Communities don’t start overnight, and a customer base is not, by default, a community. When fans of any particular brand of software start talking, though, communities are bound to emerge. I have fond memories of a number of tutorial sites, you know? Well Affinity, the company behind Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, has apparently decided to try and jumpstart this process by launching Affinity Spotlight. This new site does double duty as a learning resource for designers and photographers, and as an attempt to build a community around the Affinity brand. The site features tutorials, interviews, behind-the-scenes style articles, and articles geared toward plain old inspiration. It’s a bit like a cross between Tuts+, and Adobe’s own blog. Affinity Spotlight has a heavy focus on teaching the basics of its software to readers, but it also has a lot of content about the more conceptual aspects of creating art and design. Since it is a fairly new site (having only just officially launched), there isn’t a ton of content just yet. They have content that goes back to December of last year, but the early stuff is basically all just news releases. Their learning-focused content is beginner-level for now, with titles like Blend modes explained, and Raw, actually (a title that I quite like). Their inspirational and behind-the-scenes content, features some rather stunning work, by talented artists and designers. This, I think, can be enjoyed by creatives of any skill level, so if the beginner-level tutorials don’t appeal to you, you should go check that out. Keep in mind that they are looking for contributors. If you have some experience with Affinity software, and creating learning materials, they’d likely be interested. If you have work that you think deserves to be featured on their site (preferably made with their software), they’re interested in that, too. I’d say to give it a look. Even if you don’t use Affinity software, there’s a little something there that pretty much any creative could be inspired by, and there’s more coming… Featured image is a detail from artwork by Dimitrios Sakkas, profiled on Affinity Spotlight.