that you know a bit more about brushes, discover how to design a custom guilloché brush in Affinity Designer with this step-by-step tutorial. Apart from learning what guilloché is, you’ll also pick up some useful stroke-building techniques to help you create a useful tool.

Premium Affinity Designer resources from Envato

Looking for great Affinity Designer resources? At Envato, you will find a wide selection of brushes and templates that are easy to customise in Affinity Designer. In fact, you can download as many Affinity Designer resources as you want, as often as you want, for one flat monthly fee.

What’s more, that monthly fee also gives you unlimited access to thousands of quality digital assets like graphic templates, photos, business card templates, and much more. Let’s take a look at a selection of the Affinity Designer assets you can download.

Travel flyer for Affinity Designer

How cool is this flyer? It can be yours to use and customise as you like. All you need to do is download it and replace the text and images with your own using Affinity Designer, and your work is done.

Multi-purpose magazine template for Affinity Designer

Want to create a stunning, modern magazine? Why not try this beautiful template from Envato? The A4 template offers 18 editable pages and is fully customisable using both Affinity Designer and Publisher.

Colored Brushes Pattern for Affinity Designer

If you love texture and pattern, you will love this seamless hand-painted pattern with its spontaneous brush strokes. Download it and use Affinity Designer to integrate it into your next project.

So Flowery Branding Kit

This is a fantastic branding kit that will keep on giving. That’s because it contains 18 logo designs, 17 icons, and 13 watercolour elements, all fully editable using Affinity Designer.

Clean Modern Stationery

Looking for the perfect stationery template for a new business venture? How about this collection offering a clean and modern design? The collection, which is fully customisable in Affinity Designer, includes both A4 and Letter size templates featuring envelopes, business cards, and presentation folders.

Learn Affinity Designer today

I hope you’ve found this article on the best Affinity Designer tutorials helpful. As you can see, Envato Tuts+ has no shortage of informative tutorials for this amazing software.

And when it comes to digital assets, Envato is an excellent resource for premium brushes, icons, templates, and other design resources. It offers unlimited downloads for one low monthly fee. Sign up today!

Post date January 15, 2025

This content originally appeared on Envato Tuts+ Tutorials and was authored by Nona Blackman

Affinity Designer is a powerful design tool that combines both vector and raster editing capabilities. It is available for Mac, iPad, and Windows.

Some are offered as written Affinity tutorials, and others include a video.

1. Adobe vs. Affinity: A comprehensive guide

Let's kick things off with this terrific guide, which will help answer your questions like "What is the difference between Affinity software and Adobe?" This will help you understand the key differences and benefits of the Affinity suite vs. the Adobe suite.

You can read the Adobe vs Affinity guide if you'd like a companion to the video.

2. Affinity Designer quick start course

What is Affinity Designer used for? This design tutorial is what you need to dive right into the Affinity software to understand features like brushes, tools, shapes, and more.

For a written companion to the video, here's the Affinity Designer quick start course.

3. Affinity Designer for beginners

Below you'll find a comprehensive written tutorial to go along with the video. It's broken down into sections to help you skip right to the feature you're most interested in.