Transcripts
1. Course Intro : we owe. I'm Generally I run a creative studio based on the Midwest that focuses on graphic design, surface pattern design and illustration. I have a background working in the fashion industry and teaching in higher education. I specialize in creating surface pattern designs and other illustrated digital media for the fashion product and stationery industries. You may know me from my previous classes break here on skill share, but of focused on trend forecasting, digital and surface pattern design and planning both digital and analog. Aside from my work in the fashion and graphic design industries, I really enjoy planning and designing stationary as you saw in my how to fill the digital intercourse. Some of my top selling products are my digital trainers and digital sticker sets in my Etsy shop. My top course right here on skill share is my how to design digital stickers with affinity designer for the desktop. I wanted to do an update on that class because I've been getting a lot of response and requests to focus on basically how to design digital stickers using affinity designer, but for the iPad version, and this is because the interfaces are different. So this course that I'm releasing today will actually get you comfortable with the iPad version. Creating digital stickers for using good notes or your iPad is not nearly as hard as you think, so I wanted to share some tips, my knowledge and help people the digital sticker stop that you can customize to your needs . The sticker sets give digital panting a bit of creativity and are not to the real thing and the beauty about working in affinity designers that you don't necessarily. I need to have too much artistic ability, as we will be working with shapes and vector tools. Digital stickers air also a bit more eco friendly than your traditional paper planners, as you can reuse them over and over again. Let's get started.
2. What You Will Learn: No way. So what is this class about in this class, you will learn how to create a digital sticker sot using the affinity designer iPad app. This is an update to my prior class as I've received messages and requests to do this class to highlight the iPad affinity designer interface. I really enjoy using affinity design on the iPad for working on projects on the go and for creating digital stickers because it allows you to simply and quickly create precise shapes , a line and space items really easily add. Vector affects the shapes and export your images of slices to PNG files without a background. So you get that kind of sticker vibe sticker feel when it comes to being able to place these images and elements into your spreads and layouts in APS like good notes and things like that. So basically, this allows you to pair them for your digital note, taking APS and apply them to pages without a white background. This course is also a fantastic class to get comfortable using the affinity designer app on her iPad as we're gonna go through the basic process of creating in the program and you get a tangible product that you can use after you're done. The goal for this class is to highlight the interface of the iPad version. As like I said before, it is a bit different that what you might find on the dust half version, which you can learn about in my previous class. It also streamlines the whole process of using digital planning. In general, we will start with the basics of understanding the tool bars and the functions in the affinity designer iPad app. And then we're going to start to build out our digital stickers set. You'll learn how to design simple, functional stickers that don't require any artistic prowess. You will learn about the different types of stickers for planning. We'll also talk about how to set up your file and prop your art board. You will also get an understanding of the layers function in the program. We will also go over how to use the shape tools, the line school and how to use the move in a line functions in the act, and we will also go over how to load your digital stickers into good notes and just some simple tasks and the good notes app. Look out of place and resize your stickers so that you can get used to using them in your digital planning process. You can use these stickers that you create in this class toe offer as a free download. If you're trying to build an email list, you can sell them on your Web site or a site like at sea or creative market. Or you could just use them for yourself. To make things easier, I'm gonna include a class project under the class project. Resource is that basically has a template of the file that will be creating today, and you can add it and get acquainted with it before you start your own. And I also include a sticker book that you can use to load your stickers on to within the good notes. Finally, I will also make sure to include a file with all the stickers that we create in this class for personal use after mice for good notes. And it isn't file is P and G's. If you like my work, you can also check out my other sticker packs that you might find interesting over on my Web site at www dot Bella Sophia creative dot com
3. Course Project: do you wear? What are some of the supplies that you need for this class? All you need to take this class is your iPad, the affinity designer iPad, app and the good notes, app or any other note taking app that you might use but specifically good notes is that's what I'll be optimizing our files for just to make it easier. If you're into physical planning and you want the real thing, definitely check out my other two planner stuff. Your classes here on school share designing planner stickers using procreate and the cricket Explore air. Or you can also check out Learn how to design Foiled Planner stickers using the meat in cricket. So for your class project, you will create a one page sticker set featuring functional digital planner stickers. You will learn how to create your own digital planner stickers and affinity designer for the iPad app, and we will start with the basics of understanding the tool bars and the functions and affinity designer within the iPad version workspace. Then we'll start to build out the actual digital stinker set. Your final project will include creating your one page digital sticker set exporting them into a PNG file set and then optimizing and adding them to your sticker book template and good notes. Feel free to share your final project in the Class Project gallery. You can share either a snapshot screenshot of your final P and G. You can share the actual file and a link within it if you choose as well. Whatever you feel comfortable with to share what you're working out, I'd be happy to offer some feedback. This class is geared towards beginners. You don't need any prior experience using the affinity designer software within the iPad app, as I will be going over all the basics to help you get comfortable using the software. Some very basic technical abilities will be needed as I will be showing you step by step, how to use the app on your iPad on how to build your sticker set on the iPad. So just having a basic understanding of your iPad and how to access the apse and things like that will be helpful. But overall, it's a very, very basic course that I'm gonna be walking you step by step through. I'm excited to create this project with you. Let's get started
4. Sticker Types: way before we jump into actually rating in the Infinity designer app space. I want to go over sticker types, so we're gonna be talking about functional versus creative first in the real world, these concepts apply, but we also buy them in the digital note, taking digital sticker world as well. So functional stickers are typically no frills, straightforward, and they're meant to keep track of dates, keep track of events, and they just help organize life in general. Often there is a lack of dick or to them. They're very functional looking. But I think within the creative space that we're working in, you have the ability to actually add color and make them fund. But overall, functional stickers are meant to be efficient. When we're looking at creative type stickers, they're very visually pleasing. They help to track and celebrate memorable moments. It's all about organization, but with aesthetics, but can be meditative when you're creating planner spreads and things like that with these types of stickers. But it can be more time consuming because often you're tryingto create a really pretty spread or something very focused in terms of the style and design that you're going for, and creative stickers also have more of us scrapbooking flair. They just add a bit of creativity to whatever it is that you're working on. Now I want to talk about Died. Cut first kiss cut. Well, we're not making actual physical stickers specifically in this class. I do have a bonus section at the end of this course that's gonna take you through How to export your files is a PNG file that can be cut with a cricket. Typically, when you're making your own stickers, you have the option of either creating a die cut or a kiss cut. Die cut stickers are when you cut the entire sticker out of the sticker paper to be a customs shape that you've designed for the custom stickers that you wish to create. So it's not something that you peel off like from a whole sheet, but it's basically this digger Backing is gonna come completely off, but it's in that specific shape that you've created. Kiss cuts, on the other hand, are light surface cuts on stickers. Um, within that sicker paper kiss cuts do not cut the entire backing material, which is what allows the kiss cut stickers actually peel out of the sheet. Then finally, I want us to talk about pre cropped and optimized. When it comes to the digital stick or world digital stickers that are put, Crop just means that they've been exported as a PNG file without a white background. The hard work is done for you, and you don't have to crop down the image files on do. You don't have to worry about that white background at all when you're placing these digital stickers onto your planners, your digital planners, your notes, your notes and your note taking app now I want to look at optimized files. I optimize my fouls for all of the sticker SATs, digital sticker sets, digital note taking planners and things like that that I create, optimize them for my customers. Basically, what this means is that the PNG files have been placed into a file using the note taking app that you use for that you sell with. In my case, it's good notes and then exported as a file that can be opened in that specific note. Taking out so again this just allows for ease of use makes life a lot easier especially if you have a sticker pack that has, like 600 digital stickers individually, pulling those over into the APP can be incredibly time consuming. And I just like Teoh, you know, create added value by doing that for the potential buyer of the potential client, and it just makes things so much easier to use, and I think that's an added benefit of customer service.
5. The Basics of Affinity Designer Part 1: Okay, so let's start by getting into the affinity designer iPad app. So, typically, you need to make sure you download the app from your APP store onto your iPad. And this little blue icon is what it will look like once it downloads onto your system. So I'm just gonna click on it to open it up, and once it opens, it will go through like the main system. And once you open up the app, it will take you to your project gallery. So I've had this for a while. I work on it quite often, so I have a ton of projects here. What we're going to do, though, is we're gonna set up ah, file for a project. So once you're in the affinity designer app, um, in the upper left hand side, you'll see the affinity designer product name. And then on the right hand side, you'll see these three little icons, a plus, a question mark and kind of like a sprocket icon. If you hit that, plus, it will take you to your new documents set up so you can create a new document. You can create a new document from the clipboard from a template, you could open something from the cloud you could import from photos and things like that. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna set up a new document, But before we do that, I want to highlight these other two items up in the right hand side. So if we click on the question mark, it's going to take us to the affinity designer app help system. So if there's tons of different instructions and tutorial options within the help icon, this is a great little area that answers a lot of questions that you might have is you're working through projects. Or maybe you can't find something specific within your interface. This is where you can learn more about how to do those things or how to find those things. And then if you hit the X little icon, it will take you out of there on then. The little sprocket is basically your preferences and your settings, so this allows you to adjust things like your interface. If you want it to, um, adjust the like if you wanted, have it as a left hand mode, if you're a left handed person or turn it off. If you use your right hand, you can adjust your color presets. You can adjust the different tools that you have. You can adjust your pressure sensitivity with your pencil. You can pull in fonts you can add in front from the cloud. You can adjust sure cuts and different tap functions in order to apply those shortcuts here . But for the most part, I like to keep all of this very much the same. I don't touch it too much when you want to exit out here. Just hit done on then we're gonna do is we're gonna hit new document and we're gonna set up a file. So when we're looking at designing stickers for you, son and iPad, they don't need to be print quality. You don't necessarily need something to be 300 tp I because you're not printing them there for use in a Web type interface. So I would suggest at, ah, that minimum 72 dp high for your file settings. My range is usually 100 and 50 to 300 I do that because I often end up using my digital sticker designs as physical stickers as well and I print the mountain Seldom in my shop so really depends on what your needs and uses are. And also keep in mind how big you make your stickers too. So sometimes people might run into problems at the beginning. Ah, that have to do with their stickers being blurry or pixelated when they are using them in good notes. And that could be because they're designing them much too small them They're trying to increase them. So I always suggest working bigger cause you could always size down versus workings Fallar . So what we're going to do today is just set up a regular 8.5 by 11 file. So we're gonna click on our dimensions over here, and we're going to select our with and we're gonna change them from points two inches and are with is going to be 8.5 and hit OK, and then our height we're gonna change at two inches as well, and we're gonna do 11 and then hit. Okay, We want to change our items from points two inches just so that we know what we're working with. So it's easier to see your document. You can keep it as a device document. Everything else is fine. I would suggest keeping it at RGB 16. So you have higher quality of colors, Um and then change your DP. I like I said, depending on what your needs are, I would suggest at least 100 and 50 dp I So you won't run into any picks, elation issues, but for me, I'm gonna go up to 300 cause I potentially going to print these out and make them into physical stickers. But if you're not going to, then you could use them at 150 dp I or even 72 d p. I. Just to keep size limitations within what you need them to be for a Web or for like, a digital product. I'm gonna change my orientation to portrait. And then I want to make sure I have a transparent background and I'm just gonna create an art board and then hit. Okay, I like to create art boards because I like to work in different elements. What's nice is within the art board. You could add if say, you're working in creating one sticker sat after you're done with this project you want to create something similar? Um, you don't necessarily have to edit what's on this art board. You can just go over to your menu functions and you can select art boards, and then you can add an art board and you'll have to that you're going to be working in. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create, too, by going into my menu function up in the upper left hand side. I'm going to scroll down to our boards and it's gonna give me this little pop up at the bottom. I'm gonna hit the plus, and it's gonna duplicate the exact same size of my art for to the right of it. So I'm gonna work on this one to kind of do some test pieces with you as we work through the menu functions. And then this one over here will be my final our board that we're gonna make stickers on. So the first thing we want to do is set up and get familiar with our work space. So you'll notice that there are menus all around your whole entire art board. On the right hand side, you have a menu on the left hand side. You Do you have a menu in the upper left hand corner, and then you have a menu at the bottom, and typically the menu at the bottom is kind of related to whatever icon you're selecting in the menu bars here or here. You'll be able to adjust and change them in this area right here at the bottom, so the first area will want to look at our these icons in the upper left hand corner of the mini bar right at the top. So if you click on the one little icon that looks like like a piece of paper with a corner folded over, it's the best way I can describe it. This is this is your document menu on before we get into that? What I really want to show cases that again, the interface with affinity designer. They try to make it turn key and a simple assed possible. If you click the little question mark at the bottom right hand corner, you'll notice that when you click on it, you get all of these little descriptions of what each menu or what each studio is for affinity. So up here, you'll have your document menu. You'll have your edit menu. You have your designer menu, your pixel and your export. We'll talk about those later on in the course, but those will be very important. And on the right hand side you'll have your studio options. And on the left hand side you'll have all of your tools. Um, and you also are able to de select. You can adjust snapping, and you can delete items in this lower left hand corner. So if you ever wondering where something is that I'm mentioning by name, just hit that little question mark menu or question Mark icon, and it'll pop up all of the menu names here. It's really, really simple and easy to use. So first things first. Let's go through the document menu. Click on this. This is where you'll able to resize your document. You can export your files. You can save a copy to export. A template on what's really nice is you could export something from affinity designer on your I can and then work on it in your in your actual desktop version. Below that, you can place images, so let's click on that really quick. What's nice is that you could import from your cloud or you can import from photo. So if I click on a photo on the photos, I can actually import a photo. One of my most recent photos, and then all you have to do is drag with your pen to place it. It's really simple, really easy to use on. Then you can click on the little move tool and move it around where, if you want. And if you don't want that on your dust, or if you don't want that on your art board, all you have to do is click on that little trash bin in the lower left hand side, and it will delete it. So going back to that document menu, you could also again like we did earlier. You can create new art boards if you click on our board. Ah, gun. You'll get that little pop up at the bottom. You can change the size and the selection. I'm just gonna keep it documents. So, basically, whatever my documents sizes, that's what the art board will be and then hit plus, and it will insert another our board for me to the right of my original to. And if you don't want that art board, all you have to do is go into your layers on. Then you can select it and then hit the little trash I can, and it will delete it for you. So let's go through a few more things. You can turn on your grid system if you want, and you need things to be really like, aligned very specifically and perfectly concern on your grid system. Here you can add greater guides, and you can click on show guides. You can add guides. You can delete them. You can add vertical or horizontal guides, and again you can delete them. And now let's move over to the next option, which is our edit menu. We're gonna move over tour at menu. It's the three little dots in the circle. Click on that, and this is where you'll find all of your options. Minds are kind of great out because I don't have anything on my my art bird right now, but this is where you can copy paste duplicate. You can add or subtract or intersect shapes and things like that, which we will be working within a bit. You can also select all you can convert items to curves and yeah, so this is this menu will be worked with a lot when it comes to editing or shapes or copying items so that we don't have to remake those specific items and shapes as well. So this is a really, really, really helpful area that will be working with. If you ever notice that your menus kind of like pop out or disappear, you may have accidentally clicked the hide you Lie, which is hide user interface. It's that little square with the two right angles inside of it in the upper right hand corner. If you click on that, it will hide your entire your face. If you click on it again, it will bring it back into view. So to the right of our edit menu, you will get our, um, personas. So basically, when you're working in affinity, you're working within specific persona. So there there's the designer persona, which is a factor based software. There's also you can change it to a pixel persona, which is very similar to what, um, like something like affinity photo, which is similar to Photoshopped might be that interfaces raster based options on then the export persona, which allows us to export our items in our images with inner art boards. A specific file. So PNG's J pegs and things like that. So right now we're currently in our designer persona, so we'll be working with factor tools here. But if we clicked on the item to the right of it, this is our pixel persona, and it allows us to, um, utilize pixel based pools here on. Then our export persona will allow us to expert will be working with this at the end of our project. Remember slicing our slicing and exporting those slices of our file to PNG's for use in the other programs. Let's go back to our designer persona, bit clicking on it. And now let's get used to some of the tools. So on the left hand side is our tool bar. On the right hand side is our studio bar, so we're gonna look at the toolbar first. So when we look at this toolbar and have tons of little different options of things that will be working with, but specifically we are going to mainly work with the move tool. The No. 21 point transform tool will probably be using our vector brush tool today are pen tool, and then we'll be using our shape in our text tool and our color picker tool. So let's look at some of these. So if we click on Started the shape tool, our rectangle tool right now it's the little icon right above the text tool, which looks like a little letter A. And again, if you need to just click on that question mark, and it will show you the names of everything. So we're gonna click on our shape tool, and we're just going to make a shape. So right now, if you click and you hold on it or you hold the icon with your pen, it will pop up all the different shapes and all the different options within that tool. So sometimes you might just click on it, and it's just one item, but you can actually change it. So let's scroll down to the heart shape, and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our stylist or your EpiPen your apple pencil, and we're just gonna click on our art board and drag, and it's gonna create our first shape so you can make stickers. It'll stickers a simple as something like this, just creating shapes with the shape makers. Who'll and then you could add text on top of them, which we will be doing something like that today. Um, once you've created your shape, what's nice is that there's different options. So down here for the circle shaped tool, you can change it to a doughnut, or you can undo by clicking your screen with two fingers. You can change it to a pie, and then you can adjust. Um, you can adjust that pie, and you can basically pull in those little red dots to adjust the overall shape, so that was originally a pie shaped. But if you take that little note and then you drag it in using your pen, it will create kind of like a segment shape. So same thing with this, you can adjust the curve of your heart by bringing that note in. If you go back to your shaped tool again, you can change it from the lips tool. You can change it toe a star and Then again, just take your pen and drag it onto your art board. Um, what's nice with this is you can adjust the angle of your stars well, she could make it really thin or make it into a Pentagon type shape. And you could also make the points shorter, taller, bigger, softer rounder. Create more like, UH, flower shape or an ashtray types shape We can go back with. Select one more shape that we can work with. You can create like a call out bubble. There's tons of shapes. You're ready. It's sort of like about this. You don't necessarily have to use the pencil to make some of these complex shapes because they're already included in the software, which just makes life easier. Um, if we click on that little white arrow, that's our move tool. So if we click on the shape, we can move all of our shapes. So keep in mind when you select your shape and you go to move it, um, trying not to pull from your corners because that's that's basically going to resize and adjust your shape. Try to move your shapes from the center. That way, you don't have to worry about your shapes, being resized or, um, changed in any way and for something like this really go. Where's the center? Just go literally to the center off your frame box, and then you can move it around. So this is the move tool. If we click on our no tool and we double click into our shape, we should be able to again adjust the nodes with end to the nodes or those little red icon like little red dots that allow us to adjust the overall look and feel of a shape. So let's take our move tool and move everything and lining up to the top of our page. Okay, so we made some shapes. Now let's go into some of these other tools that we will likely be using today. Let's select the vector brush tool. I really love this tool. It allows you to basically draw in affinity designer but using vectors. So if you click on the vector brush tour on, then go to your right hand side your studio bar. What you'll notice is that you're able to change the colors. You're able to change your stroke style here on your able to change the type of brush, so there's tons of different options in your studio on the right hand side. So let's click on that little brush icon, and we're gonna change our brush to something that's a little bit more traditional feeling . So there's tons of different options. If you click on the brush is like the names you'll see acrylics at first, but if you click on it, you'll see all the different options. There's pencils, pens, oils, watercolors, dry media engraving, washes, inks, markers, pencils and you can keep going down on. Do you see all of these different options? I'm just gonna select. I'm gonna keep acrylics, and then I'm gonna select something that looks a little bit more textured. So, um, if you scroll down to acrylic texture, acrylic too glazing and I'm gonna keep my color black just so that it's easy to see on the screen here and then a adjust the size by clicking on the little stroke icon. And then I'm taking my apple pencil and changing the with and bringing it to the right that's gonna increase the size to the left is going to decrease. I'm just going to bring it up to about actually a brilliant too 35 just so that you can see . And then all you're gonna do to basically right on your art board is take your apple pencil , basically like you would do with a pen and paper kind of doodle on top. And you get to see this lovely league textured element. You can resize it, you can get rid of it. If you want it even bigger. We can go back to the stroke and increase it even more and adjust the size so that you can see what it really looks like. And we're gonna be using this street some artistic elements within, like a washing strip on this set of stickers that we're gonna be making today. So this is a really fun option to you. So to get rid of these again, you could just go to your move tool, um, and so lack them and then hit a little trash icon in the lower left hand side and it will get rid of those elements. Or you could just keep him so that you can get to see what we're working with. The next item that will be working with is the pen tool. So let's click on the pentacle. It's on the left hand toolbar. It's 1234567 down. It's redder. Neither brush tool A gun. If you need to look up with these, are click that little question mark, and the pencil allows you to create factor shape. So basically with points. If you click on your art board and then you just keep clicking and you can close off your shape, it'll create a A shape for you, and you can actually fill it with color, which is really nice. You could also utilize copy and paste function, so it's a you want it to be the exact shape, and you want to create more than one of them. If we go up to our at it toolbar, we can select duplicate, and it will duplicate it for us. We can also intersect shapes, which is really nice. I'm gonna change the color of this second shape that I duplicated, and I'm going to rotate it by using by clicking on my move tool. I'm gonna select that shape and then you'll notice that there's like a little rotation element right at the top of your shape. If you click on that, it'll allow you to rotate your shape. So I'm gonna rotate it a bit at I'm going to change the color just so that we can see how this element works. And we're going to use the geometry function to add and subtract from a shape. So we're gonna change the color from black and change it to blue. Gonna make sure the inside as well as the stroke are both blue, so you can see it better. And then I'm gonna move it so that it's right on top of that original shape. And then I'm gonna take my apple pencil, and I'm gonna select both elements by clicking the first holding my finger down and clicking the second on. Both of them will be selected together on. Then we're gonna go up to the edit functions of that three, that little circle with the three dots and then we're gonna go down to geometry and we're going to select, subtract, and it's gonna subtract that corner shape that we overlapped from that original shape and it's going to give us this new shape. I think this is a really great function that allows you to work with really intricate shapes. So I'm gonna take two fingers to click on my A screen and undo. I'm gonna click twice and it's gonna undo that. And then I'm also gonna know I'm gonna add these elements together so that I can show you how it emerges Thumb as well. So go back up to the circle with the three dots and we're gonna go down to G comical, make sure both of the elements are selected. I'm not. We're gonna go to our at a toolbar and then we're gonna go down to geometry and we're gonna select add and it basically merges those two shapes together. So this is a function that I like to use. It makes work a bit easier when I'm working with vector shapes. We're also gonna be utilizing the busier curves with the pen troll as well. So I want to show you quickly how you can work with that as well as your curves air basically creating curves with these straight lines. So when we're working with Dr Shapes, what's nice is that you can adjust your ad. It motor Your pun mode so we can do is we can change the mode from line to pen too smart. And it's gonna know that we are looking to try and create a curve. So I'm gonna select my no tool after I've created those that little like triangular shape. And I am going to change my options Too smart on. Then I'm gonna use these little handles to adjust the curves that I'm creating just so that you can see I'm just gonna just the with So we'll use this if you've ever seen like, um, like the paperclips style digital stickers, things like that. That's typically they're using busier curves to create that that rounded shape. So I'm gonna do this one more time. We can move this out of the way. So elect our pen tool, gonna create kind of like a triangle shapes. All right, so we're gonna select our pen tool, gonna change our mode from pen to smart so that it knows we're creating curves. We're gonna start creating our shape, so select a no tool once you got the shape that you want and then you can adjust those curves based on your needs. It makes it really simple and easy to dio. So we'll be using these to create kind of like a little paper clip icon later. So remember to delete things just select on hit the trash can. All right. For the last two elements, I want to look at our type tool and our color picker. So what we'll do first is we're gonna create our frame for text. So if you hit our text, it just creates like, a letter, and you're able to update it as you need, and you can type a word can change the font the size so you'll get this pop up along with your keyboard so you could change the size of your fun. I'm just gonna change to 48 for now. And then I'm gonna write the word Hello. And what's nice is that you can select everything with your pen and you can zoom in as well . If you ever need to zoom in or zoom out from your screen, we can zoom in by taking your fingers, holding them on the screen and dragging out to zoom in and then drag in to them out. So I'm gonna add it this text here by double clicking it with my pen. I'm that I can change the font type to whatever I'd like it to be. And then depending on If you're font has different options, you can change it from regular to medium to italic toe. Bold things like that will be using this quite a bit to add text to some of our shapes. You can also adjust the alignment if you want left the line centered, right? Aligned things like that on, then, to get out of this, all you have to do is click your little keyboard icon, and it'll drive you out of that option if we select the frame like the text frame tool that allows you to create an actual frame for the amount of tax that you want to include. So if we click on the frame, text tool will create the frame, and then whatever we put in there has to fit in there and we can resize and a justice needed. So I'm gonna change our fund by clicking on the Are gonna change our size by clicking on the size option, change it to 48 and then I'm gonna change the tax too. Have a near next condensed and you may or may not have some of these on your iPad. It just depends on what you have loaded. But for now, just for the sake of working in this, I'm just gonna choose something that I think everyone will be able to use. Um And then I'm gonna write the word hello again, and then I'm gonna select it all. I'm gonna hit bold, and then I'm gonna resize my frame by dragging it in and dragging it up. And you can actually resize the word in general once you've created it without even having to add it the text by taking the corner option of your frame and dragging it out or dragging it in and it'll stay in proportion, which is really nice. Same thing with this dragged from the corner, and it will resize it for you. And then you couldn't move it. And then the next and final item that I want to look at in our toolbar is our color picker . It allows you to basically pick colors and apply them to items. So say I want the hello to be the same color as that blue curve that we created. I'm just going to select Hello, first with my move tool. And then I'm in a click on my color picker tool on. Then I am going to select the item and we're gonna hold it down. You see, this little pop up with the blue comes in and it automatically adds it to our to our color swatches. So then we can go back through and we can select the hello, and we can recover it using our most recent swatches on. Then it'll give you the exact color that we had originally selected. Now that we looked at all of our tools, I want to start getting a bit more into our studio.
6. The Basics of Affinity Designer Part 2: way have a better understanding of our tool options and our menu options. Let's look at our studio options. So on the right hand side will have all of the different studio elements that allow us to kind of manipulate and work with the three elements that we've created. So we've kind of already looked at some of them, specifically the brush studio when we were adjusting this little stroke that we create with that brush tool underneath that there. Two key here is that will be looking at our layer studio and our facts studio because us, that's what's gonna allow us to add some facts like shadows, ingredients and things like that. But first, let's look at the layer studio. Basically, everything that we're working with is on specific art boards. As we've created and specific layers. We can merge layers as we see here. Everything's kind of merged on this art birth, but when we click on that little down arrow releases everything and you compete, pick each individual element by selecting it. You can also group elements that are meant to be together. So let's say, for example, if we wanted at this hello to this little talking box or talking bubble. We can resize it and then we can move it so that it fits within the little talking bubble. But we wanted to move the element together. When I select the bubble, it's going to just move the bubble. And if I don't wanna have to, like, select Botham at the same time every single time, what's nice is that we can group them together and we can do that within the layers panel so we can go to our layers panel over here in earlier studio, and then we can select that Hello and that Carla Ellipse. So what we can do is I can hold this down with my friend and move it down towards that shape so that they're together on. Then you'll know that each layer is selected cause it kind of grazed it out a bit on then. So we're gonna select the hello first, and then we're gonna take our apple pencil and we're going to select the lip snacks by just dragging over it, and then you'll see both of them are great out and then on your screen, you'll see that both of them are selected so now that they're both selected, what we can do is we can click this little I come That kind of looks like a puzzle piece. So once we select it, it's gonna group those two objects together, and then we can move them around freely together without each of them moving individually. We can also add it the layer individually. So if we click on it and highlight it So we're gonna select the donut option and we click on earlier options. We can adjust the opacity of different layers. We can lock layers. We can also adjust, like the color hue saturation. Here we can, um, multiply items here is Well, it's all the kind of stuff that you might seem something like Photo shop. You have options here to do the same now that we've gone through our layers function, let's look at another option within our studio function. So the other studio that will be working with quite a bit today is the effects studio. This is where you can add things like and bossing does employer and drop shadows. So the first thing I want to do is create a drop shadow. So I've kind of doomed into that little flower icon be created. I'm going to select it with my move tool and that I am going to turn on the outer shadow by turning the function on by clicking on that little white circle eso it's gonna go to the right and turned blue. That's how you know you're function is activated on that I'm gonna so lacked outer shadow Like I'm click on the word so that it pops up our actual effects functions at the very bottom of the screen so you can adjust the type of blend mode. I'm gonna keep it on multiply, and I'm gonna keep the capacity at 50%. But then I'm gonna just the radius, the offset and the intensity. So this basically creates a shadow that is kind of off centered on that it looks a little bit blurry and feels a little bit more realistic. You can click on it and you're gonna pop up, and you can increase by increments here by adding by adding actual numbers. Or you can just click on the radius and then drag your pen to the right or to the left and you'll see just like a slight shadow will search up here. Um, when you're dragging it to the right, and then I would do the same thing for the offset. I'm just going to click on it, and I'm gonna drag my pen to the right of it and you'll start to see it kind of offset just a little bit more than the intensity is going to be, How dark it ISS. So I'm just gonna click on it with my pen and then just drag it to the right just so that it's a little bit more intense and it creates this nice little like three. The effect. All right, The next thing I want to look at here to kind of add some more of that three d effect element into this is our bubble in in Boston. I'm gonna select the heart now, so I'm just gonna take my move, tool, click on the heart I'm. Then I'm going to go to my effects studio, and I'm gonna turn on the bubble on him, boss. And then I'm gonna click on Bubble in Boston that the actual function edit functions pop up and I'm gonna just the radius and adapt and I'm in a soft in it. You can also change the type. I'm gonna keep it so that it's more like a pillow. So to change the type, you just click on type and you'll have are all of your little options pop up here? Or you could just hit the little writer left arrows. I'm gonna go with pillow and then I'm adjust my radius a bit and then I'm gonna change my depth when you go to the right, just like with the other. With the shadow of facts, you can click on your your circle, Teoh change the percentages and the amounts. And if you go to the right, it's gonna increase it. If you go to the left, it's gonna decrease it. So I just want this to feel like slightly, slightly three D And then I'm gonna soft in it a bit. And then when you zoom in, you kind of see it gives us this little like three d of fact to this shape. You can also change the azimuth and elevation, and it kind of adds a bit of, um, height, everything and again, it just creates a space the like three D of fact here shape that you can add two different items just to make them feel a little bit more lifelike on your page. So those are the two options that I think I use the most and this type of work on affinity designer. When I'm creating these like digital sticker sets, you can use outer glow and inter clothes kind of create like a neon effect with brighter colors. I'm so say, for example, we want to add that, like, neon effect to the text. We can select the text. I'm gonna get out of this tool or I'm gonna close the effects studio. I'm gonna select the text. I'm gonna change the color of it from black to that blue. And then I'm gonna go back into the effects studio and I'm gonna turn on outer glow, and then I'm just select outer glow so that I get the options to at it. So I'm gonna change it from screen too soft light on that I'm gonna change my radius on my intensity And I'm change the color from white to something similar to that blue that I've that I'm using here. And you can kind of get this bit of ah, of a blow. I mean, it's not perfect. I want to do two different colors just so that you can see it. But you can adjust the radius for how far out that glow is gonna be. You can address the intensity for how dark it iss or how light it ISS. And then you can select the color and change the color, and then you can also change the blood mode. So if you do like when you're light, it's going to change how it looks. If you do vivid light, it's gonna change how it looks. If you still like multiply, its gonna change as well. So this is just a fun option to kind of add different elements and styles to what you're doing. So we've went through all the elements that will be working with specific the tools and the studios like the layers. Enough facts functions. And now we can get into actually building the sticker set
7. Building Your Sticker Set Part 1: Okay, So before we jump into actually designing our set of stickers, I wanted to go through some inspiration. I've been actually penned these on a Pinterest board for you and include them in ah, file under the class resources. But when we look at stickers, we typically look at two different types. There's the more creative type. And then there's a functional tape. Well, we're going to be designing today is the more functional type. When we look at digital functional stickers, we're looking at stickers with a purpose like tracking habit trackers, things to track appointments, thinks to trap heydays things like that. That's not to say that the creative types stickers are any better any worse that just they serve a different purpose. So when we're looking at functional stickers, things like appointment trackers are really popular on a little monthly calendars that look at on the entire year have it. Trackers are really popular as well, so this is just one example. So this is a combo both creative and functional, so we've got little like no paper pieces, post it notes, kind of looking things. Appointment trackers. We've got some little creative bits and pieces with, like, paperclips, location trackers, reminders spilled do trackers on. Then. Over here we have some more of the fun, creative like tabs and check marks, and to do lists on some fun washes that I created with, um, the paint brush tool. So the there's some great combos, and then I wanted to pull some other kind of inspiration from physical packs that you might see in the industry. So these air just from my happy Planner sticker sets you can actually create digital stickers that look similar to this. Things that are important. Um, just little lake windows pieces for your spreads. Thes air literally just shapes. So these air metallic stickers on their just shapes to kind of like call out important things again shaped with text and then some have, like, patterns in them as well. These are just some examples of flags, and then these air examples of seasonal inspired ones to know we're going to do is we are going to work on our board number two in our spread, and we're going to be creating our stickers here. If you want to keep us, you can keep this. I'm just gonna get rid of it. Um, by going into my layers function, I'm gonna still lack this art board, and then I'm just gonna toss it away. All right, so we'll be working on this nice, clean workspace. It would just be easier to see everything. And what we're gonna do is work on a combo of more like, functional slash creative stickers. Um, because we will be pulling in some of those washi tape concepts and will use the paint brush to kind of get those funds. Strokes will just be starting with basic shapes. So what I want to do is create some of these circle stickers with text inside of, Hm. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to our shape maker, tool. And remember, when you click on the rectangle, asshole, hold it down. A matter we're gonna go to the lips on, we're just gonna make a circle. You might notice because we had our stroke on earlier and we have the shape to doughnut. We may have to change this. So we'll do. Is we'll go to our color, we're gonna turn off the stroke, and then we're gonna create kind of like this Teal color, cause I'm thinking we'll play around with, like, Thiel's reds, yellows and greens. All right, we may need to turn off our radius for our circle so that we don't have, like, that donut shape. Okay, so now that we have this circle shape, I'm gonna zoom in a bit so that we can see what we're working with. One of the big things that I want you to keep in mind as you're creating this is the size of your stickers. It's always easier to scale them down that it is to scale them up. So in order to see how big these are, what I like to work between anywhere from 1/4 inch to like an inch and 1/2 in terms off sizes for these stickers. But we can see what this size is by clicking on the transform tool. And then it will show us our Hytner with. So this is just a bit over 1/2 a niche so we could make it bigger if we want I'm on. We can close this transform tool. So with that little square with like, a square or drink in the lower left hand side and you'll be able to see your dimensions up at the top. Um, and it will tell you exactly what your within your high tous and to keep everything in proportion. Make sure that little lack is lacked is closed. So now that we know the size of this and we're happy with this, I think it inches good we can do is just kind of drag it to the corner of our workspace just so that we have more space. And then what I want to create is kind of like a text that says something like Love this. So now that we've created her shape, we're gonna have to go to our text tool. So the garden you could either do frame textile or artistic text tool. Either way, you're gonna get text, and then we're gonna have to do is lower the size, so decrease the size. I'm gonna change this to about 14. That should work. And then I want to change the color of my text to something that's going to be easy to see . So I'm gonna change it toe white. You could do whatever you'd like, but I'm also going to remove the stroke and then I'm gonna change it toe weight, and then I'm gonna go back, and I'm going to type in the word love and this and I'm a do it in caps. And then what I'm gonna do is because I want this to be centered. I'm gonna highlight everything. And then I'm gonna go to my paragraph settings here, and I'm gonna select centered, and then I'm gonna take my move, tool. And I'm just gonna move this down. So it's kind of in the center of this circle. I'm not. I'm gonna add on another shape on top of this, I'm gonna add a heart. And then I want to make sure again that the color is white and that there's no stroke, and then I'm just gonna create that heart right underneath the text. And if you notice that it creates the same color as the original circle, just go back into your color tool in your color studio on, then select. Wait, and it will give you the shape that you're looking for. And then you can resize it. And remember, you can at the nodes, you can edit the overall shape. I think this works really nicely. And if you wanted a little bit bigger, you can increase the size as well. And then what I want to do is group all this together so that everything is all together in one place on that. If I ever needed to move this shape, it's not just gonna move the individual element. It's gonna move everything all together. So I'm gonna take my move, tool, and I'm just gonna drive from one corner over the shape. And, you know, everything is selected because there should be blue lines around everything, and then we're gonna go into our layers. Ah, studio. And then we're gonna hit the little puzzle looking icon and that will group everything together. And now we can move it altogether out. Want it's without moving each individual element. So what I want to do as create three more of these and what we're gonna do is we're just gonna select it, and we're gonna copy, and I'm gonna change the colors in each one as well. So what we'll do is we'll select it. We'll go up to our at it when you were going to select duplicate, and then we're just gonna move it over to the right. So now we have floor total. That's is humans. You can see this a bit better. You have four total. And they're all kind of like going up at an angle. We wanna have them all aligned perfectly. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my move tool again. I'm gonna select all four of these items on. Then we're gonna online them at the top. If you look at this when I zoom in, you'll see these aren't all aligned at the top. So they're kind of like staggering up towards the right. Now that we have all of them selected, we can go into our transform studio down towards the bottom, and then you can reorder items you can flip and rotate them. But we also have this function called alignment options, and these allow you to easily align shapes by the top, the bottom, the center, the vertical center in the horizontal center. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna line it vertically to the top by clicking on this little icon right here, and it's gonna align everything perfectly so that it's not going up at a funky angle, and it's much quicker than trying to align them by hand and eyeballing things. So this is a really great function that will be using a lot today. So now let's exit out of the alignment and transform studio and let's change the colors of each of these. So I'm gonna change this color of this circle too. Read. So to do that we're gonna have to do is we're gonna get to the actual circle by clicking. So when we click it once, it's gonna select everything. If we click it twice, it's going to select the biggest object in this case, the circle. And then we're gonna go into our color studio and we're gonna change it to like, a red color. And I want it more of like a pinky red than, like, more of a very red than a traditional deep, deep red. Because I wanted to feel kind of like, very summery. I wanted to be bright and Poppy. So we're gonna be working with bright colors. So that's that one. Now let's go to the next one. We're gonna turn it into kind of a yellow color to remember once we click once it selects everything. If we click twice with their pen, it will select that largest item, which is a circle. Now let's go into our color studio on Let's pick a nice yellow I wanted to feel more mustardy but bright And then the last calorie thing we're gonna use for our color story is green. So selector circle. And if you're having trouble with just tapping to select, you could always also just go into your layers. We grouped everything together So if you click on a group and you select a little drop down arrow it's going to show all the pieces of that group so that all you have to do is so black the actual circle My men will go into her color studio and will pick a green. I want this to be more of a soft kind of like lime pastel a green versus something that filled neon. And I think I like this color story. Think this will be really fun and bright for what we're gonna be working with today. The next element we're gonna create are some flags. Flags are great way to kind of like call something out in your planner. We're gonna combine some the shapes to create our first, like so I'm gonna do some of those around it flags first, and then we will do some more traditional flags. What kind of like the pointed ends and things like that. We will be working with the geometry function that we used before. So let's first start with our rectangle. I'm really gonna create a rectangle on our screen kind of eyeball it. But what you'll notice is, well, is that you'll get this little pop up here and that is actually telling you the width and height off your actual shape. So I think this is good. It's between my quarter inch to two inches on. What we're gonna dio is we're going to combine this rectangle with kind of like 1/2 circle . So let's go back to our shaped tool instead of the Ellipse tool. We're gonna do a pie tool cause that's that'll allow us to create segments so we'll create a pie and we're going to We're going to use the nodes and we're going to make it so that it creates 1/2 pie, so usually it'll create like 3/4 of a prime. And if you click on that little red natural here and you bring it down to the left, it'll adjust that angle and then you can read all the way down to create 1/2 pie. And then we're gonna use our rotate function right here, and we're going to rotate it 90 degrees to the left. We had also adjust here in the bottom functions, but it's just easier to kind of like work with it by hand. So once you've created that, we can zoom out and we can piece these two together. So take this item and we just want to make sure that it is the exact same size on that. The angle is exactly at 90 degrees. So what we'll do is we're gonna resize this and we're gonna bring this down so that it meets the edge off the rectangle. And then we're gonna zoom in a bit so that we can see exactly that. It's lining up. So now you can zoom out and we can see that everything's all together and it's all aligned to. Then we'll take our move tool. I'm going to select both of these shapes And what we're going to do also is I'm gonna just the colors on this, just so that we can see just like some sort of delineation between the shapes. It could also just group the elements as well, and we can go weaken, select them both, go into our layers panel and then select our group function and it'll create a little group of these elements. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna rotate thes 90 degrees so that it is up and up and down on and then write a copy of this and we are going to duplicate this three more times, and then we're just gonna create color combinations based on the color story that we have. So we'll go into our edit menu. I'm not gonna hit. We're gonna select it, going to edit menu select duplicate, and then we're just gonna move that duplicated item, gonna duplicated again. We're gonna move it to the right, we're gonna duplicated again, and then we're gonna move to the right once more, and then we're gonna do that process one more time, and then we can go in and we can manually adjust these colors as well. So we can go and select that blew that we worked with And then we can go in and so lark that yellow on we can go in and select the red as well. And then we can go and adjust the tap areas as well and change the colors if we prefer. So we'll go into the blue and red one. I'm going to select the half circle and I'm gonna change it to yellow. I'm that I'm gonna go into the green and just keep it bread. And then what's nice too is that we could add some additional little elements to this to we can go into our shaped tool. We can use the cloud we can use the hearts, the cross it moon, whatever you want to something to kind of like add some design elements to this. So I'm gonna select Cloud. I'm gonna make sure that the color I have in my color studio is white so that it will be visible one to be place it on top of these elements. So this is gonna give me kind of more like a traditional bubbly looking cloud. What's nice is you can change the number of bubbles to in the lower area here, Aziz. Well, if you go to the laugh, it's going to decrease the number of bubbles. If you go to the right, it's gonna increase it. I'm gonna keep it around eight. I'm not used. My move tool. And I'm gonna place this bubble like this cloud bubble right in the center of this area on . Then I'm gonna assume out I'm gonna select all of these elements and then I'm gonna group them together using the group function. I'm gonna then go into the shape tool, and I'm a select the heart shape. And I'm gonna do that exact same process for the next one. I'm using my move tool, the kind of center it within the shape. And then I'm gonna use my move to select everything. And then I'm going to my layers function. Click on that little puzzle piece and I'm in a group. Everything together. You can select whatever shape you want. There's tons of different options. I'm to use the cross at this time now that we have all of these little like flagged tab selected and created, what we're gonna do is we're gonna select them on and make sure that they're all aligned. So when the user move tool, drag it over all of these items, make sure everything is selected. And then we're gonna go into our transform studio over here on that, we're going to go into our alignment options and we're going toe align them vertically. Now we're gonna create some more traditional flags. We're gonna use the geometry tool, organics, that we're gonna be subtracting elements. So we're gonna go into our shaped tool and we're going to go into the rectangle tool. We're gonna create another rectangle and let's change the color to be something within our color scheme. And then we're gonna go into the shape to again and we're gonna keep We're going to create a triangle. I'm gonna change the color of the triangle just so that I can see what we're doing here. I want to change it to yellow for now. I'm just gonna create triangle and I'm gonna make it so that it is the with of the actual rectangle here. No, Line it up. What I'm gonna do is once I have haven't lined up. If you want the tail to be center or longer or shorter. You can adjust the height of the triangle. I think what I have right here is pretty good. So what I wanna do is them to select both of them with my move tool. And then I'm going to go up to my edit toolbar. I'm that I'm gonna go down to geometry and I'm in a select subtract, and it's going to subtract that shape out of my bigger shape, that triangle shape and it creates like this Nice flagship. So now, if you want, you can increase the size of this. You can rotate it. Whatever makes sense for you, I'm just gonna rotate it so that it's up and down. And it fits nicely with the rest of the tab flags that I have down here. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna duplicate this three more times so that I can adjust the color so it meets my color scheme. And now I'm gonna go back in and change the colors will select the shape, and then I'll just adjust the colors. I'm gonna select these flags, and then I'm gonna align them into my alignment function toolbar no line, um, up top gonna line them vertically and then I'm gonna still lack them. And I am going to copy them by duplicated thumb, and I'm going to drag them down. And I'm gonna add some text to them now as well, and I'm gonna rotate them as well. And then I'm gonna zoom in so we can see where didn't burn a select artistic text tool tap inside off the first flag, and I'm gonna add some just reminder tax like to do. And if you want to make it bigger, you can just double click to select or drag over the text to select it. And then you can adjust in your fund options. And then I'm just gonna copy that tax, duplicate it and just drag it to the next. And then I'm going to do the same thing to the other two, and then I'll change the tax now. So I change. Just want to say today, instead of to do the next one, I'll change it to save, remember? And if you notice the text kind of goes off the shape, you can just drag it in and over, and then the next one. I'll change it to love this. And then what I want to go back to do, um, is selected each of these and group them together. So it's like my move tool. Select both the text and the flag going to my layers function and group it and then repeat the process for the rest of these. No, I want to create just some docket of stickers that I can fill up this corner with just some parts. So hearts and stars is what I'm thinking. I'll do two hearts at the top of into stars at the bottom, so also have a heart shaped tool, and then I'll just drag the shape over to be the with that I wanted to change it to the color that I'd like get used my move tool to moving around. And then I'm gonna duplicate this in my menu and my edit menu duplicated. And then I'm just gonna drag it over to the right, and then I'm gonna re color it as well. And then I'm gonna go back to my shape tool, and I'm going to select the star, do the same thing, drag it to create the shape that I'm looking for. You can adjust the number of points as well. Here you can have a multi point star. You can have Ah, five point, whatever you'd like and then remember, you can also adjust the angle and then I'm going to duplicate this and I'm gonna drag it over, and I'm going to change the color for both of them so that they fit my color scheme and that kind of fills up. This space over here is Well, now I want to use this space down here to create some more like text box saying type stickers. And then the bottom will create some more of the functional stickers like the habit trackers, the appointment records, grid papers and things like that. So I think this space right here works really well for the size in the shapes that we're gonna work with nuts. What I want to do is create something similar to what we saw in these like physical packs, so you'll see these squares, but oftentimes you'll see stuff like tax owns half of them. So I'm thinking we'll do something like that. So to do that will go into our shaped tool select a rectangle. You just keep the color that it's in, as is We're going to zoom in a bit, you can see, and then I'm gonna create my rectangle, kind of like a window size that's the equivalent to four of those flags. And I'm gonna change the color to be that Teal and I'm gonna add some text on top of it. So I'm gonna go to my artistic text tool here. I'm gonna actually increase this to about 48 and we're going to say something like brand spanking New day and we're gonna combine two types of funds were gonna keep this kind of like San Serif Simple fast. And then we're gonna add in something like a script he fought with it. Knowing what I take to send, I'm noticing that the spot is a little too heavy, so I'm gonna go in and change it from bold to medium, and then I'm just gonna move it so that it goes right into the centre at the top, and then I'm gonna use my artistic text tool again, and I'm gonna change this from this avenue text Is something scripting feeling So I have something called beyond the mountains. And then I'm gonna keep the rest of it the same text that we had for the brand just so that you don't want to use more than two types of fonts were in creating something like this because it can get overwhelming. So I'd say stick to on. And really, when you're working with the script font, decide the word that you want staying out the most and have that be that script. So now I'm gonna duplicate the brand, and then I'm gonna change the size of it so that the word will fit. Then I'm gonna duplicate this again and then change it to say day. And if you wanna work with, like, all caps without having to keep pressing the chef button, you just hit your up arrow and double click it and you'll get this little like line underneath it. And that's how you know you're working with all caps, and then you can type without having to keep going back and forth, and then just click it again to turn it off. So now I have everything in here. What I want to do is play around with the placement off the text within this square, so kind of want it to be organic feeling, But I wanted to line up nicely as well. And I wanted to be centered, so I kind of like how this looks together. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna select all of the text on. Then I'm going to group that that way I can, but just its placement. And I feel like this feels a little plane, so I might work with some lines to add some Sal eyes elements in here. So I'm gonna take my pen tool. I'm gonna change the color in my color studio, and I'm gonna change it toe white, and then I'm gonna change it to a stroke. And then I'm gonna go into my stroke function, and I'm gonna adjust the with of it and bring it down just a bit. I still left in that little stroke looking icon underneath the color tool that your show could click on it. You bring it to the little laughed, it will decrease the stroke, bring it to the right. It'll increase it. So now that I have this, the color and the with of my strokes that I'm gonna actually create a stroke that goes above the taxed, Angulo the text. So I'm gonna click on the edge of the rectangle here, and then I'm going to click across. And if you notice that it's a little bit off of your edge, I don't know if you guys didn't see that on screen, but it actually goes off just a bit. Um, what we can do is we can change the cap style to be squared so we can adjust the cap so that it's not like this rounded curve. We can make it so that it's a square. And to do that, we'll click inner stroke box at the very bottom. It says advanced. Think on the advance. You're gonna change your cap from this rounded edge to a square edge and make sure you select that center so that the cap doesn't go beyond the point. So you also left that center cap on. Then we can double check the other side to make sure it looks okay. If it's too far end, we just drag it out to the to the edge here. And if you feel like that is a little too thick. Um, you can decrease you're with in your stroke here. I'm gonna bring it down to 5.2, and then I'm just going to duplicate this, and I'm gonna drag it to the bottom and then so that everything is aligned appropriately. I'm going to zoom in and just make sure everything goes to the edge. And then I'm gonna use my line functions to make sure everything is aligned to the left. So now I'm going to select all of these elements here, and then I'm gonna go into my transform tool, and I'm gonna go down to my alignment. I'm in a line horizontally to the left, and then I'm going to Seoul, lack that taxed and everything else. And I'm gonna go into my layers function, and I'm in a group at all using the group function. Now. I want to create kind of like a grid paper for us here. So we're gonna use the rectangle tool again. We're gonna go back into our color studio. We want to make sure that the stroke is turned off and that we have color fill. So let's remove our stroke. So to do that we'll click on the stroke. So, like that circle was kind of like the blue line through it. That means no Phil, no color. A man behind it is the actual color fill. So we just want to make sure that we still work that and then select a color. But I'm thinking as well create like a fun little piece of like graph paper. What we'll do is just as we did earlier, with the shape and the lines. We'll do the exact same kind of thing. Onley will make more of like a grid style. All right. And to make sure that we are making our grid as aligned as possible, we're gonna turn on the actual physical grid within our affinity designer program.
8. Building Your Sticker Set Part 2: to make this process a little bit easier for creating the grid. We're gonna actually turn on the grid function here in affinity Designer. So if you go up to our menu bar up top, we're gonna go to our document menu. I'm gonna scroll down to Grid, we'll click grid, and then this little pop up will show up. So what we want to do is we want to create a standard grid. You can adjust the spacings if you want the number of divisions, and then I'm just going to select the eyeball so that you could actually see the grid. And I don't know if you can see this up close, but if you zoom in a bit, you will be able to see the actual grid. Um, and then we'll use that to create the grids on our square here. So I'm gonna zoom in. I'm going Teoh, select my pen tool. I am going to go into my stroke tool, and I'm going to decrease the stroke to about 0.5 inches. And then I'm gonna hit, okay, and I'm gonna start creating my strokes. Make sure that the color of your show is, um something lighter than the color of your background. In this case, I'm going to select for my stroke color. That blue the teal blue. All right, I'm gonna close this studio, and then I'm gonna zoom in and start creating my marks from one edge to the other. And then what's nice is Aiken, just duplicate this across, so I'm gonna go into my attitude, all duplicate, and then I'm gonna drag it over, and then I'm just gonna keep duplicating and dragging. Once I've duplicated all of them, I'm going to still lack. Hm. And then I want to make sure everything is aligned vertically up top, so go into my transform tool, and then I'll go into my alignment options, and then I'm in align vertically at the top, and then I'm actually gonna group these so that they all stay together, and then I'm gonna do the exact same process going the other way. I was left all these now that I'm done duplicating them, and I'm going to align them to the left this time. So go into my transform studio, go into my alignment options on, then align horizontally to the left. And if I noticed anything is out of place like over here. I can just select all of these and then I could just drag them in a bit so that they will line right to the edge. And then I'll select everything and group it all together, go into my layers panel and then going to group, and it'll group the whole entire object. Now that we're done making the good paper, let's get started on making some of our trackers. So we'll do a Monday through Friday Habit tracker and we'll do a to do list and we'll do a work hours. So that'll be in this middle section right here and then the bottom section we're going to save to create some long washing strips. I'm gonna go back into my document menu, and I'm gonna turn off my grids just so that it's not hard to see. And then we're going to start with this tracker. So if we look at the original samples that I shared, ah, happy is really fun. Simple, easy to use trackers will design something similar to this with kind of like the rounded corners, um, the dates to track him and then the space for the specific cabin or thing that you're tracking. So let's go back into designer. And we are Instead of using the rectangle shaped tool, we're gonna use the rounded. We're going around our edges, so we'll go into a rectangle tool, and we're gonna make sure that our corner is rounded. You see this in your quarter, type in the bottom, Um, and then we're gonna create our shape, and then we're gonna go in and adjust the color as well. And remember, we don't want a stroke. We want to fill. So going to our swatches studio. So, Dr Phil, on that we want a select our corner type and change it from none to round on. Then what's nice is we can go into our curves here and adjust the actual roundness of this shape so will select our shape and will double click into the shape so that we get the adjusted little note options and we're gonna pull our corners out a bit so that they're not surrounded, but that we get just a slight around. So again we're gonna double click onto her shape and that in these corners you'll see little red dots and then you can drag them in or you can drag him out. And I'm just going to drag them out a bit so that they're just slightly rounded. I'm gonna do this whole process again and create a skinnier rectangle with similar corners . Except I'm going to change the color from red so white just so that will be able to see it and right on top of it. So we'll go back to our shape, create our shape here, change your corner type from none to round it on the double, click inside of her shape so that we get the little note options here, that little red dot and then we're gonna pull the corner out just a bit. I'm not. I'm going to realign this so that it's up a little bit higher. And then I'm gonna create seven squares on their me for the dates that will select over tangle tool again. Ameren will create a smaller one. I don't want it to take up too much face because underneath I'm gonna include letters for the days of the week. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, MT. W things like that. So once we've created our rectangle where option for the days. Now it will select it with our move tool, go into the edit menu on, then select duplicate, and then just move it over well duplicated again. We'll do this three more times so that we have seven total and then we're going to do is going to use our line function to make sure that they're evenly distributed and that they're lined up top. So I'm gonna select my move tool, highlight all of the squares, go into my transform studio. I'm gonna go into my alignment options and then I'm going to select a line vertically up top. And then I want to also align horizontally in between. So I'm gonna select that and that it should blind everything nicely. And then I'm going to select everything and group it all together. Go into my layer studio, select the little puzzle piece and group it altogether. Now what I want to do is add text to here so that we know we're tracking Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So I'll use my artistic text tool on. I'll draw. I'll create text underneath. I'm gonna change the text to the original Avenir next that we were using and I wanna change it from regular to Demi Bold and 13 point should be fine. And then I'm just gonna put the corresponding day under each backs. Then I just want to go through each one and kind of aligned them appropriately on. Then change the tax from, um to the corresponding day. Once I'm done adding the tax than realigning everything I'm going to sell, walked all of it again, and then I'm gonna once more going to my layers options, and then I'm gonna group them. That way we can move each of these elements in together versus individually. Okay, so we've made our habit tracker. Now we can make our work hours tracker so we'll use the rectangle tool once more. And what's nice is actually, we can reuse some of these elements to so I could select with this original habit tracker here, and I could just duplicate it on. Then I can break it down and adjust it to what I needed to be for the work hours tracker. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna delete the extra boxes and I'm gonna resize this rectangle here making sure I'm just re sizing the outside backs. And then I'm gonna go in and adjust the white section as well. And then I'll go in and add text. It's more, and then I'll change it to say work hours, and I'm gonna make it a bit smaller as well. So select all of the text, go into my font options. I'm gonna bring it down to 14 use my move tool, and bring it on top and center it. And then I'm gonna actually duplicate this text so that I can reuse it for the two that's gonna go inside of here so selected all and change the color from white to the red. And I'm just going to change it to two, and then I'll select all of these elements and then I'm going to group them together once more, So go into my layers function and group. But I have a habit checker. I have my work hours tracker. Now I want to create an appointment tracker, So I'm just going to duplicate that, have a tracker once more, bring it over here, and then I'm actually going to increase the size a bit, and then I'm gonna go in and delete the options that I don't need. So, like the text and these smaller boxes do that. I'm just double clicking on the element with my stylist and then going to the lower left hand quarter and selecting the trashcan, and it'll delete these off of my art board. So for this appointment tracker, I want to include details on who I'm meeting with when I'm meeting them and where I'm meeting them. So this box should be just a little bit bigger, and then I'm gonna decrease the size of the white box, and then I'm just going to duplicate that and then drag it down, duplicated again and drag it down. And then I'm gonna so lack these little elements, and then I'm gonna align them to the laughed, and then I want to distribute the with between each section vertically. So select this option here, and then I'm gonna go into my layers functions, and I'm gonna group them together. And then I'm gonna copy the work hours one. I'm gonna duplicate it and then drag it over here and then change the taxed to appointment , and then I just want to make sure everything's aligned in the center here. And I make sure these little elements are lined in the centre is Well, I'm that I'm gonna select everything here, and I'm going to group. Um, all right, so now that we have all of the habit trackers completed, now we can go down to this lower section, and I'm gonna have us create some fun washy strips. So what we're going to be working with again is just the rectangle shape tool. So we'll create three strips that have created one in the with and height that I like. I can just duplicate that and then change the colors manually afterwards. So I'm gonna go and aligned these right away just so that they're worried like them to be. And then I'm gonna change the color of the 2nd 1 by clicking on it, going into my swatches studio, selecting the red and then going in to the next one and then selecting the teal. So what we're gonna be working with is the brush tool, the paintbrush, the vector brush tool. So let's select that brush on. Then we're gonna go into our brush studio and we're gonna silt lacked a brush. That kind of gives us some fun like textured feeling a fact. So the acrylics are great for this. So is dry media. And I also think big washes air really good for this asses. Well, so I'm in a select, dry and deluded quash the first brush option in this. And then I'm going to increase the size just a bit too. About between anywhere between 30 and 50. Should be good. And then I'm going to change the color to be white so that we can see it. And we're just gonna do some organically shaped doodles on this strip here. And then I'm going to show you how to group them together so that it's embedded within this . So let's start with this first. So again, I'm just being organic with this doesn't have to be perfect. So once I've created those of facts that I'm gonna go into my layers palette or my layer studio, I'm going to select them. Remember, you click on your first option on, then drag your cell is over the next one to the right to select all of them together. On that I'm in a group thes And now they're group together. And what I'm gonna do next, in order for the shapes to not go off the edge, is like I wanted to be embedded within this green. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take that group. I'm gonna drag it and kind of like, place it inside of the layer so I'll do this one more time. So undo it. We've created are strips are our paint strokes and then we've group them together. We're going to go into earlier, and we're gonna drag this group and literally place it like inside off the green rectangle ear. And then what you'll see is that it basically kind of like houses and, um, crops it in. So sort of like what you might see masking work like in traditional raster based kind of files. It's kind of the same kind of thing. We're masking it so that it is within this shape until we'll do this again for the next two . So select our vector brush from then. Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect because we're gonna mask it within. Hey, once you've created your strokes, go back into your layer panel on. Then select your first curve and then go back through and select the next ones. So just take your stylist like the 1st 1 and then drag over the next, however many you have, and then we're gonna group them, and then we're gonna take that group and place it right on top of the red rectangle. All right, I will do this one last time with the last set for this blue one, go into our brush tool and then create the shapes that you like, And then we're going to select all of those brush strokes together, and we're gonna group, um, and then we're gonna drag that group and place it right on top of that till rectangle, and it'll crop it in. And then these are your washing strips. Now that we've made all the stickers, if you want to go back and add some three D effects and overall like shadows and things like that, now is the time to do so. So what we can do is we can just select each element. My men will go into our affect studio the right hand side, and then we can just add something like a really simple outer shadow. Teoh, give this a little bit more of a three D effects. So we'll click on outer shadow, turn that on, and then we'll click on the actual text of outer shuttle, give us or shadow options, and then we're gonna keep the blend mode multiply. We're gonna increase our rapacity to 60%. We're going to change our radius from zero, and we're gonna increase it just a bit. And then we're gonna change the offset just a bit so that it feels like it's more to the right and then are we're gonna increase our intensity just a tad so that it's about 7%. Miss gives us a nice, little like shadow. And then we can just keep applying the same options to the rest of the the elements that we might want with each of these other pieces. So you don't have to do this to all of them. Um, you can do it to some of them. Just depends on what your needs and wants are. I like to keep them sometimes flat feeling to just because it's easier toe. Look at some while I'm working in, um, you know within the technology, but it just depends on your needs. Are so again we can go into this rectangle piece of paper, weaken, turn on our outer shadow and then select the text. Outer shuttle on will give us our options. Keep the blood mode at multiply. Drag your stylists over to the right to increase your opacity. Click on your radius, drag your Silas to the right again to increase the radius, and then you might want to offset it just the bit. So click on Offset and then drag your silence to the right to increase the offset or to the left to decrease the offset on. Then you can click on intensity, and you can either type in how much. Or you could just drag your stylist to the right to increase how intense your your shadow. Well, look, this is the final sticker set. Now we've got a combination of like call out buttons, some great shapes, flags, reminder elements, some text elements and paper elements and some habit trackers, and we've created a set of washes using the paintbrush factor tool. So now the next step we're gonna jump into is actually how to export thes and prepare them for use in good notes
9. Exporting Your Stickers as PNG Slices: now that we're done with our stickers, what we want to do is export thes files as PNG's that are transparent without any type of white background. What's really great with affinity designers that it allows you to export elements as slices on this basically will export this entire shape without a background. So to do this, what we're gonna have to do is go into the export persona. Remember, we're talking about the personas at the very beginning of this class. So in your upper toolbar, you have your designer persona, your pixel persona, and we're gonna go to the last one, which is the export persona. So what we want to do is we want to select all of these pieces individually and then export them a slices. So what we'll do is we'll use our slice selection toe, which is the little arrow, and we're just gonna drag it over this whole entire board, and it's going to select every single element. What you want to make sure, though, is that all of your elements are grouped together. That's why, as we were working, I was grouping together elements because if elements are grouped together, it's gonna export those pieces off your element individually. So as we can tell, all of these elements are all grouped. There's nothing that looks out of place now that we've still lacked it. All of them. We're gonna make sure that all of our objects are going exported slices individually. So this shows will have to slow lack slice options. And that's basically that little circle with three dots. It'll show how many objects are selected. We want to make sure that it is a PNG dithered eight so that it's the highest quality and we're gonna select at three times. So that again is just higher quality. So we don't run into any issues with picks elation. When we are re sizing these elements in good notes, once you selected them all with your slice selection tool going to go into our layers tool on. What we're gonna do is we're gonna create a slice with all of these elements selected. So we want to make sure all the elements within our layers are all selected and highlighted amount. What will do is will select, create, slice on. Then we'll go back to our spices panel. You'll see all the slices are right here in our slices panel. So once we've created the slices, then we wanna check Mark each of these they're all selected on. Then we're going to hit export all, and they'll be exported into my selected folder. So we'll go into untitled folder and we'll see each of the elements every we've created as individual elements with the transparent background. Now that we see was exported, everything. They're all in here. Now that we're done, we can exit out of affinity designer, and we can begin pulling these elements into our files on grownups.
10. Loading to Goodnotes: now that we're done creating our stickers want to test them out in goodnight. So I'm gonna open up my good notes app. I'm gonna just keep whatever notebook I already have in here as my options so that we can just pull some of these elements. And so I'm gonna go to a blank page, and what I'm gonna utilize is the side by side feature that the iPad has. So I'm gonna double click my home button. If you have a newer model of an IPAD, you'll just pull it up from your bottom dock bar. But I'm in a double click my home button, and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna select my files icon and I'm a dragon and drop it right next to my good notes file. So when we exported our spices, we exported down to a file right on our system. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna find that file. So it's on my I've had I put mine in a no affinity designer under me within a file folder called Untitled. You can place yours wherever you want, but just make it so it's easy for you to find. Once I've arrived to my folder, I can then basically just drag and drop each of these elements into my notebooks here or my planner here on. Good note. So to do that, I just drag it, click it, drag and drop it. And what you'll see is that there's no white background you can resize easily. It looks really nice and clean, and it feels again very similar to what you might see in a traditional planner. But it's very simple and easy to just bring these over a side by side because you can just click on the element and drag it in, and then you can just resize it. Place them wherever you want. Pick on the element. Drag it in now. You should be able. Thio. Use your stickers in your good notes happened. Note ability. In any type of no taking after you may have, you can apply them to any digital planner that you might have already on and you can coordinate colors and styles. And things like that just makes it really simple and easy, and I love the fact that you can reuse them over and over again, and overall and makes planning a little bit more equal friendly. Okay, so that's it for this class. I hope you guys found this really interesting and fun. Thank you so much for joining along and creating digital stickers with me.
11. Bonus Lesson: Exporting for Cricut: Now that we finalized exporting our stickers as slices, I quickly wanted to do a little bonus tutorial. A lot of people like to take their Digeo stickers and turn them into actual physical stickers. So I wanted to show you a quick analog process. If you have a cricket or any type of cutting machine, the file that we're going to create will allow you to basically cut stickers out. So we're going to do is just export this final piece as a PNG, and I will take you through the steps of uploading it to cricket design space and getting the foul set up to print. So once we are in our sticker work area, we are going to export this as a PNG. So we're gonna go into our upper file menu, and we're going to still lacked export. Once we've selected export, the next pop up menu will come up. We want to change it to PNG. We want to make sure we have whole documents selected, and we can change the file name too physical cut. Everything else couldn't stay as it is. And then we are just going to hit OK, and we're gonna still left an area on our iPad where we want to save this file. And then I'm just gonna save it in our untitled folder that I created in my affinity designer folder. And then we're gonna select save. Once we've done that, it should export the file as a PNG. We can go check this in our file menu. Goto on my iPad select offended designer. And then what I saved it was the entitled folder. I'm going to select it, and then I should see my physical cup file loaded as a Panji in this. So I see it in there. So now we can go into cricket design space, and we can load it. So I'm using the cricket design space app on my iPad. Once you're signed and you'll come up onto your project gallery, what you are going to do is select canvas. So we're going to select upload in the lower mini bar, and then we're gonna select browse files, and then we're gonna go to the file folder where we've say that PNG. So I saved in my untitled folder. I'm gonna still like my physical cut file, and it will load it too. The designs base. So what you'll see is that cricket arm is only cutting whatever is in color because we exported. This is a PNG with a transparent background. You just want to check to make sure the cuts look fine. If there's anything that looks out of place, it can you erase to other remove tool. But since this is a PNG, it's not SPG fell. But since it is a Panji, you will really have to clean anything up because there's no white background and then you can just select next. And then you could refine your cut. Passive needed. These look great. I'm just gonna hit next, and then I'm gonna select print than cut, and then I'm gonna give it a name. Once I've done that, I'm gonna hit, done, and then it'll save it as a print. Then cut file now in order, she used this file. You are going to sum this to your printer from the design space and you're gonna cut it with your cricket were not going to go through that process. I do have a video that shows you how to do this. I'll share a link in the class description, and I have a little image pop up right now. That kind of highlights my class on how to create actual physical stickers using the cricket machine on an at home printer. I do this on procreate, but like I said, with this file, we can use a lot of the fouls that we create an affinity designer and export them. It's PNG's as well. So in order to get the file set up to cut in print, we're gonna so lacked our image and then we're gonna select insert on. Then it'll insert it into our work board. So the thing is, sometimes cricket design space resize is file, so you only have a certain with and height that you can work within s. So I like to size this down. You can keep the whole sheet the size of like an 8.5 by 11. If you want you. I usually don't need on that big, so I'll just size it down to about either four by six or five by seven. You can also put two of these fouls together next to each other and just resize them and wrote Take them If you want it and you could duplicate them. But if you do want him a little bit bigger than I'd suggest, just keeping them at a five by seven and cutting it as is, so in order to do that, you will then go to make it and cook. A design space will set up your foul still that it'll cut in print and you can see where the cut lines are there. Outlined in black, you don't need a mirror. Anything you can just hit continue, and then you can go through the process of actually sending your file to the printer and cutting it out with the cricket machine. And like I said, if you wanna go through that whole entire process of the cutting, then definitely check out my class. How to make planner stickers using a cricket machine and procreate. I take you through all the steps of the cutting process, and you don't have to necessarily have any artistic prowess to do that, just especially if you're using this file in particular
12. Final Thoughts: I do hope you found this course interesting and that you're more comfortable using the affinity designer I've had up on that you can create digital stickers that are inspiring to you and that worked for your needs. Thanks for learning with me today. If you want to learn more about me or check out any of my other products and classes, definitely make sure to visit my website at www dot Bella Sophia creative dot com. Thank you so much for joining along and creating digital stickers with me. I
Jenny Veguilla-Lezan, Latinx Designer & Illustrator
