With the latest update of Affinity Designer, I decided to download my copy and give it a try to create my mobile icon and fav icon with it. I was immediately blown away!

In a matter of minutes, it has become on of my favorite tools and it now holds one of the prime spots in the Launchpad.

If you are familiar with the Photoshop and the general Adobe Studio environment, then using this designer tool is really easy. It is not exactly the same, but it is a very similar UI. All the right tools are where they are supposed to be. It’s what I call a “common sense interface” where tools are located where they make sense to be found.

I was able to create my icon in less then 20 minutes despite not having used Affinity Designer before. Trial and error and some “undo” was required, of course.

The software is really fast. I love how easy it is to zoom in and pan to make things go quicker, along with the smart use of shortcuts that saves a lot of time and keep you focused on your idea before it’s gone. For me, it is more important to have more possibilities with a software, rather then go for how easy it is to use, but Affinity Designer has both, the power and the user friendly versatility we all want.

I believe it has one of the easiest layer system for working with vectors and definitely the easiest gradient tool I have seen so far. It is so much fun how you can independently change the corners of a rectangle without having to change its other properties using the corner tool. The layer effects panel is amazing and the new saveable undo history is a killer.

 

After just a little bit of use, I could see myself replacing several steps I take with other software (like Illustrator) and pretty much doing it all here. I can easily create full Web Interface for a potential website or something as simple as a logo in a matter of minutes. Once exported into photoshop, the layers are kept the way they are supposed to be but then I wondered… Why even bother exporting to photoshop?

 

I will surely write a full review in a near future about this awesome mac app, but for right now, if you haven’t already, download your copy of Affinity Designer as soon as you can shed those $39 and see for yourself how easy it is to create with this useful tool.