Affinity Designer 1.5 released

The powerful and award-winning graphic-designer app Affinity Designer has just received a big update. This alternative to Adobe just released version 1.5, which is now available in the Mac App Store. According to a press release from Affinity, the new version is completely optimized for use with the newly released MacOS Sierra, which should provide designers with a seamless user experience in this Mac-only app. Here’s a complete rundown of the major components of this big update: 

• Symbols
• Constraints
• Asset management
• Text styles
• Massive export improvements
• New color picker tool
• Style improvements

Here’s additional context on some of these new features. Symbols empower designers to have multiple instances of the exact same object. It works like this: If they edit just one object, they’ll be able to edit all of the objects at the same time. Designers can now use constraints to precisely control either the size or position of an object relative to its container. This makes it entirely possible to produce reusable elements that function in a pseudo-responsive fashion. One of the more popular features of Affinity Designer is snapping power, which users regularly rave about. Thanks to features like snap-to-pixel and customizable grids, alignment is a cinch. At the same time, instant live feedback makes it a breeze for designers to keep close track of their design’s precision. Now let’s switch gears to the asset management panel. This is another vital element of a much smoother and efficient workflow. It enables designers to simply drag and drop items either into or out of the panel. This makes for hassle-free access when it’s necessary. Here’s a helpful and brief explainer video on all of the big, new features that version 1.5 has in store for designers.  Besides these big changes, Affinity is celebrating the release of version 1.5 by rewarding Affinity Designer owners with a free Grade UI web-design kit, which is worth $58. Russian designer Sergey Azovskly, the kit’s creator, asserts that the kit is both useful and versatile for designers and developers. His objective was to provide designers with the chance to choose from a wide variety of options for the same component. Since creating a design from scratch takes a lot of time, the availability of a lot of universal components simply means that designers have the power to build a whole site design in only a few minutes, now. Interested designers have to follow the in-app prompts in order to download the UI kit. The Windows version, which is currently in beta but whose official release is imminent at the time of this writing, will also get this free kit. If you’re already an existing owner of Affinity Designer, then you’re not going to have to pay anything to get version 1.5. Serif, however, is also offering any new customers a 20% discount that’s only going to be around for a limited time on the standard Affinity Designer price. Users can get Affinity Designer here from the Mac App Store.