Learn to Create Digital Stickers for Digital Planning in Affinity Designer 2 on your iPad

1. Course Introduction : Digital planning continues to grow in popularity. Apps like Good Notes, Zoo Notes, and Artful Agenda continue to capture the hearts of creatives. People often love the ease of use once you get through the initial learning curve of using a digital planner. People also absolutely love the idea of having an endless supply of digital stickers that you can reuse over and over again. Personally, I love having an endless supply of ideas to create digital stickers that I can use whenever I feel inspired. And that is what this month's class will be all about. Designing digital stickers on your ipad in affinity designer version two. Whether you want to create digital stickers for personal use or eventually to sell in a digital shop, making digital stickers doesn't have to be complicated and it's absolutely fun. Hi everyone. Welcome to class. I'm Jen Gilson and I'll be the one guiding you through this creative course. I am a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and educator based out of the Midwest In a run, Bella and Sophia Creative Studio. If you want to learn more about me, you can find me online at Bell Sophia Creative.com Also, check out my Youtube channel, The Creative Studio, where you will get a behind the scenes view of the work that I do as a creative freelancer. And find a huge library of free tutorials catered to those of you interested in things like graphic design, surface pattern design programs like affinity and procreate, as well as art and illustration. If this is your first foray into my classes relating to digital planning, I highly suggest you check out some of my previous classes. I have a variety within my course library that show you the basics of digital planning. One of my more recent courses dives into the process of creating your very own digital planner. Design a digital planner in the affinity publisher to ipad app. I'll make sure to leave it length in the course description. Also, if you're working in a different version of the affinity designer app, specifically version one or the desktop version, I have a couple of classes that will help you to do what we're doing in this very class. But in those versions I'll leave those linked as well. So aside from my work in graphic design and illustration, I really enjoy planning and designing stationery. As you saw in my How to Build a Digital Planner course, some of my top selling products are my digital planners and my digital stickers in my Etsy shop. One of my top courses is my how to design digital stickers with the affinity version, one ipad app, as well as the desktop version. And I wanted to do an update to this class. Sarah lease an update to all three of the affinity products. I wanted to take people through the sticker design process in the new version of the affinity designer app on their ipad. This is because the interfaces are a bit different. So this course will get you comfortable with the ipad version two of designer creating digital stickers for use in good notes or your other note taking apps is not nearly as hard as you think. I wanted to share some tips, my knowledge of the ipad app, and then help you build a digital sticker set that you can customize to your very own needs. These sticker sets give digital planning a bit of creativity and a nod to the real thing. The beauty about working in affinity designer is that you don't necessarily need to have too much artistic ability as we will be working with things like shapes and vector tools. But you can still definitely flex your art skills in the app if you choose to. And I can show you a few tips on how to do that. These are great to use for digital planning and scrapbooking and you can reuse them over and over again. What is this class about? In this class, you will learn how to create a digital sticker set and affinity designer version two for the ipad. This is an update to my prior class as I received a few messages and requests to do this class to highlight the differences in the ipad app for affinity designer version two and to explore the interface. I really enjoy using affinity designer on the ipad for working on projects on the go as well as for creating digital stickers. Because it really allows you to simply and quickly create precise shapes, align and space items, really easily, add vector effects to the shapes, and then export those images as slices to PNG files without a background very quickly. This basically allows you to prepare them for your digital note taking app and then apply them to pages without a white background. This course is a fantastic class to also get comfortable using affinity designer version two on your ipad as you're going through the whole basic process of creating in the program. And then you get a tangible project that you can use after you're done. The goal for this class is to highlight the differences in the interface of the ipad version as well as the updates. And then you'll see a little bit more about what's different than what you might find on the desktop version or on version one. What are the skills that you'll learn? You will learn how to create your own digital planner stickers in the Affinity designer version two app right on your ipad. We will start with the basics of understanding the toolbars and functions in the Affinity Designer ipad workspace. And then we'll start to build out our sticker set. You'll learn how to design simple functional stickers that don't really require any artistic prowess. You'll learn about the different types of stickers for planning. I'll share some tips on what you can utilize if you're interested in doing a little bit more creative, artistic, hand drawn looking pieces as well. We'll learn about how to set up your file and prep your artboards. You'll get an understanding of the layers functions in the program. We will also go over how to use the shape tools, the line tool, and how to use the move and align functions. You will get a better understanding of the layer effects tools and how to add things like shadows to make your items feel a little bit more three D and realistic if you so choose to. And we will go over how to load your digital stickers into good notes and how to place them into your layouts to make things a little easier, I will be including the class project affinity designer template that you can edit and get acquainted with before you even start your own. I will also include a file with all of the stickers that I've created in the class for personal use and a zip file as p andG's. 2. Tools and Class Project: When it comes to the tools that you'll need to take this class, all you really need is your ipad, the affinity designer ipad app version two, and the Good Notes app or any other note taking app that you use. But for my example of placing the stickers into the app that will be utilizing good notes. Who is this class for? This class is really for anyone. Artists, graphic design enthusiasts, graphic designers, illustrators, digital planners, digital planning beginners, and anyone creative who wants to learn how to design their own digital stickers in the affinity designer version two ipad app comes to the skill level that you need to take this class. This class is geared towards beginners. I will be walking you through and helping you familiarize yourself with the new affinity designer version to interface. I will also walk learners through the process of creating your digital stickers step by step. And I'm also reintroducing the interface due to the updates and the changes. It's perfect for anyone just learning, but it's also great for anyone who might be an expert or an intermediate learner who has used affinity designer in the past, but they're interested in learning how to make their own digital stickers. For your class project, you're going to create a one page sticker set featuring functional planner stickers. You'll learn how to create your own digital planner stickers and the affinity designer version to ipad app. And then your final project will just be sharing that one page digital sticker set. You can either export them into a PNG file set and share a link. Or you can share a screenshot of that final sticker set. Or you can even just share the P and G of the final sticker set as a whole as well. When you're ready. In terms of the deliverables, just upload that final file to the class project gallery. I'd love to see what you create. Don't forget, make sure you download the class resources and if you are interested, you could also share your project on social media and tag me at Bello Sophia Creative. I'd love to see what you've created or even offer some insightful tips or helpful feedback if you need it. Definitely also consider leaving the class or review. These reviews are so helpful in ensuring teachers get engagement, which in turn helps your classes overall in search. I'm really looking forward to creating with you today. Let's get started. 3. Exploring the tools : Before we get started and actually designing our sticker set, I want to take you through the interface of the Affinity Designer version two app on our ipad just so that we can get used to some of the tools and studios that are in the app so that you feel a little bit more familiar as we actually work on creating the project. When you launch affinity, you'll likely have a gallery view. Yours might be empty if this is the first time using the ipad app for you. If not, you may be like me and have a bunch of projects already in your system. So what we're going to do is just set up a simple four by six sticker sheet and then we'll be working on that with our testing as well as into the actual project. On the left hand side of our interface, here we have all of our options for setting up new documents, as well as templates, sample work that you can go through and the help, which is a fantastic option if you're just learning about the app itself. If you tap on the help, it'll take you to the different learning portals and Quickstart guides that affinity has, which is fantastic. You do have to be connected to the Internet, but there are a ton different options here that you can utilize to learn tutorials that they share. They have a wealth of information, I highly suggest checking that out, and that's why it's one of the first things that I like to share. You could also go into your settings and adjust settings as you need here. You can use your interface, you can adjust your great background as needed. I have it a little bit darker so it's easier to see on screen. You can adjust the left or right hand mode. You could also show brush previews. There's a ton of different options in here that we can play around with and adjust if you're looking for something a little bit more advanced in terms of like printer settings. When you're done with that, you can just hit the Done button. And then what we want to focus on really are these options in the upper left hand corner. So we're going to select New, and we can tap New From document to set up a new document. Or we can also open up files as well. You can open documents from your file system, import documents and import items from your photos. And I'll show you how to work with that in a bit because I like to sketch out my stickers before I design them in the app. And I do that and procreate. So I'm going to import my Jpeg from there. Let's tap on the new option here and we're going to select new document. You'll have all of your options for your dimensions, for your margins and bleeds. Since we're not printing, you won't really need to worry about these margins and bleeds because we will be working in a digital file. But like I said, if you opt to actually print something out, you may want to adjust these based on the printer settings that you get from your manufacturer or from whatever company you might be working with. So we're going to go into our dimensions here and we're going to update. If you don't have inches, if you go down to where it says Document Units and you chap on it, you can change it from whatever it currently is to inches. And then I'm going to change my page width to 4 " and my page height to 6 ". And then I'm going to go into DP, I'm going to keep it at 300, but two, you can adjust as you need based on the file size limitations that you may have. But also, like I said, if you opt to print this, you may want to increase your DPI from 192 or 144 to 300 or higher so that you have higher quality images when you send it to the printer. I'm going to keep my color format, RGB because we are going to be working on a digital format. I'm going to keep my image placement embedded, I'm going to create an artboard, and then everything else can stay the same. And I'm going to select, okay, and that's going to set up our file for us. Once we've done that, we'll have this art board on the left hand side. We have our tools. On the right hand side we have our studios. And then in the top here we have some of our menu options. Let's look at the menu options and then we'll jump into some of the tools and then our studios. Before we start though, I want to highlight something that's really helpful if you, if you go to the lower left hand corner of the app. If you tap on that little question mark, what it does is that it shows you all of the names of all of the options within the interface. If you ever get confused about what I'm selecting, just listen to the word that I use and you click on this little question mark here. It'll allow you to kind of pull up and look at what the names are of all of these different elements, icons on your screen. So this is a really, really helpful tool. But first we're going to check out some of these menus. So this is our designer persona. So if you tap where the affinity designer logo is in the upper left hand corner, you'll get a drop down which gives you different personas. You can work in pixel persona which allows you to use some of the affinity photo pixel based tools if you tap on the export persona which is what we'll be utilizing. A lot towards the end of this class. It'll give you different ways to export the different elements on your file. Here, you could export the whole file, or you could actually pinpoint and select key elements and export them separately as something called slices. But we'll get more into that later. Now if we go back into our persona, we tap on designer, It'll bring us back to our designer options. Next to that is our document menu. It looks like a hamburger menu with three lines. If we tap on that, you'll get all of your different document options where you can resize your canvas, export your file print place, any imagery. You can adjust your art boards. We can add artboards if we wanted. If we go back into that document men, you can select artboard. Then in the upper left hand corner here, you can select the type of artboard that you want to add. So say you just want to make a copy of this current artboard. You can hit the plus icon and it'll add an artboard for you and you'll have two to undo this. You can just take two fingers and tap on your screen and it'll remove it. This is really helpful if you like working on another artboard while you have one clean that you can experiment with and then do your final work on the other one. I find this to be really helpful. You could also add artboards based on the selection and then specific pre made settings that they have as well, like ipad, ipad ten, portrait landscape. So that's really helpful and that's a big change. And I noticed that some of these options where you add or select or change have kind of switch that used to be in the middle here and now you'll see them up here in the menu board. So now if we go back to that document menu, you can tap on Canvas. It'll allow you to clip to canvas or change to a transparent canvas, which is actually what we're going to need. I forgot to click on that while we were setting up our file. We're going to want to select transparent canvas. Because what we need to do is export our final stickers as transparent PNGs. And that means it won't have that white background behind the element. So we want to make sure we utilize transparency. You can select that in the set up as well when you're setting up your file. But if you forgot, like me, you can just go into your document menu. Select Canvas, and then change it to a transparent canvas. We can also go into our edit menu. This is where you'll get all of your options for duplicate, cut copy. But there are also some really great shortcuts that we can use. If we want to use any of those It options, we can just take the fingers and swipe down on our screen and you'll be able to get your duplicate copy, paste, cut, Delete Quick Options. That's another, um, helpful update as well. We'll go back into that three dot menu, which is our edit menu. We could also convert to curves if we're working with shapes through this edit menu. Then the other thing I would like to highlight here is the magnetics option, which is in the upper right hand corner. It helps to align different elements together when we have this magnetic option to turn none. Sometimes it's helpful to turn it off if you want to do some fine tuning. But I find that it's helpful to keep it on as we're working. Now that we can have an idea of these menu, we'll use some of those options as we start to work with and play around with our tools. On the left hand side is our tools. The first tool I want to highlight that we'll be using the most today is our shaped tool. Right now it looks like a rectangle, but if you hold it down, it'll give you all of the different shape options that we have. So I'm just going to select rounded rectangle to start. And I'm going to create a rectangle on my screen here. And I'm actually going to go into the right hand side and select this little, it looks like a gray, white circle in the upper right hand carter. That's my color studio. If I tap on it, it'll fly out and then I can update the color so it's easier to see. And then when I tap on it, it'll pull it back in. What you'll notice is with me creating the shape, you'll see this slider bar next to the tool. That's another update I notice in the app is that a lot of the edit functions for these different tools are in the slider view. If I zoom in, you'll notice that we have these little red dots. If we select these red dots, it'll allow us to adjust our curve mature of our corners here. So you can go all the way out and it'll be completely pointy, or you can bring it in to create that curve. You can also adjust your options here in the upper menu, you can select the different corners that you want. If you want the rounded, rounded, inverted, straight cut out, or non. If we tap on that shaped tool, again, you get all kinds of different options. There's a ton. You can create stars. And what's nice is that, say you want your star to be like a perfect proportion when you're creating the star, all you have to do is you can do this with any of the shapes. Add your finger, tap your finger on the screen, and it'll create it in perfect proportions. Again, you'll notice that you have these little elements here that allow you to adjust the nodes. You can adjust your inside angle of your star. You can also go in and adjust your inner radius. You can change the number of points as well in this upper menu on the upper left hand side. You can add as many points as you want and it'll adjust and update that. You could also adjust your inner radius, as I mentioned here in this menu at the top, by dragging your apple pencil over it to the right to increase the radius. Or drag it to the left to decrease the radius. Or you can just use those little points on the inside of the shape as well. You have all of these additional options within the shape as you create it. Now if you notice, I'm going to update the color of that shape by tapping on it with my move tool, which is this black arrow tool. And I'm going to tap on it so I know it's selected. You'll know it's selected because it's outlined in blue. I'm going to go into my color studio here by tapping on that colored circle. And then I'm going to update the color to like this grayish white. And I'm going to pull it on top of my rounded rectangle here. Then I'm going to go into some of these quick options here. You, this option right next to where it says Default. That's our arranged menu. If we tap on that, it'll allow you to move your eyelines forward or back. So for example, if I want to move that starch of the front, I'm just going to tap move to front and it'll pull it to the front of my shape. For me, the move tool is another tool that will utilize a lot, that black arrow tool. And then I showcase the bit how that node tool works. So I'm going to tap on the node tool. I'm going to recolor this star so it's easier to see. It's going to bring up these little red dots within some of these angles, I'm going to move this star out of the red triangle so you can see this little better. I'm going to zoom and you'll notice these little red dots within the angles and towards the top. With the node tool selected, you're able to adjust those radius options again. But you could also adjust the points as well. You can create rounded points as opposed to point points. And you can create more of like flower shapes. I'm going to go back into my rectangle tool. My shape tool, I'm going to tap on it. I'm going to select a circle. The ellipse tool, I'm going to create an ellipse. I'm going to drag my apple pencil, and then I'm going to hold my finger down so that I create a perfect circle. I'm going to go into my color studio here, and I'm going to update it so that it is yellow. If we want to update the color, say you have these sliders, but you want to have more options. If we tap on the little menu below, there's like a toggle menu. If you tap right, you can get to your color wheel and then you can update the color here as well. Once I've done that, I'm going to bring that so that it goes on top of the flower here. And you'll notice that I have these red and green cross hairs because they have magnetics turned on. It'll allow me to place the circle right in the middle of the flower. So I'm going to select both of these by taking my apple pencil dragging across. And then I'm going to go into my layer studio really quick. And I'm just going to group these together so that I can move them. Your layer studio on the right hand side, it's right underneath your Stroke studio. I'm just going to group these together into a folder by tapping that little folder icon, and then you'll get all of these options. And I'm just going to hit Group. And it'll select both of those and group them together so you can move it as one. The next tool that I want to look at with you is our pen tool. We'll utilize this quite a bit to create line segments when we're working on our file. If we tap on this little pen tool, you can basically create shapes with line segments. You can create shapes with points and line segments. So what we need to do is turn on our stroke so that we can see what we are creating. If you have fill turned on, it's basically going to create like a fill, so I can show you what that looks like first. So say I'm creating a shape and I have fill turned on. It's just going to create a fill. But say you want to use line segments, what I'll need to do is change it from a fill to a stroke. And you'll see that in your color options, the fill is just like a full circle. The stroke looks kind of like a doughnut. So we'll update the color of that stroke by tapping on it to pull it to the front and then tapping on the color that we want. If we want to remove a color, you can just tap on that option and then swipe up with your finger and it'll remove the color for you. Or you can just go down to your quick colors and select the white square with a blue line through it and it'll remove the color. Now that we have a stroke, I can start to create line segments using just points. If we select our node, we can adjust the placement and the curve of that line segment as well Using that white node tool that I showed you earlier. We won't be creating too many shapes with the pen tool, but it is an option. If you need a vectorized shapes or drawing, that would be the tool that you utilize. It just takes some getting used to, you have to get used to creating bezier curves with this. But the more you practice, the easier it gets. And say we didn't want just outline, we wanted this to be filled. We can go back into our color studio, we can add a fill, or you can go into your stroke and just remove the stroke and just keep the fill. The next tool I want to highlight is the pencil tool, which is really helpful if you don't feel comfortable with the pen tool and you like the idea of like tracing or following a shape in a more traditional way, but it'll still create vector lines for you, for example. What you can do is select the pencil tool, Let's say you wanted to outline a shape like this versus using the pencol to create bezier curves. You can do so. It'll allow you to build the shape by making sure that sculpt is selected, which is an option here. So that it'll allow you to continue to create shapes that connect with one another. The negative thing with is that it creates a lot of points that you may end up having to go back through and delete or clean up. Whereas the pen tool, you can create really clean shapes with just a few points, but some people just prefer the ease of going this route. And then once you've created the shape that you wanted, you could go in with your node tool, that little white arrow tool. And you can go in and fine tune and adjust the overall shape of the work that you've done. You can go in as well and select different node options. You can create sharp options, you can smooth out your nodes. You can utilize the smart node as well. And then once you're done cleaning everything up, you can go into your options here in the top menu as I highlighted, like the sharp options, rounded. But you could also clean up using this smoothing tool. It'll decrease the number of nodes that you have and clean up the shape overall. I think it's really helpful and effective to utilize that. The next too I want to highlight is our vector flood fill tool. If you create shapes that are enclosed like we did down here, this is a really helpful tool too, when you're having to color things very quickly. And you can update color with just a tap of your pencils. You can also pick up colors with the color picker as well. Say you want colors to be similar. You can just update the color by selecting the object that you want to update. I'm going to update this triangle again. I'm going to go into my color picker tool, making sure that that fill is selected. And then I'm going to select my color picker tool, which looks like an eye dropper. And then I'm going to tap on the color of the other element so that it matches. The last tool I want to highlight really quickly is just our delete tool. You can utilize your quick swipe, but you could also use in the lower left hand corner, this little trash can icon. If you tap on an element on your screen that you don't want using your move tool, then you can just select the trash icon and it'll delete it. All right. Now that we've explored these tools, what I'd like to do is look at our studios really quickly and get us familiarized, then we can jump into creating our stickers. 4. Exploring the studios: All right, so the first thing we'll look at really quickly, just so that we're going in order from top to bottom, is our color studio. As I highlighted this before, we'll use this to update our colors, but there's also other options in here. When I tap on the little circle that is currently red, we have our fill color and our stroke color. Fill color is the fill. I'm going to select one of these squares that I have here. I'm going to tap on the stroke tool and then select a color. And it'll give me a stroke around that shape. What we could also do is below it, select the stroke studio and you can adjust and increase or decrease the width of that. And then say we don't want that. We can just double tap to undo or we can just swipe up on the stroke here with our apple pencil or our finger and it'll remove the stroke for you. We also have the color wheel. We can also tap on these options. Here we go to the right. We have different sliders to saturation lumina. You have your RGB sliders, your Heck sliders, your CMYK sliders. What's nice is that all of these, even though you can slide them, you can also tap on them and enter the numbers in manually. If we go to our hex sliders, if there are certain hex codes that you want to use for your color story. If you go to your sliders, you could tap where the actual hex number is and enter it there. If you have something from like Pantone or a website, you can enter it there and then hit okay and update the color for you. Then if you go to your color wheel, this just allows you to utilize the color wheel to select and create your color stories that you need. Then also you have the ability to adjust the opacity and transparency of your color. Here, I'm going to make sure that my color fill is selected and then I can adjust it will increase or decrease the opacity. Now what I also think is helpful is adding in swatches to my color options here so that I have a story and everything is cohesive. If we tap on swatches, it gives you all of these options. You have your gradient grays. There are already panton swatches in here as well. But then you could also create your own color story. For example, I have recent colors. But then I could also to this little hamburger menu right next to this pin icon. And then I can add a document palette, or I can import a palette, or I can add current fill to my palette. You can also change the overall view of your color palette. Right now you'll see squares and like swatches, but if you tap on this icon that's next to your recent color options, it looks like a window pane. If you tap on that, it'll change it to like a list view where you see the different colors in a list form. And then it could also show you the RGB and hex codes as well. If you want to add your own document palette. So you'll go into that hamburger menu, select Add Document palette. You'll name it. Hit Okay, and then it's going to be empty. So what you'll do is you'll go back into that hamburger menu and it'll give you all of the additional options to do things like add current filter palette, add a global color, import palette, delete palette, export palette. So I'm going to select add current filter palette, and it'll add it to my palette here. Okay, now that we are done with color here, what we can go into next is our stroke. As I mentioned, you have these options to update your stroke. I'm going to go into my color studio and I'm going to remove Fill here. And I'm going to change it to just a stroke so we can work with this. If we go back into our stroke options, you'll be able to change the type of stroke as well as your width and different options here. The things that will most likely use are the type of stroke and the width. Right now, we currently have just a plane stroke, but if we select this option here, it'll give us a dotted or dashed stroke. And you could increase or decrease the width of this. You could also increase or decrease the mitter limit as well. Then you can change your dash pattern. I find that I usually do a dash and then a gap to give myself some space. You'll want the gap to be a little bit bigger than your dash. I have this as a 1.1 0.5 where you could do a 1.2 and see how that looks and it'll increase or decrease the distance between your dashes. You can also adjust your cap and the Join and the Align options here. Your cap can be, if you have it rounded. It's going to give you more of a rounded curve. If you have it squared off, it's going to give you more squares. If you have it with the cap meeting at beyond the end of the point, it's going to give you more of a rectangular look. You can also adjust the way your segments connect and join. This is more of a flattened corner. You could also adjust how everything aligns. This option will make it a little bit further. The center option will bring things a little bit closer. It'll be like on the middle of your actual shape line. The center will be on the inside of your shape. The last option here in your A Align options will have the dash pattern on the outside of your shape. The next thing I want to look at, our layers highlighted this earlier, but layers work in affinity designer, similar to the way they'll work in affinity photo or something like Photoshop. Basically think of seven layer cake. Things are layered on top and whatever you put on top will likely hide whatever is beneath it, depending on the transparency and whatnot. For example, we want to add this little stroke outline here to this yellow square as a, as a frame that goes on top of it. I'm going to resize it. Basically what that did was hit it because in our layers here, that the rectangle layer with the stroke is underneath our orange square here. If we go into our layer studio, we can tap on that rectangle dash pattern and we can drag it so that it goes above yellow square here. This is all really helpful in organizing. I also think it's important that as you create your layers that you organize them. I like to group things within folders. Say it's a bunch of different elements. For one sticker I would want to group this together. I'd select my black Arrow tool. I'd highlight by dragging across both options, and then you'll see they're both selected. In my Layers menu, I use my grouping functions here. Select this little like folder looking icon, and select Group. Then I would rename this, maybe you're going to call it yellow, red sticker, with that group selected, I'm going to go into this little three menu. This is my Layers options. If I tap on that, it'll give me a whole bunch of different options. Like you could adjust capacity here, You can lock this so that it doesn't move or get messed up. You can turn it on or off with the visibility. But the important thing that I like to use here is where it says group. That's where we're going to rename it. I'm going to tap where it says group and it'll give me the option to rename my layer here. Then when I'm done, I can hit, okay, I'll go out of the layer options by tapping on that little carrot, That's like a back carrot that's right next to where it says layer options. Then when I'm back out into my studio here, you'll see that my layer group has now been renamed Yellow. Some other options we have in here is if we select this little plus icon, you'll be able to add a vector layer, a pixel layer. That's what's great about this whole suite of apps. You can work in pixels in affinity designer, just like I showed you earlier. If we tap on those personas, we can add our pixel persona and we can work in pixels. You can add pixel layers here. Vector layers, your masking layers. We could also merge elements and rasterize and trim within this. So say I wanted this to become one element after I was done with it. I don't need to have editability. I could merge the selected items or I can rasterize them and it'll turn it into a rasterized pixel based shape. But keep in mind that changes it effectively and you can no longer edit it. To undo, you're just going to tap with your fingers to undo it. You can also get rid of layers by selecting the trash can option here in your layer menu. So I want to get rid of this outline that we've made. I'm going to tap on that curve layer and then I'm going to select the trash can and it'll delete it. You can also adjust your opacity here as well. So I'm going to select this red one. You can tap on where it says opacity. You can enter it manually, or if you take your Apple Pincil and go over the opacity percentage, if you drag to the left, it's going to decrease it. If you drag it to the right, it's going to increase it. You can also change your options here and multiply so that you can work again with layering and additional effects within each of these layers. For example, if we change this option from just normal. To screen, You're not going to see anything right now if I move this flower so that it's on top of it. But if we layered red rectangle over the flower and we screen, it increases your exposure so to speak. I'm going to go into my layers, Select the rounded rectangle and then drag it so that it goes over my flower group. Now you can see it change the color of the flower because of the effects that we have within this specific layer. The next studio below it is our brush studio. That's what's great about affinity designer. They have some great vector brushes that give you more or less like a more traditional feel. In order to access these, we have to select our brush tool on the left hand side. I didn't show you this when we were going through the tools because they work in tandem, so I want to show it together. Right underneath your pencil tool is your brush tool. You can adjust the opacity of the brush as well as the width of the brush. Then if you go into your brush studios here, you can select the type and it gives you more of a traditional effect even though you're using vector elements. What's nice is that once you've done that, you can go in and select your node tool and you can adjust your points here because it's a vector element. I'm going to move this out of the way so you can see what I'm doing. Even this water color splatch here. I can select my No tools and I can, because it's a vector element, it just has the effect of a traditional medium. There's all kinds of vector brushes. If you want to create more of a traditional sketcherly looking element as well, you can just change from your designer options to your pixel persona. And you can utilize the different brushes here as well. Or you can just go back into designer and instead of using the more water color effects, you can go into your brushes and change it to something like ink or pencil. And you can update the pencil option, change your color, you can sketch with it as well. But just keep in mind you're sketching with vector points. If you want to have more of a traditional feel, I would suggest utilizing the pixel persona. And then you can use your pen tools here and it's going to create more of that drawing effect that you might get with something like say procreate. Personally, I tend to do my sketches in procreate, but you can sketch in affinity designer, in pixel persona or you can sketch in affinity photo as well. It gives you all of these different fun textures and this is a really great way to flex your artistic ability. You don't necessarily only have to create vectors, you can create more hand drawn looking stylized stickers as well in here. But just for the sake of ease with this class, I just wanted to highlight some easier options that you could play around with. But show that you can do similar things that you might do and say something like procreate or in Photoshop, you can do that here in affinity as well. Now that I'm done with that, I'm going to select all of these and I'm just going to delete them. Then I'm going to go back into my designer persona. I want to highlight a couple more things and then we'll jump into creating our stickers. The next studio I want to look at is our effect studio. I'm going to zoom into this red rectangle that I have here and we're going to add some effects. When we're creating your stickers. You can opt to just keep them flat if you like that look, but if you want to have it feel a little bit more, three D, you could also add things like shadows and embossing. That's what we're going to explore. Now, selecting our move tool, that black arrow tool, I'm going to tap on my square here and then I'm going to hit my options in my X studio will pop up. Then what we can do is you can add different effects to your elements. If we select Bevel Emboss, it'll give you like this, like beveled and stamped looking effect. But the thing is we may want to adjust how this looks. This is just like the automatic options. But what we can do is edit the options by capping where it says Bevel and Emboss. And then we get these sliders on the left hand side. This is another big change that I notice typically in affinity designer one on the ipad app, you'll get your editable options at the bottom of your screen, Now they are to the left, you have all of these sliders. And even though they are sliders, you can still tap and manually enter your figures as well. But we want to soften that shadow a bit, make it a little bit more grainy. We can utilize the soften option. We can also adjust the radius by going up or down. On this little screen here, you can adjust the elevation as well and the depth. And the important thing to note what some of these Is that you might have to tap the little icon to change the types. You can change your highlight opacity by tapping on the little icon, and you can go back to soften by tapping on it again. Same with here. You can change the direction, you can change from elevation to your depth by tapping on the little icon at the bottom of the scroll bar and then here, or you can tap on it to manually enter your numbers. All right, once I'm done with that, to turn it on or off, you can just toggle it by tapping on the little toggle and I'll take it back to what it was before. So I'm going to turn it off now. The next thing we can do is add things like outer shadows and Gaussian blurs. I'm going to tap where it says outer shadow. Toggle it on, and then you'll get your options to edit. On the left hand side, we can adjust the offset, then we can adjust our radius and the angle of the shadow itself. And then again the intensity and the opacity Again to change between the options that are included in that scroll menu, you have to tap on the little icon at the bottom of it all. Then our last two that we'll look at, a, our type options, our type studio and our transform studio. Now that you know how to add effects, we can also add text to our stickers. To do that, we'll go into our text tool on the left hand side, it's right above our color dropper. We tap on it, you'll have artistic text. And then if you hold down, you can also get your frame text. I find the frame text tool is the most helpful because it allows me to work within parameters. To use this, what you'll do is drag across your screen once you've selected the tool, and then you'll get a pop up with your keyboard and you can add text. Then if we go into our text studio over here, our character studio on the right hand side, it looks like an A. It's right below our adjustment studio. Then we can go in and we can change it from, we can change it from regular to bowl, to italics to strike underline. You can also adjust the paragraph type from left align, right align, centered, justified. You could also change our fonts here as well. And then we can increase or decrease the size of our font. For example, if we tap where it says ten point. If we drag to the right, it'll increase. If we drag to the left, it'll decrease. Also, we can just tap on it and we can manually enter the number we want and then hit okay. Then finally, after we've done that, I want to look at our transform studio. With our transform studio, obviously, we can transform and scale and adjust our dimensions. But this is also where we can adjust the order of our elements. Say we want that hello on top we have the red square selected. If we re order here and we can send to back, it'll send the red square to the back. We can also flip and rotate. We can adjust our width or height of our element and the position and placement. Then finally, the last bit within here is our alignment option. Say I want the hello to be aligned up top with the squares. I'm going to select both of them by tapping on my move tool, dragging across them. I'm going to go into my alignment options here. And then I'll be able to align horizontally, horizontally, align vertically and space vertically. In this case, I want to align vertically up top. So I'm going to tap that and it's going to align the text with the box. And this will be really helpful as we're adding text in the different parts of the stickers and wanting to align things so that they're spaced precisely. This is really helpful. Okay, That is it for our little exploration of the tools and studios. Now that we are done with this, we can jump into designing and creating our stickers on this file. 5. Digital sticker types: Now that we have explored the affinity designer version two interface, let's talk a little bit more about what functional and decorative stickers are before we actually start designing them. Digital planner stickers are digital electronic versions of traditional paper planner stickers. They used to decorate digital planner pages and mark important events or tasks. Digital planner stickers can be created using a range of design tools, but I personally prefer and we will be using the affinity designer version two app on the ipad. They're often used in tandem with digital planners to add some personality and fun to planner pages and also to just help you organize your content. There are two types of stickers that you will often see on the market. Functional and decorative. Functional stickers, which is what we're going to be focusing on, are designed to help you stay organized and manage your schedule and tasks. These stickers often feature icons and symbols that represent different types of tasks or events, such as meetings, appointments, and deadlines. Then there are decorative stickers. Decorative stickers are created to add some visual interests and personality to your planners and outlines. These stickers often feature cute or whimsical designs that are fun or funky. Things like illustrations, animals, flowers, or food. But there's all kinds out there. We will be focusing on the functional type of digital stickers in this class today. But we have a few decorative ones thrown into the layout as well when it comes to finding inspiration for your stickers. Pinterest is a fantastic option. I have created a Pinterest board with digital sticker and planner inspiration. And I'm going to leave it linked in the class description box for the course. You can also find inspiration or even sticker sets to buy for personal use on sites like creative market design cuts and even at C, there are a variety out there. You'll want to find what suits you in terms of design concepts and then you can customize them to your own needs. Now that we have a better understanding of the sticker types, let's jump into actually creating our own set. 6. Setting up the layers and color palette: Now that we have gone through the Affinity Designer app, let's actually start designing our own. What I'm going to do is actually import a sketch that I've created from procreate. But as I mentioned when we were going through the interface, you can sketch in affinity designer as well. You don't necessarily have to sketch somewhere else. It's just I was already working in procreate and I worked on some ideas within the app and then I just exported this as a J peg that I'm now going to bring into affinity designer. I'm going to go into my Document menu and I'm going to select place and it's going to allow me to place an image from my files. I already saved this in my photos. What I'm going to do to place it is basically once I've selected the image, a hit. Okay, Then you can just drag your pencil across your screen. I designed in a four by six page ways so it fits perfectly in that. I'm going to select my Move tool just to fine tune everything. It's okay if it's not perfect. Um, you'll be basically drawing over this. The sketch doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to give you an idea of what you're planning on creating. I did a combination of some more functional stickers like a two do list and a few decorative stickers so that you can get used to designing some more of the creative stickers as well. Like I have some washi tape flower and then some other washi tape with some other designs. All right, Now that I've placed this in, what I want to do is set up my layers so that we can work with this. I'm going to have this layer at the very top, but I'm going to change its settings to multiply so that I can see whatever I'm creating underneath it. It creates like the see through effect. I'm going to go into my layer studio, I'm going to tap on my artboard, There's a little carrot to the left of the artboard, thumbnail. I'm going to tap on that. And then I'm going to select my photo that I place, and I'm going to change my settings from normal to multiply. It's not going to look like much is done, but we'll see its effects once we add an additional layer. What I'm going to do, add a new vector layer, but I don't want that layer above my photo, I want it below it. Because if we add something above, let's say we kept that layer above and we added a shape, it's going to block out that image below it. And we're using this as a guide, so it's helpful to be able to see it. You can multiply that updated layer. But I notice that it plays around with the colors, and I want the colors to be as true to what I want as possible. Instead, I'm going to take that layer, that new vector layer. I'm going to drag it so that it goes underneath my photo layer. And then what you'll see is when I add in a shape, again, we go over it, we can see that outline still so we know what we're working with. And it just makes it easier. I use the same process when I'm drawing in procreate or coloring within affinity as well. But it just makes it easier to be able to see your guidelines so that you can just like design within those parameters. All right, So I'm just going to undo that. I'm going to tap on that layer. I'm going to go into my layer options at three dot menu. And I'm going to tap where it says layer one. And I'm just going to rename this sticker layer. And then I'm going to hit, okay, I'm going to go back out of my layer options. I'm going to go into my photo layer. I'm going to tap on that three dot menu again. I'm going to select lock. That way this little sketch doesn't move around and you won't run into issues. The only thing that you want to just remember is to make sure that when you're working, you're working on your sticker layer. Now that I've set that up, I'm going to tap on my layer studio, so it pulls back in. Then what we want to do really quickly is set up our color story. I'm going to share a file with you all that includes my color, Palett. But you are welcome to use whatever colors that you'd like. There are a few websites I'd like to visit, but in this case, I just use Pinterest to find some color stories. I love when they create these little color guides here with the hex codes or the pantone codes. I saved a color story that I really liked and it's really just based on a drawing. I'm going to screenshot it. To screenshot, all you have to do is press your side volume, the top button, and your power button and it'll screenshot the image for you. I'm going to escape out of interest. Now I'm going to go back into my affinity designer file here. Then I'm just going to place that screenshot image into this file so that we can pull the colors from it and then we'll get rid of it. I'm going to go into my Document menu. I'm going to select Place again, and then I'm going to go Place From Photos. I'm going to select that picture, hit Add, and then just place it in, but I'm going to make sure that it's on top of my layers here. And then I'm going to delete it, so I'll just drag it to the top so it goes above my artboard in my layers. I'm going to zoom in so we can see what we're doing. We're going to utilize that Eyedropper tool that we learned about when we were first working through the app. So I'm going to tap on the colors that I want to create a color story. So I'm going to go into my color studio, and then I'm going to go down to where it says Swatches. I'm going to tap that. And then I'm going to create a new Swatch library so I don't get confused. So I'm going to go into my three menu and my Swatches. And I'm going to select Add a document palette. And then I'm just going to name it. I'm going to hit okay, and it's going to give me a blank palette here. Now what we'll want to do is we can select the eyedropper tool. You can either pick it from the left hand side towards the bottom, or you can tap on the little eye dropper that's right next to our current colors, then making sure that the image is de selected. You don't want it outlined in blue. I'm going to tap on my black arrow tool, my move tool, and then I'm going to tap outside of the image, so it's de selected. I'm going to go back into my color studio, making sure I'm still in my swatches area. I'm going to tap on my image to pick up the color. And then you'll see that it'll pop up in the color studio here. Then what we'll want to do is add that color to our palette. To do that, we're going to go back into that hamburger menu and we're going to add current fill to palette. And it'll add it to our palette. I'm going to continue this process tapping on the colors with my eyedropper tool, going into my swatches, Selecting the hamburger menu and select Add current fill to palette. If you need to get a certain color that it might feel like it's hard or difficult to tap, you can just zoom in to take two fingers. You swipe out with both of them to zoom in, and then you pull in those two fingers to zoom. I'm going to zoom in so that I can tap this darker green. Then I'll go back into my color palette. Go into my swatches, hamburger menu here, And then add current fill to palette. Once I've selected all the colors in the design that I like, I now have a color palette specifically for the project that I'm working on. You don't need to have this many colors. If you don't want, you can have a more limited palette, or you can go wild and pick as many colors as you'd like. Once you're done with that, what you can do is get rid of this image. So I'm going to go into my layer studio. Select that photo that I placed in, and then tap on that little trash icon and it's going to delete it. 7. Designing the stickers part 1 (functional): Now making sure I'm on my sticker layer, I can begin to build out some of these stickers using my shape builder tool as well as my line tool. Let's start here. I'm going to create this little like title tag. This is a really simple design actually. We can utilize rounded rectangles to build this and use the geometry functions to merge shapes together. I'm going to go to my left hand side, select my rectangle tool, tap on it twice so that I get this pop up. And then I'm going to select rounded rectangle. And then to make sure I go into my color studio and I'm going to pick a color for this design, I'm going to start with this dark blue, just so that it's easy to see. Then I'm going to start to pull this across to create the shape. I want this curve to be just a little bit tighter. So I'm going to zoom in and adjust my curve here with that little red dot and I'm going to just pull it out just a bit. Once I've done that, I've created the shape that I like, then I'm going to go in and create another that goes on top. I'm going back into that shape tool, select round a rectangle, then I'm just going to create another rounded rectangle that will go on top of this one, making sure that my curves match up with the side. And then pulling this up so that I get this tag looking feel to it. Once I've done that, I can just go to the side here and just make sure everything lines up perfectly. And if you're having trouble with this, you could just turn on magnetics and your upper right hand side tap the little magnet icon and it'll help you to like match everything up. Once I'm done with that, what I'm going to do is utilize the geometry tool that will allow us to merge these two shapes together. If I tap on one, you'll see there's one shape, I tap on the other, there's another shape, but we want it to be one big shape. So I'm going to select my black arrow tool, and I'm going to drag over both of these shapes so that they're both selected. And then I'm going to go into my geometry tool. It's right here in the upper menu, in the center, right next to our alignment tools. It looks like a square in a circle with a plus on the circle. If we tap on that, that gives you all of our geometry functions. What we want to do is select Add, then it'll create one whole shape. Now, we don't have two shapes together, we have one that creates this nice outline that we wanted. Now I want to add space where I can write. I'm going to update my color in my color studio, and I'm going to utilize this off white color that we have here. And then again, I'm going to go back into that shape tool. I'm going to go into my rounded rectangle and then I'm just going to follow the outline that I have in here and give myself a little area to write in with that magnetics turned down. What's nice is that we can make sure that everything is placed right in the center and you'll see you get these little lines that help you to gauge if things are lined up that way. I have a nice even amount around it. Once I've done that, I don't necessarily need to use the geometry functions to merge the shapes together. I just want to keep these elements in one folder. We're going to group them. I'm going to select the black arrow tool and I'm going to drag across both of these shapes so that they're both selected. And if you go into your layer studio on the right hand side, you'll see that both of those layers are now in fact selected. They're highlighted in blue. Then we're going to select this little folder icon and it will give you all these additional options. But in this case, we just want to select Group. And it'll group everything into a folder. Then you can rename this group by tapping on the three menu. Tapping where it says Group, and then hit. Okay. This is just an easy way for you to keep track of all of the layers. Now I want to add some text so that I know what this little note card is for. I'm going to go into my color studio. Select that off white again, making sure that this is de selected. I'll tap on my black arrow tool, tap outside of the shape. And then I'm going to go into my color studio and I'm going to update my color to that off white again. Then I'm going to go into my text tool. My type tool utilize the artistic text which just gives you an ongoing line of text. Or you can use your frame text tool which will give you like parameters that will keep the text in. I like doing that just so that I know where things are. I already have a font selected, but we can update it. I'm going to see what this looks like, but if you look at the very top, you'll see you have your font options. You can. Right now with mine you can see it's as American Typewriter. But if you tap on it and you can scroll down, you have all of these options for whatever fonts are included in your app and that you have installed on your ipad. And then you could also adjust the size of the font as well. In my case, I need this smaller than 15. I think eight should be good. And then you can write whatever you'd like here. I think I'm going to either do meeting or appointment. If you notice the color is not the same as what you selected, you can just double tap with your apple pencil on the letter and it'll highlight it. Then you can go back into your color studio, or you can just tap on the color options right next to your font options. It'll be right next to the underline selection. Right now it's black. And then you could update it based on your recent colors or based on your palette. You can just like scroll through the options here. And I'm going to go to my sticker palette. And I'm going to select that off white, and it'll update it for me. I think this might be a little too bold. I'm going to change this from bold to regular. Then it looks like it has an underline. I'm going to double tap again. I'm going to go to these additional options right next to my color options, and I'm going to select the underline option. Then once I've typed that in, I can see if I like this font or not. I think it's fun. Has like a bit of a typewriter feel. I think I'm just going to keep that for now. And then what we can do, we can go into our layer studio and you can turn off your drawing so you can see what it looks like. Now that we are done with that one, I'm going to turn my sketch back on and then I'm going to just go through my sticker sketch and just continue outlining and building based on my designs. I like having little arrows point things out or highlight something that is important. What's nice is that you can either use the pen tool to create this arrow or you can just utilize the arrow shape. If you go into your shape tool, we have an arrow option. You'll see all of the options or all of the settings for that arrow option at the top of our menu. To create the arrow, all we're going to have to do is drag across. All right, as you see it's that default double arrow. What we have to do is go up into our menu here and tap on one side. And change it from arrow to none. And it'll change it into this basic arrow. Then what we can do is rotate it. A quick trick so that you can rotate in perfect increments is hold your finger down. When you're rotating, it will rotate in 15 degree increments so that you can get to exactly 90. This isn't exactly the style of the arrow that I've drawn. I can just go in and refine. I'll select my node tool, which is that white arrow. I can adjust the nodes of the arrow here so that it's a little bit lower. And then I can also adjust the width and the angle as well. To adjust the width, you'll have that red node on the side. Drag it out, right? That gives me more along the lines of what I'm looking for. And then I can just resize it so that it fits my arrow. It's really simple and quick way to do this, or if you want to practice with the pen tool, you can also practice with the pen tool. What we'll do is I'm going to turn off the fill and just use an outline so you can see how this works. I'm going to go into my color studio. I'm going to turn off my color fill, and then I'm going to tap on my stroke, and then I'm going to update the color there. Then I'm going to use the sketch as my guideline. I'll select the pen tool, adjust the stroke if you want here as well. Or you can go into your stroke studio here and adjust the stroke here as well. All right, now what we're going to do is just basically use line segments to build this out. So I'm going to start within the inside of my arrow here. I'm going to tap and then I'm going to hold my finger down so that I get a straight line. Then if you're noticing your line looks strange, it's probably because we didn't change it back from that data line. We can just go back to a straight line by going into our stroke studio here on the right hand side, which is underneath our color studio. And then just changing our stroke from that data stroke to a regular stroke and your join is a sharp angle. Now I can continue building this out. Once I've created that first stroke, I'm going to tap on the last point and then tap on my top point. And then just continue to follow the shape that I'm building using these line segments. And then closing it off by tapping on that last point. Then if I go into my layers, I'm going to turn off my sketch. So you can see this is what it looks like. We can go back into the stroke if you want to adjust how things are joining. I think this rounded join actually gives me a better shape for what I'm looking for. Now that I've done that, then I can go in and refine this just a little bit more. I'm going to turn my sketch back on by going into my layer studio and tapping on that little tago menu to turn it back on. And then I'm going to select my node tool. Then I can just refine my nodes and adjust based on what I want this design to look like. You can keep this as an outline or you can fill it. If we're going to fill it, I'm going to go back into my color studio. I'm going to remove my stroke. I'm going to tap on my fill, and I'm going to select that color again and it'll give me the fill that I want. If you want a thicker arrow, you can keep your stroke on as well and that'll give you your final shape. All right, I'm going to delete one of these. I'm going to keep my hand drawn one because I like that it's not perfect and it's a little bit softer. Then we'll continue on next. What I want to do is create this to do list, these are fun to make really simple and easy. It's just line segments, your shape tool, and some text. Then I'm going to go into my color studio and update the color. What I think I'm going to use is the off white color again. And then I'm going to go into my shape builder, my shape tool here. And then I'm going to select the rounded rectangle. And then I'm just going to start building over this. As you could tell, my rounded edges are not as refined as the one that I drew. All we have to do is go in and adjust and then I'm going to resize this as well. All right. Once I've done that and I have the shape that I like, I can go in and add my lines and then I can add my text. I'm just going to be using my pen tool to create these lines. We don't have to make every single one with Nic as we can make one and then copy and paste them. So I'm going to create this first line and I think I'm going to have the lines be in this kind of like burnt umber sienna, red looking color. So I'm going to tap on one side of the line that I have here. Hold my finger down to create a straight line, tap on the other. And then if you notice that you don't have color or you don't see your line or just go into your color studio and then tap on your stroke and then update the color. Actually, I don't like that more red looking color on this. It feels like it's going to be to bold. So I'm just going to select like lighter brown tan kind of color. Then I'm going to adjust the size of my line to be one point as opposed to 1.2 And then I'm going to make sure everything is straight. If you notice, if you're having a hard time figuring out if your shape is straight, I just go back into my layer studio. I'll turn off the sketch and then check it from there. In this case, my brown line is a little lopsided. I can just tap on my node tool and I'm going to turn that sketch back on so I can see what I'm doing. Obviously, my sketch was a little off. That's okay. Now that I've done, I've created that first line, I'm just going to copy and paste it. I'm going to tap on my layer studio so it moves out of the way. I'm going to select three fingers, I'm going to swipe down, then I'm going to copy. Then I'm going to select Paste. And it'll paste it right on top. I'm going to hold my finger down on the screen so that I can drag this new line down so that it moves straight. Once I've done that, I can then paste again and keep adding the lines in. Once I've pasted a few, then I can just go into my black arrow, my move tool, select those lines. I'm group them in my layers menu by tapping on my layer menu, going into that little folder, icon selecting group they're all together. Second, move them as one. And then I'm just going to duplicate that whole entire set and fill up the rest of the page. Then I'll create that long line on the right side, or you could do it on the left side. I'm doing it on the right because I'm going to use this almost like a check mark. Once I've done that, I'm going to select my pen tool once more, Tap on that first line, hold my finger down, and then tap on the last one to create a straight line. Once I've done that, I'm just going to tap on that first group of lines, Hold my finger down, tap on the second group of lines so that they're both selected. And then I'm going to utilize my Align tool and I'm going to make sure that they are aligned right, everything is aligned. And even this looks nice, but I want to make sure that things are lined up and even I'm going to select the straight line that I've created. Zoom in. And then I'm just going to pull it up so that it blends into the rest of the horizontal ones. All right. I'm going to turn my image back on and I'm going to use my text tool to add to do lists at the top of this. What I could do is also just select that meeting. Text that I added, go in to my Edit menu, or use my three finger swipe down and select Duplicate. And then just drag it down. I'll need to update the color. Of course, I'm going to update it so that it matches the lines. Tap the text so that everything is selected. I'll go into my color studio and then I'll select that brown and it'll update it. And then I'll just use my move tool to drag it down. If it disappears, that's because it's probably behind this image. So I'll go into my layer studio and then I'll drag the meeting layer so that it goes above the two do list image. I'm going to increase the size of my parameters around this text by tapping on the outline and dragging it out. And then I'm going to double tap where it says meeting. And I'm going to update it to say to do list. I might increase the size of this just a bit, so I'm going to select it by double tapping. And then I'll go into my font options at the top, in my menu here. And then I'll increase it. Then I'm going to make sure I group this all together. This is the final design. When I tap on this final design, what we can do is double check to see what our dimensions are with things. Always suggest designing your stickers bigger rather than smaller because it's always easier to scale them down in your digital note taking app versus having to scale them up, which often will cause pixelation. If we tap on this design now, and we can go down into our transform studio, if we tap on that, it'll tell us exactly how big the sticker is. This is 1.17 " by 1.5 ". It's 1.5 " long by just a little bit over an inch wide. Always increase while you're working. Say you feel like you wanted a sticker that's a little bit bigger. You can increase in affinity designer as we're working because it's a vector. But once you export it, if you want it any bigger, you may not be able to do that because it'll be pixilated. I'm going to turn my sketch back on. I'm going to start working on some of these posted ideas. These are really simple, just squares, making sure we are on the correct layer. I'm going to go in and update my colors here. I'm going to tap on my color studio. I think I'm going to use some of the sage green. And then I'm going to make sure I don't have a stroke. I've created the square here and now I want to add the little check boxes. I'm going to go back into my color studio making sure that square is selected so we don't change the color of that. Go back into my color studio, I'm going to select like this off gray that I have my film. I'm going to go back into my rectangle tool and I'm just going to create some squares to go on the side of this. Once I've created one, I can just copy it and paste it. Just three fingers down. I'm going to select duplicate. And then I'm going to drag it down, and then I'm going to do that process again. This is the power duplicate. Once you've duplicated something, and then you've moved it, you can then just continue to duplicate it, and it'll do the same thing all the way down. I'm going to select all of these and adjust the placement. And then I'm going to use my rounded rectangle to create the rest of these. Also, if you opt you don't necessarily have to have these as fills, you could also use an outline instead. Instead of having a fill, I can change this to an outline two. Once I've made that rectangle, I can just do the power duplicate again. Take three fingers, swipe down, select duplicate. I'm going to move it to where I'd like it. Then I'm going to power duplicate. Just duplicating it two more times. All right, once I have that done, I'm going to select everything and then just fine tune the placement. And then I'm going to zoom out, select my black arrow tool and select across everything including the green background. And then I'm going to go into my layer studio here. And then I'm going to select that folder icon. And I'm going to group it so that it's all grouped together. And then I can move it as one thing. 8. Designing the stickers part 2 (functional): All right, now I'm going to create a gridded paper posted note. Yeah, for this one I'm going to utilize the shape tool and then create this corner with a pen tool and then merge the shapes together. I'm going to go into my rectangle tool. I'm going to update the color. I'm going to have this B that off white color, and then I'm going to have the lighter blue grid. I've done that. I'm going to create the shape based on my sketch here. Then I'm going to create the corner here. To do that, I'm going to go into my pen tool. I'm going to update the color in my color studio. I'm going to go into the color studio. I'm going to select that other version of that cream color because it's a little bit darker. And then I'm going to select my pen pool. Then I'm going to create the shape by using line segments and curves. I'm going to tap on one end, hold my finger down to create a straight line, tap on the other end, and then continue to create the shape. And then what I'm going to do, instead of adding some additional points, I'm going to close this off, like hitting that initial point, hold my finger down, and then drag my apple pencil out. It's going to allow me to create this curve. It's okay if it looks a little wonky. We can select our node tool to adjust, then it's going to give me the curve that I want. I'm going to go back into my color studio, make sure that the color that I was trying to create it with has been selected. Then in order to get rid of this point from the original shape underneath, I'm going to use our slice tool to select the knife tool. I'm going to select my rectangle, and then I'm going to select my knife tool. And I'm going to zoom in so you can see this. I'm going to basically cut off this corner. I'm going to use this knife tool and it allows you to create an intersection. And then you're able to then remove this additional piece. And I'm going to delete that by tapping on my trash can. You can create this curve like this simply. But I created the additional piece to go on top because I want to have that idea of a shadow so that it looks a little bit more realistic. Then we can go into our Layer studio, select that folder icon, and then select Group. It'll be all grouped together. Now we can go in and add the lines as well. To create that grid, I'm going to turn that sketch back on, then I'm going to utilize the pen tool once again to create these lines. I'm going to make sure my color is updated. I'm going to go into my color studio. I'm going to select that light blue and then go back into my pen tool and then just start creating lines. Go back into my color studio, select my stroke option, tap that blue, and then go into my stroke studio. And then I can increase or decrease the size of the line. Once I've created that first line, I'm going to do that power duplicate to create the next set in the grouping. Once we get to the area where we would be, essentially that line would be behind the fold. We can just then stop and then we can go in and edit the length of that line. I'll go into my move tool by tapping on that black arrow, tap on the line, and then I can adjust. Also, if you're noticing any of your lines are going off of your page. What we could also do is go into our layer studio, tap on them, or tap on the first in the series, and then swipe right over the next one until all of the lines are selected. We can group them using our folder icon select group. And then we can take that whole group and we're going to drag it so that it goes literally on top of that original, like white piece of paper. And it'll get housed and cropped into this page so that the lines aren't falling off the edge. And then you don't have to worry about lining everything up so close that you have to zoom in to get the edges correct, you can just create a clipping mass. The next thing I want to do is add a little bit of shadow effect here so that it feels a little bit more three D and more realistic with that fold. I'm going to select that curve, then I'm going to go into our FX studio. Then I'm going to tap on outer shadow. Then I'm going to adjust the shadow with our sliders here. I'm going to increase the offset just a bit to do that. Once I have this turned on, I'm going to tap on my sliders here. I'm going to adjust the angle first, and then we can adjust the radius. I want the shadow to go this way as opposed to this way for this little fold here. I'm going to tap on the middle slider here. And I'm going to change it from radius to angle. Then we can adjust the angle. Then we can the offset well at the bottom, I'm going to adjust the angle just a little bit more. It goes directly to the left as opposed to the right. Once I have that little shadow outline, then I can adjust how far offset it is. Then we can adjust the blur. I can adjust the intensity of it. I'm going to adjust the intensity. I'm going to tap that center slider once more and change it from angle to radius. Then I'm going to increase the radius just a bit so that it blurs it a little bit more. I'm going to go back into angle again and adjust it so that it doesn't anything from the outside. Now, I realize I wanted to have more of a grid. Once I've added that paper on, I've edited. Once I've added the horizontal lines, then I can just add vertical lines. By copying those horizontal lines, I'm going to turn off my sketch once more. So we can see this a little bit easier. I'm going to select my group of lines and I'm going to duplicate this. I'm going to tap on my layer studio to pull it in. I'm going to do a three finger swipe to select duplicate. And then I'm going to hold my finger down and I'm going to rotate this to a 90 degree angle. Then if I need to, I can go in and adjust these lines as well. I'm just going to select my black arrow tool, my move tool. I'm going to double tap on the lines so that I can get a direct selection. And then I'm just going to adjust and move it so that they go beyond the edge. Now we have this little grid posted note. I'm going to go back into my layer studio, turn on my sketch. Then we'll keep moving on using our shape builder and our line tool to create the rest of the stickers. What we'll do now is this little notebook looking thing, like a ring notebook, because it's a little bit more complicated. We're going to create our shape, then we're going to use our pen tool to create these rounded rings. Let's select our rectangle tool. I'm going to have this that off white color again. The lines will be more of that darker blue. Let's first start with our shape, and then we're going to turn off our stroke here, update our color to that off white. And then we're going to create our rectangle. All right, now that we've created the rectangle, we can add the squares to the side, and then we'll add a little shadow, and then we'll start working on the rings to create the cut out here, what we're going to do is just update the color in our color studio so that it's easy to see. I'm going to select the blue, and then I'm going to create squares that will go over where the edge would be. Then I want to make sure I have enough space between the edge of the page and the paper. I'm going to update this color so you can see this a little bit better. I'm actually going to change the color of the page to this light blue so it's a little bit easier for us to see. All right, once I've added that little rectangle, I'm going to then go back into my layer studio. Turn on my sketch, so I know how many more I wanted. I'm going to select my move tool, tap on the little rectangle and then three finger swipe down. I'm going to select duplicate. And then I'm going to drag it down to where I'd like it. Then I'm going to do that power duplicate move again. I'm going to take three fingers, drag down select duplicate. Continue to do that until I have the number of squares that I want. Once that's done, what I'm going to do is group all of these squares together. I'm going to select one in my layer studio and then drag right across the others to select all of them. I'm going to select all of them. I'm going to group them using that folder icon. I'm going to tap on group. Then what I want to do is knock out this shape from the rest of the page so that it creates paper holes. I'm going to have that group selected and then I'm going to select the light blue rectangle. I'll know both are selected because they're outlined in blue. And then I'm going to go to that geometry option and I'm going to subtract. And basically whatever is on top of the blue page will knock out some of the color that is in the shape of that design. I'm going to select subtract, and it'll remove that part of the blue. You get this little paper hole. Right. Now that I've done that, I want to add the little shadow underneath this. I'm going to use my Pentool actually, to create that shape, I'm going to select my pen pool. And then I'm going to start not exactly center, but lower center on the left hand side. And then I'm going to tap around to create this little shadow effect. Once I've done that, I can update the color. I'm going to go into my color studio. I'm going to select that dark blue. Then I want to make sure that I can see it. Then I can use my No tool to adjust this as needed. All right, now that I've done that, I can do our little curves and then we can add our lines to the center of the page. I'm going to select my move tool tap outside of the shape so that it's de selected. I'm going to go into my color studio making sure I have that blue selected so I can create the rings out of this. And then I'm going to select my pen tool. Then I'm going to create the curves with this pen. I'm going to tap on the inside. I'm going to make sure that also within my color studio that I have my strokes selected and no film use bezier curves to create this shape. I'm going to tap inside for my first point, inside of the area that we knocked out. And then I'm going to go to where the first curve starts to dip down. Then I'm going to drag my apple pencil down. Then I'm going to create one additional point that will go behind page to create like this little ring. And then we can go into our Stroke studio and adjust the size of this if we'd like. Then we can go into our Node tool and adjust the placement as well. Fine tune the overall curvature as well. All right, once we've fine tuned our curve, what we can do is adjust the placement of it so that it looks like it's behind the page. If you're finding that your curve is in front of it, you can just pull in with the node tool and you can do the same concept here, so that it meets at the bottom. That way it looks like it's a ring that's completely behind. Once you've done one, you can just copy that and paste them into the other ones. We'll just go into our edimnul duplicate and then drag it down so that it goes to the next one. And then we'll do the power duplicate by just dragging three fingers on your screen. And then select Duplicate. If you need to, though, you could always go zoom in really close and fine tune everything by selecting your node tool and then bringing everything down. Once you've created all of that, then we can go into our black arrow tool, select everything, go into your layer studio, tap on that folder, and then select Group. It's all one element. Now we can add our line work. I'm going to turn my sketch back on by tapping on it in my layer studio and toggling it on so I can count to see how many lines I had. It looks like I had ten lines here. I'm going to turn this off once again just so that it's easier for me to see as we're working on this specific element. I'm going to on my black arrow to tap off of my selection. Then I'm going to go into my pen tool. I'm going to go into my color studio. I want to make sure that I have my stroke selected and I'm going to use this off white for the lines. And then I'm just going to start creating lines that go across from one end, hold my finger down to create a straight line. Then I can go into my stroke studio to adjust the width of that line. Then I can copy it and paste it as well. I'm going to select my black arrow tool. Tap on the line itself. Three finger swipe down, select duplicate. And then drag it the distance that I want it to go down. Then I'm going to do that power duplicate by then just three fingers down, duplicate. And then it'll move it for me. All right, once I'm done with that and I have everything duplicated, then I can go into my layer studio and all of those lines hold my finger down and then tap on the blue to deselect the page part. Then I can go into my layer studio and select the folder icon to group everything. Then what I did before with the grid, I'm going to mask these lines into this page. I'm going to select that group of lines. And then I'm going to drag it so that it goes right into the blue page. That way masks everything and anything that don't have color behind it. It's masked within. And you don't see the lines in there anymore. All right, before we move on to the rest of these, what I want to do is add some shadows to some of these designs. You can opt to not do this. I'm going to select, for example, this to do list. I'm going to tap on the entire group. Then I'm going to go into my effect studio. And I'm going to tap on outer shadow. I'm going to tuggle it on by tapping on it. And then I'm going to tap where it says outer shadow To get our options to the left. The adjust using our sliders, then we can adjust the opacity, how dark it is. I'm going to make it a little less dark, but you can see if I increase it, it gets really dark. But if I decrease it, it just gives us just an inkling of a shadow. I think this is a really nice effect. It's really soft. We have a 42 degree angle, 4.34 0.3 pixels for our offset, we have 19% opacity. I'm going to keep these in mind, these settings and apply them to the rest of the stickers here. 9. Designing the stickers part 3 (functional): All right, so I've updated the color of the background so it's just a little bit easier for us to see what these stickers look like now that we've made them. If you can tell the shadow is very slight, but it gives us nice effect. Now we can move on to the rest of these. Let's go back into our layer studio. I'm going to turn on my sketch then to figure out what else I want to create. Once we get all the big ones done, we can start making some of these little icons that are a little bit more creative. I'm going to create a polaroid shape here, just like what we did with this little page here cutting out the shapes from inside that original shape. We're going to do that concept so that we have a transparency so that you can put this little polaroid sticker on top of an image in your planner, or maybe your scrapbooking. Using a digital scrapbook, something like that. This is a great way to do that. I'm going to utilize my square tool here, and polaroids are usually like an off white, so I'm going to use that off white color again. I'm going to create the shape and then I'm going to tap out of this so that it deselects. I'm going to go back into that selected darker colors that can see what I'm doing, and then create another square on the inside. The outside is more of a rectangular shape and then the inside will be more of a square. Then what we'll want to do is cut this blue out from the white so that it gives us a transparency. I'm going to tap on that rectangle in my layer studio, and then swipe right over the white rectangle so that they're both selected. I'm going to go into my geometry options here. I'm going to select my black arrow tool. I'm going to tap on the geometry functions. Then I'm going to subtract and it'll knock out the blue. Keep in mind whenever you're using subtract, it's whatever is on top is what's going to be subtracted from the bottom shape. We can add a shadow if we want. You can add text to this if you want. You can just like select the two list, duplicate it and then drag it down. Then we can go into our layers and we just want to make sure that that is above the Polaroid. We can double tap to select everything. And then our keyboard will come up and you can write something like memories, or you don't even have to write anything on this at all. I'm going to double tap to select it. And then I'm going to decrease the size of the font just a bit. It's not so in your face. All right, once that's done, we can create these Washi tapes. I suggest using your pen tool to create some of these, but some of them that are really simple, like this, we can just create using our shape tool. I'm going to select my rectangle tool and then I'm going to create a rectangle that goes over this, making sure it's the length and the width that I want. I'm going to update the color. Then I think I'm going to add white stripes to the inside of this. We can use the pen tool to create these 45 degree angle diamonds, then we can fill it with color and then just copy and paste them. Then we can crop them in by using that layer mask. I'm going to do that power duplicate. So I'm just going to make sure that is selected using the black arrow tool. Tap on it. And then three finger swipe down, duplicate it. And then I'm going to drag it to the next area. And then do that multiple times until I fill the rest. All right. Once I've done that, what I can then do, I'm going to select all of those white angled shape and then I'm going to go into my layer studio. I'm going to go into my grouping options. I'm going to tap on that folder, select Group, they're all going to be selected. And then I'm going to take that selection and I'm going to drag it so that it goes on top of the pink rectangle that I've made. That way it basically crops in that shape so we don't have to worry about lining things up. If I turn off my sketch, we can see how that looks. There we go. And I've created a simple angled stripe wash. Now that we've added detail to some of these elements, we can continue to build off of the final, remaining larger pieces. I created a little calendar flag. You can make as many of these as you want. You can do zero through nine so that you can put them together to add additional numbers or flags to your layouts. But for now, I'm just going to walk you through creating the one and then you can make additional ones if you'd like. We're going to utilize the rectangle tool. Usually when I see these they're like red and white. We are going to use a white, that off white color and then we're going to add more of that brownish to the top so that it flows with our color story here. Once I've made the rectangle, I'm going to go back into my color here. I'm going to remove the. Stroke. Tap on my color fill and update it to that off white. Then I'm going to go back into my color studio. Select that like brownish red. Create another rectangle with this color on top, making sure everything lines up. Even if it doesn't, we can also do the masking trick where I can take that rectangle and then just drop it right on top the white rectangle. All right, looks like I have it in. What I'm going to do is use the circle ellipse tool and I'm going to do that knockout effect. Create a circle on top of the red. Hold my finger down to that, I get a perfect proportion circle and then resize it as needed. And then I'm going to go into my layer studio on the right. I'm going to make sure that ellipse is selected and then drag right over the rectangle grouping here. I'm going to go into my geometry tools here at the top, in the center of my menu. And I'm going to select Subtract, and it'll delete that shape so it's more of a transparent hole that goes to the top like you might see with a calendar. That is what that will look like. And then we can add a number using our text tool. I'm going to go into my artistic text tool and I'm just going to create a letter that's similar in size and make sure I update my text at the top to that American typewriter. I'm going to go into my number menu here and just type in one. And then I'm going to double tap on the one and go into my color studio. And then update the color so it matches what is in my color palette here. Once I complete that, then I can go in my tools here, select my black arrow tool, the move tool, highlight over this entire grouping. Go into my layer studio, and then select my little folder icon and group everything together. I'm going to do the same process here with this heart. I'm going to use my circle tool. Start creating my shape. Pull my finger down so that I get a perfect proportion circle. Resize it as needed. I think I like the idea of using this pink color here. Then I'm going to use my heart shape as well, which is at the bottom. You may need to scroll up using your apple pencil, Select the heart, and then make sure I update the color I'm going to use off white again. Then I'm going to create a heart that goes right on top of this. Then if you zoom in, you see you have access to adjusting the nodes so you can adjust how deep that indent is at the top. Once I've done that, then I'm going to go into my layer studio. Select the heart, select the ellipse by dragging right over it. Go into that folder icon and select Group. We can also go in as we're creating these and add those effects. We can go to the right hand studio, select our effect studio, and then go down to outer shadow. And then you can go in and adjust your settings to give yourself a little shadow. Do these little arrows. We can utilize our pencil tool for this. It makes it really simple and easy. We can update our color in our color studio. I'm going to select my pencil tool, and you want to make sure that your stroke is turned on in your swatches. Then I'm going to create the arrow and then I can go in and adjust as needed. Again, you can adjust your cap so things are more rounded versus squared or pointed, things like that. Using these additional options underneath, then you can opt to just continue to use the pencil tool to make the rest of this arrow and then connect everything. It gives it a little bit more of that hand drawn effect versus it being perfect. If you use your pen tool to create more of a vector shape, but you can still go in and select your node tool, that white arrow tool, and adjust your nodes as needed. Once you've done that, then you can just select both sections of the shape in your layer studio. Tap on one jug right over the next to select the, tap on that little folder icon and select Group. And then we'll do the same process with this little arrow here below it. I'm going to create this little flag again. You can make as many of these as you want. I just want to show you how to make one and then you can opt to make additional ones. Is basically use our shape builder as well as our geometry functions to create this flag shape. But you could also use your pen tool to create the same shape. I just think it's quicker to use the shape tool and then the geometry bullion function. I'm going to select a rectangle. I'm going to go into my color studio. I'm going to go into my color studio and update it. I think I'm going to use this light blue. Then I'm going to create a rectangle and then I'm going to go back into my color studio and I'm actually going to change this to a fill. And then remove my stroke. And then I'm going to adjust the shape of my rectangle here. And then I'm going to use a triangle to cut out this one end. I'm going to select my move tool, tap outside of the shape so that it deselects it. I'm going to go into my color studio. I'm going to pick a new color so that I can see what I'm working with. I'm going to go back into my shape tool and then I'm going to tap on it again and select the triangle. I'm going to select the triangle. I'm going to create a triangle. I'm going to adjust the size and the placement. So I'm going to go in, man, I'm going to adjust the width of this just a little bit more. Now what we want to do is cut this triangle piece out. I'm going to select my move tool, drag across both of these shapes, my geometry functions, which are right here at the top. And then I'm going to subtract and it's going to delete that. And it's going to create the flag shape for me. Now, I can add in type to this as well. I'm just going to go down to where this memory is and I'm going to duplicate it. I'm going to drag it up here. And then I'm going to go into my layers and make sure that that layer is above the new flag that I've created. I'm going to tap on the layer and drag it so that it goes right above the flag. Then I'm going to update the text to say M O, N in all caps. Then I'm going to double tap to select the type. And then I'm going to go into my color studio and I'm going to update the color. All right, once I've done that, I can select it all and then I'm going to go into my layer studio. Tap on the folder hit group. Right now we have some of these elements on the side. I want to create our habit tracker. First what we're going to do is rotate or screen. Currently I have the screen rotation turned off. What we're going to do is go back out into our gallery and we're going to go into our settings. And then we're going to tap on tools toggle, allow canvas rotation in all tools to be turned on. This will allow us to rotate our screens so that you can hit Done, and then I'm going to go into my project again. And then what you'll see is I can take my fingers and rotate my canvas and then be able to work on these additional pieces on the side. We'll utilize our rectangle tool. Once again, we're going to use this blue. Then we're going to go into our color studio and we're going to change it from a fill to a stroke. So I'm going to swipe up on that color fill, tap on my color outline, and then tap on that blue. Then I'm going to go into my stroke studio here and adjust the size of the stroke. I don't want it too big, but I don't want it too small. And I'm just going to create more of an outline effect for this one. Keep in mind the size of the stroke. I can go into my black arrow tool, tap out of what I just created, and then tap on my pen tool. And then I'll use the pen tool to create the rest of the line work. Then I'm going to select that Memories text again by just double tapping until I get selected. And then I'm going to go into my Edit menu, select Duplicate, and then just drag it out. Then I'm going to rotate it, double tap everything so it's all selected. And update it to say habit tracker, making sure the habit tracker outline and the text is selected. And then I'm going to select the whole folder icon and then tap on group. And it'll group it all together we can get started on this washi tape for this one. Similar to what we did with the arrows, you can opt to use the pencil tool to outline this, the shape of this, and it gives you more of that, like torn edge effect. One of the important things we need to make sure that is turned on while we're creating this is that our sculpt option has been turned on. This allows you to continue to connect lines that you're creating. Then I'm going to continue along the straight end here, but I want to make sure that I have a stabilizer turned on so that I can get a straight line. Because it's harder to get a straight line when you're using the pencil tool because it's meant to create a hand drawn effect in your options up here. We're going to toggle to rope stabilizer, then we're going to start from that last point that we've created and then just create a straight line. Then I'm going to do the same thing here. Zoom in, Start from that last point, create a straight line. Hold your finger down, it'll help to create that straight effect. And then we're going to do the same thing here, going across and closing it by tapping on that final point. Then if you find that your line work isn't meeting up, you can just select your node tool, that white arrow tool, zoom in. And then bring your nodes so that they connect where you need them to connect. And then that will create the final shape. Then we can do is go into our color studio and then we can remove the stroke, and then we can tap on the fill and we can update it to a color that we want. I'm going to use this salmony pink. So that I have a little bit more of that used throughout this set. And then I'm going to go and work on adding those polka dots. Now that I've created the actual tape part itself, I'm going to go into my shape studio and then I'm going to select my lips tool. I'm going to tap on my layers so that I pull that in and I can see what I'm doing. And then I'm going to use that off white color. Then I'm going to create ellipses that are the size of what my sketches are for the circle shapes. Once I've done that, I only have to create one, then I can duplicate the rest. I'm just going to duplicate this one and then drag it to place it where I need to. Once I've done that, what I'm going to do is go into my layer studio, turn off my sketch just so that I can see how this final bit looks. All right, so what we want to make sure we do is select these layers and group them all together. We've pretty much made all of the functional stickers. There are a few more that I think we might want to make. For example, like important, remember priority. Just little labels. So I'm just going to use this empty space and I'm going to do something similar to what I did with this meeting, except I'm not going to have a tab on it. I'm going to go into my shape tool, select my rounded rectangle, and then I'm just going to create a rounded rectangle and I'm going to update the color. Then I'm going to double tap where it says meeting so that I can select that. I'm going to copy it. And then I'm going to paste it by going into my edit menu. And then I can move this up. Just remember you want to make sure that that text is above that layer so that we can see it. I'm going to tap on that layer and then drag it above the red here. Then I'm going to adjust the frame. Then I'm going to double tap the text so that it's all selected. I'm going to increase the size of this. Then I'm going to finish typing in meeting details. What I think I'll do is select this little arrow here. Make a copy of it and then paste it. Then I'm going to resize it and put it so that it's facing down so we'll know that whatever our meeting details are, it's below this little label. Again, I'm going to take this layer and drag it so that it goes above the rounded rectangle we've created here. I'm going to resize it, holding my finger down on the screen so that it resizes in proportion. Then I'm going to rotate it. I'm going to bring it so that it goes on top. And then I'm going to go into my color studio. I'm going to update the color so that it matches the type or the color that I used on the type. Then once I've done that, I'm going to select my move tool, drag over all of these pieces, go into my Layer studio. And then I'm going to go and tap that folder, menu select, Group. And now everything is grouped together. This is essentially how I would create like the additional ones for like remember or priority. Then we can add different icons if you'd like. Now I'm going to create these like yes, no bubbles. So I'm going to go into my shape tool and then we have these little call out ellipses that we can use. We'll just drag across, making sure that our fingers down to create a perfect shape. If you want it more wide, you can adjust this as well, using the little red dots to adjust the placement of the tail. How wide or thin the tail should be, How high or low the tail should be within the bubble, then we can always just go in and make this wider if we want as well. I'm going to update the color of this to be lighter green and I'm going to have that be yes. And then I'm going to create a no as well. I'm going to select my black arrow tool, double tap my text in these little boxes here. I'm going to duplicate this priority. Then I'm just going to change it to say yes in all caps. And then making sure that this text is above the call out layer. And then I can adjust the placement and the size and drag it in. Once I get it in there, I can decide if I want this to be bigger, smaller. I can just tap on the outline here. Hold my finger down and adjust the size of this by just pulling from the corner and should keep it in proportion. Then I can adjust the placement so that it's centered. I'm going to select both of these by D with my move tool over both the text and the shape. I'm going to group them in my layer studio by selecting that folder icon tapping group. And then I'm going to adjust the size just a bit because I feel like they're big. Then what I want to do is just copy this to make the n and then I'm just going to make it smaller. 10. Designing the Stickers Part 4 (decorative): Now that we're done with these more functional designs, let's look at what we have so far. I'm going to go into my layers. I'm going to turn off my sketch, and this is what we have so far. What I'd like to do is work on creating some of the more artistic decorative ones so that you can see you can still do that kind of thing within affinity designer, what I want to do is create some of these icons. First, let's start with the snowflake. All this really is is lines and a circle. I'm going to update my color here so that I have that icy blue. And I'm going to make sure that it is a stroke to start with. And then we'll adjust it to fill so that we can add the circle to the middle. I'm going to select my pen tool, and then I'm just going to follow the shape of this. I'm going to adjust the width of my stroke as well, and then just essentially follow the overall design for this. Once I've created the outline of the snowflake, then I'm going to go into my shape tool and I'm going to select the ellipse, and then I'm going to create a circle that goes over the center. And then go into my color studio just to make sure that it's not a outline but that it is a fill. So I'll tap on the fill, update the color I've created, essentially a little snowflake. Then what we want to do is select our move tool, drag across the entirety of the shape, go into our layer studio, select that folder icon, and then group it. Once I've made the snowflake, I'm just going to move it out of the way so I can see it. Now. To create the rain cloud, this is essentially the sketch. What I'm going to do is user shape tool. To create a cloud, we have a cloud shape which is really great. I'm going to select my rectangle shape tool and then I'm going to scroll down to where it says cloud. Then I'm going to make sure I have my color fill turned on. I don't want to stroke Then making sure that cloud shape is selected, I can create a cloud here. Then what's nice is you can adjust how thin or thick the bubbles are and then you can adjust the number of bubbles. Then once I've created the cloud, I want it to be one of the clouds that are flat on the bottom. Before I do that though, I want to update my color. I don't want it to be blue, I want it to be this white. I'm going to use my geometry functions to cut a piece out so that it creates this flat line at the bottom. So I'm going to select my rectangle, go into my color studio, update the color, that's something easy to see. And then I'm just going to create a rectangle that goes across and then I'm going to adjust it so I have the shape that I like. Then when I have it the way I'd like it, I'm just going to make sure I select both the rectangle and the cloud itself. I'm going to go into my geometry functions at the top, and then I'm going to select subtract, and it will delete this for me. Then it gives me that cloud effect that I like. You could use multiples and duplicate this and create a cloudy day. Then you can adjust the size of this as well, or you can duplicate the bigger one. Create it so that it looks like it's going to be a rainy day. Now that we've created the cloud, what we will want to then do is add some raindrops. If we go into our shape tool, we select the tier shape, we can then create what looks like raindrops. Then what we're going to do is select our move tool, drag across both the raindrops as well as the cloud. Go into our layer studio and then group them. The last weather related icon I want to create is a sun. And I'm just going to use my shape tool once more as well as the pen tool. And I'm going to create outlines. I'm going to go into my shape tool. We could either do the donut option and then we can adjust how wide or thin the inside, or we can opt to just create a circle instead of having a fill, have it be a stroke. I'm going to update it to this orange color. I'm going to move the sun over. And then we're just going to add little spokes using our pentool. I'm going to tap on my pentool, making sure I have my stroke turned on and not my fill. I'm going to go into my color studio, remove my fill, and turn on my stroke. And then we're just going to create little spokes that go out of the centerpiece of the sun. Once I'm done with creating that, I'm just going to select my move tool, drag over the entirety of all of the shapes and lines, and then go into my layer studio and then group it. Now I have a sun. Now that we've created the weather icons, let's work on some of these more creative pieces. Let's start with the Washi that has the floral design in it. Again, similar to what we did with the other wash outline it to create the shapes. Using the pencil tool is a little bit easier because it's not as uniform. So what we'll do is tap on the pencil tool. I'm going to turn off rope stabilizer and then basically just start outlining and then making sure I connect to the last point where I started. Then we can zoom in if we need to and make adjustments using the Node tool as well. And it gives us a flush shape, and then we can adjust it from being an outline. We'll remove the outline by tapping on that white square with a blue line through it, tap on our fill, and then update the color. I think I'm going to use this green again. I think I'm going to use the darker green actually. Then I'm going to rotate this zoom in. If you're noticing that your shapes are covering the sketch again, just make sure that that photo is above everything in the layers and then you'll be able to see the sketch beneath it. It looks like I have a bunch of little hearts and flowers. And then we can outline to create that flower shape. We don't like how that looks. You can always go in and adjust with our nodes. We can also use our node options up here to clean things up if we want to smooth things or if we don't want to use the pencil tool, we can again just revert back to using your shape tool. We can use that cloud shape, create the flower. In this case, my flower has five petals, so I can create a cloud shape here. Then I can change the number of bubbles to five. Then I can go in and adjust my inner radius so that it gives me that flower shape. And then I can rotate it into the shape that I'm making and adjust the size. And then I can select my circle in my shape tool. Go into my color studio, Update it from the green color currently to white. To add the center of the flower, hold my finger down to create a perfect circle. Then we can use the pencil tool to make the stem. And the leaf will go into our color studio, update it to that light green, and making sure it's not a fill but a stroke. And then go back to the pencil tool and add a little leaf, in this case, removing the stroke and having it be a fill. Then once I've made one flower, I can just select everything with my move tool and then group it in my layer studio. Then I can just duplicate that and add it to the rest of this. Copy it and reuse it. I'm going to duplicate it. Turn my sketch on so I can see what I'm doing here. Then I'm going to move this over and I'm going to flip it. I'm going to go into my transform studio. And then in my flip and rotate, I'm just going to flip it horizontal. Then I'm going to duplicate the original again and pull it back into place. Then I'm going to add the little hearts that I've created for this as well. I'm going to go into my color studio and then update the color so that it's this off white again. And then I'm going to go into my shape tool and then I'm going to select that heart shape. Then I'm just going to add the little hearts where I drew them. All right, And then just make sure that you select everything and you group it in your layer studio. Again, I'm going to use my pen tool for some of these more organic looking shapes. I have my stroke turned on. I'm going to select my pencil tool and then I'm just going to follow the shape that I've created. We want to make sure things connect. Then what I want to do is smooth this out a bit. So I'm going to select smooth. And then I'll go into my color studio, and then I'll turn off the stroke and then I'll turn on my fill. It gives me this fun like blobby shape. Then what we'll want to do is add the text on top and the heart. I'm going to go into my shape tool. I'm going to select my heart tool, I'm going to update the color to this red. And then I'm going to create the heart here. I'm going to adjust the shape and adjust the angle for it. And then I'm going to duplicate it once I'm done and pull it to the other side, then I'm going to add the, doing my best you can opt to hand draw these. Again, you can use that pencil tool if you wanted to write. Or you can use your type tool and want to try to keep this as simple as possible so people don't feel intimidated with it. But if you are great at hand lettering, absolutely, go for it. I'm going to double tap where it says Meeting. I'm going to go into my edit menu. I'm going to copy it and then I'm going to paste it. Then I'm going to move it down here. I'm going to adjust this so that I'm going to angle my screen, my artboard so that I can see what I'm doing and keep things level. If you don't see your text, it's probably because it's the same color as the cloud or because it's below that shape. You just want to go into your layer studio and pull it to the top. We're going to update the color to this red. Then we're going to increase the size as well. Change it to say, doing in all caps. If you want something to be all caps, you just have to hit shift twice. And then I'll give you the caps lock option on your keyboard here I'm going to write Do and then Best in a different type pace. Once I've written doing, I'm going to duplicate it and change it to my. Then I'm going to add Best. And I'm going to duplicate doing again, pull it to the bottom, change it to Best, but I'm going to select Best. And then I'm going to go into my font options in the upper left hand area of our menu. And then I'm going to find at that is more like hand drawn or looks more like handwriting or calligraphy. All I think this will work. I use this font called Photoshoot. Then I'm going to select it with my move tool, then I can play around with placement. All right, once I've done that, then I can select everything in this layer grouping here in my layer studio. And then I can just group it all together and then I can adjust the angle of that sticker if we want. Then what's nice is if you like something like, say for example I really like this one, I can copy it. And then, and then make it in a different color as well. Which is what I'm going to do here to fill up some space. Same with this little guy as well. I'm going to duplicate it, pull it up here. And then I'm going to go into the layer grouping for this. And I'm going to open it up. I'm going to update the actual background of the tape to change it color. We haven't used the blue too much, I think I'm going to do blue. I'm to go into the flower one here. I'm going to go into my layer group here. And I'm going to update the colors for this one. I'm going to change it to blue as well, just so that I have some additional blue ones in here. Then I can open up these flowers and update the color of the petals as well. That way we have some variety. That is it, that's all the stickers that will create for this little project. We have a nice combination of functional with a few of the more decorative creative stickers thrown in. 11. Exporting the Stickers as Slices: Now that we're done with these, what I can do is go into my layers and we can organize things if you want. That's why I say it's always important to group things together and then you can rename them. But the most important thing that we're going to do is figure out how to export these. What I'm going to do is make sure my photo is turned off. And then I'm going to delete the background that I created here because we don't need it anymore. We want to make sure that when we export this, these have transparent backgrounds. What we'll do is turn off the rectangle. You could also delete it if you prefer that. But it's important that everything is grouped together in its own little individual grouping folder. So that when we slice these and export them, it's exporting as a single image. That's why I like to just go through my layers here and just make sure all of the stickers are grouped with all their elements and it makes up one single image. All right, when I select my drop down menu, The Little Carrot, in my layer studio on artboard one, it'll show my sketch which is turned off and locked. And then it'll show my sticker layer and it'll show my background. The background should be, the sketch should be off and you want to make sure your sticker layer is turned on. If you tap on the lit on the left hand side, you can basically toggle down and it'll show all of your stickers. And they should all be grouped together and you'll see one little icon for each one. Then what we'll want to do is go into our export persona. In the upper left hand menu, we're going to tap where the designer icon is. We're going to select export. What export persona allows us to do is basically take all of the elements on this one page. Instead of exporting it as one page, which you can do, you can export it as a PNG with transparency or as a J peg with a white background. But the thing that I find is most helpful for people who do digital planning is that you can export each individual element by itself in one fell swoop with transparency, without a background, without having to do much extra work other than selecting them. What you'll see is, what you'll see is that the art board will be outlined. And then this new menu will pop up to the right hand side, which is our slices menu. You can export all we do that without selecting each individual element. It'll just export the entirety of this artboard in one page, but it will have transparency. What we want to do though is select all of these elements individually so you can drag over with our black arrow tool, which in this case is the sliced selection tool. We'll drag over, you'll see all of our elements are now outlined in blue. Then what we'll want to do once we've selected everything is go into our Slices Layers menu on the right hand side. The first one is your slices options. The second one is the Layers menu. What we'll want to do is create a slice out of all of these objects. We're going to tap create slice. Then you'll know your slice has been created because it has this little header in blue on the side. What I like to do is just go through this individually and make sure there's no empty bits that we don't need. Once I've created the slices, that basically means that each of these are going to be exported as individual files. In our case, what we want them to be is PNG's so that they have a transparency in their format. Before we do that though, we want to make sure that the quality of the PNG is high enough that we don't have any pixelation issues. That's one of the biggest problems people tend to have. Once we get to this part, they export and then they'll say, why are my images so blurry or pixelated? Typically it's because affinity will optimize your file size, so smallest. But that doesn't mean that the quality is going to be the greatest next to where it says port. All we can tap on the little three menu. We can change the PNG type that we want. We can change the file type that we want. In this case we want PNG, but they also have PNG dithered Jpeg, best quality, high quality. What I want for this project is a PNG. Then here you can select the quality type one X is your standard, two X is retina, three X is the highest quality you can go for. I'm just going to select three X and then I'm going to go out of my slices options. Once I've set this up fully, now what we can do is select Export All. Then it's going to ask you, where do you want these files exported? I have a file already set up in my affinity designer file on my ipad. For this specific course, I want it to export to that, I'm going to tap on that. And then I'm going to hit open, then I'm going to hit Export all again. It'll export all of the files. It'll export all of these PNG's into that specific file. I'm going to go check on that. I'm going to pull up from my C, go into my file system, select the Course 33 Template Files. We will see all of these have now been exported. 12. Trouble Shooting and Saving the File: Once you're done exporting, you can go into your file system and double check to make sure everything is there. A quick way to just see the quality and see what the figures look like is just to hold on on the file. You'll get a pop up and then you'll want to select Quick Look. You'll know that it's transparent with no white background because it'll just be on a black background. Now the other thing to keep in mind when you do these quick looks, just to double check the overall quality. If you notice that you're having any issues with things being blurry or pixelated, I want to quickly run through a troubleshooting scenario that you can do. If you created your file at four by six at 192 DPI and you find that that's too low quality. Once you export this, even with adjusting your sliced settings, like changing it to PNG, eight dithered or PNG and three X. Updating any of the formats. Here my suggestion would be, go back into your designer persona and we can adjust this file. Remember, if we increase things in affinity designer, it's not an issue because we are working in a vector format. My suggestion would be to increase the overall size of your canvas, which will then increase the size of all the elements. This is a really simple quick fix. What we can do is go into our Document menu. We can select Resize. It'll give us all the options to resize our document. We can select Size Document, then you can update it from the left hand side. You'll get the slider bars, you can increase your DPI. Then here, these will likely say four by 6 " and you can just double the size. You could double it to eight by 12 instead of four by six. And then you can go up to the top and change your DPI to 300. And change your settings here from bilinear to bicubic because I find that just gives you a better quality P and G overall. And then when you're done, right here to the left of all of these settings, you'll have an X or a check mark. And you'll want to just hit the check mark. And it'll save the settings and then you can go through the process and export your slices once more. Now that we've done that, we can exit out of our file system. We can go back out into our gallery here. I would quickly just save As and rename it for me. Since this is my 33rd course, I'm going to name it course 33. So I know what I'm working with. I'm going to save it, I'm going to save it to my template file so it can share this affinity designer file with you. And then I'm also going to save it as a template. To do that, I'm going to tap into my file. Go to my Document menu, select Export as template, hit Save, and I'm going to save that in that same file folder as well. That way you all will have access to these digital files and explore the file itself to see how everything is made up. 13. Using the Stickers in Goodnotes: Now that we've exported, we saved, now we can exit out of affinity designer and what we're going to do is open up good notes. I have an older version of Good notes, you may have a different digital note taking app altogether. Or you may have the more current version of Good Notes, which is now in subscription format. It may have a little bit of a different interface. So I just want to preface that section so that you know that it's just a little bit different in terms of the interface, but the idea and the concepts of how we're getting the stickers into the app are relatively the same. So I'm going to launch my good notes. Once you're in good notes, you may have stuff in your gallery or may not. My suggestion would be just before we even open anything up, we're going to do a side by side view because this is going to be the first way we load our stickers into the app. I'm going to pull up from my dock and then I'm going to go into my file system, select it from my dock, and drag it up so that I can pull to do a side by side view. I have the file already open, but if you don't, you can just explore through your file system. I have mine in my affinity designer files under my Course 33 template files. Then over on the left side I have my good notes interface. I'm just going to open up a notebook. If you have a notebook from good notes or from another designer, you usually just have to swipe left to get to the main page area. The easiest way to go about adding stickers to your good notes app is to just drag and slide them from your file system into your good notes interface. I like to just pull them in. What's nice is you can resize things, you can layer stuff. I like to think of it as almost like scrap looking in a sense. Then you can write on top. You can also use the type tool and add type on top of this. Then when you're done, you can tap out of it and you can move it around. That's one way to add these stickers in. Another way that you can add it in is directly through the interface. To remove the side by side view, I'm just going to drag my window to the right. I'm just going to select all of these and remove them off of my screen by selecting them, holding my finger down, and then just selecting delete. The other way that you can import your stickers is by using the Elements tool. In good notes, it looks like a star at the very top of your menu here, you'll tap on it and you'll get this pop up with the elements that are already included in your system. But you could also import your own. For example, if I tap on this set, this is my Y2k sticker set, we can import our own. What we'll want to do is scroll down to this little menu bar and scroll left and select the plus icon. And then we'll basically be creating a new sticker collection. I'm just going to call this Course 33 sticker set. You can obviously call it whatever you'd like. And then once I've done that, then I can add elements from my file folders or from the photo albums I'm going to import from. And I'm going to go into my affinity designer file, go into my Course 33 tempt files, and then I'm going to select all of the different ones from inside this file folder. If you have a lot of stickers, it might take some time because you do have to do this one by one. I haven't really found a way to select multiples once you've put them in. Once, You don't have to re upload them when you use the elements setting, the only thing is that it will likely increase the file load and the size of your application. Just make sure that you have enough memory and whatnot on your ipad. All right, that's all the stickers. Once I've selected all of them, I'm going to create and it'll create a collection within my elements that I can always utilize. By accessing this menu on the pop up here, I can select the collection name that I want to work with. And I can use and access these stickers over and over again. Like I said, it's always important. I know this looks really large. It's always better to create your stickers at a larger size and you can size them down than it is to try and size them up. All right, that's how you place all of your stickers in. You can import them through the file side by side view or you can import them into your Elements folder here and create a whole set that you can always access over and over again within the app itself. Then you can use like the last tool to select and move things around. You can also deselect by tapping off and then tapping on the element. And you can resize things as well. Then like I said, you can write on top, you can layer things, you can add a picture underneath this, and then add a little polaroid effect on top. It's a lot easier than most people realize. I think you're going to have a lot of fun with this, especially as we are in the New Year. If you're planning and you're already setting up your year goal setting and you're transitioning into digital planning. Creating your own stickers is a fantastic way to add some creativity and fun inspiration to your layouts and your spreads. That is it. That is how you create your own digital stickers and affinity designer version two on your ipad and how you can import them and use them in digital note taking apps like Good Notes. 14. Course Outro: Thank you so much for creating with me today. I hope that this class helped you get comfortable with the affinity version two interface, Gain the confidence that you need in creating digital stickers and it's inspired you to experiment with digital planning. Remember to make sure you check out the class resources for your project, template and digital sticker files that I made for this class. Also, please share your project in the class project gallery. Or if you feel off for it, you can also share on social media and tag me at Bello Sophia Creative. I'd love to see what you've created or even offer some helpful tips or insights if you need them. Finally, please consider leaving this class a review. These reviews are so helpful and ensuring teachers get engagement, which in turn helps our classes overall in search. Thank you so much for joining me today in class and I will see you in the next one.