Affinity Publisher vs. Affinity Designer – For Digital Planner Design
My passion for graphic and product design led me to open my own digital product business in 2018. Since then, I’ve created over 400 digital products, including digital planners, notebooks, stickers, illustrations, patterns, notepads, journals, and more.
Today, I help aspiring designers and entrepreneurs to create, launch and market a digital planner business so that you can transform your knowledge into passive income. I know how much becoming a digital entrepreneur and earning passive income has changed my life for the better and now I want to share it with everyone I can.
You might feel a little unsure about where to start or how to make your own planner. Don’t be intimidated! It’s not hard if you have the right tools.
My students often ask me which program they should use or start with to create their own digital stationary. Here’s a list of programs that you can use to create digital planners and stationery to sell:
Keynote by Apple
Powerpoint by Microsoft
Affinity Publisher by Serif
InDesign by Adobe
This blog will tackle the comparison between two programs, Affinity Publisher and Affinity Designer, as a digital creator. Keep in mind while reading that the comparison will be particular to the usage of these programs to create digital planners and stationery.
#1 – What’s Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher?
Affinity Designer, for those who are familiar with design software, is like Adobe Illustrator.
Affinity Publisher is similar to InDesign, but with a bit of Illustrator, too.
Affinity Designer lets you create art, print projects (such as digital inserts, covers ), logos, and icons. It’s a favorite among illustrators, web designers, and game developers. With features like unlimited artboards and slice exports and advanced grids, snapping and alignments, it offers a lot of ways to make designing easier and more professional than ever.
Affinity Publisher allows you to produce professional-level books, magazines, social media templates, and, of course, digital planners. Its program lets you create and customize images, graphics and texts to create beautiful graphic products. Allows you to create presets so you can save your favorite workplace setups and switch between them while working on different projects for greater ease in your workflow.
#2 – Device compatibility with Affinity Publisher and Affinity Designer
Both programs can be used on Mac and Microsoft computers. A huge bonus!
Affinity Designer has an iPadOS that helps to transfer files between a computer and an iPad, which can be very convenient if you use multiple devices to make your creations. As for Affinity Publisher, Serif will most likely release an iPadOS version in the near future.
#3 – Cost of Affinity Publisher and Affinity Designer
Each program can be purchased separately on each device, which helps to keep things simple. I love that they have one price and a one-time payment structure rather than a subscription. For me, I prefer to just pay once and be done with it.
Affinity Designer costs $49.99 for the Mac or Windows program and $19.99 for the iPad program.
Affinity Publisher costs $49.99 and comes with a lot of bonus templates like a cookbook template, a magazine template, and a photography portfolio template, for free.
Occasionally each program offers limited-time discounts that allow you to save up to 30-50%. So keep an eye on their Instagram account to see their current offers!
#4 – Hyperlink functionality
The hyperlink is the main feature that makes digital planners and other stationery different from printables. It is what makes the file interactive and functional in the note-taking app.
Affinity Publisher has hyperlink functionality.
Affinity Designer does NOT.
Therefore Affinity Publisher has an edge over Designer for making your own digital planner.
#5 – Creating printables inserts in Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher
You can create printables inserts in both Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher.
While you can use both programs to create printables and digital inserts, however, Publisher has the advantage because you can utilize:
The design presents to systematize your design
Tables to create even lines, grids and monthly and yearly calendars, etc.
Snap to grid margin
Export the document as a multiple-page PDF. ( In Affinity Designer you will only export each artboard as a single PDF)
Both programs can export the files into:
PNG (clear background)
JPEG
PDF
#6 – Creating stickers and illustrations in Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher
Both Affinity Publisher and Affinity Designer allow you to create stickers and illustrations.
Affinity Designer has a slight advantage as it’s designed to create vector-based projects such as:
Logos
Patterns
Illustrations
Any type of digital artwork
Affinity Designer has all the tools you need to create just as if you were using Adobe Illustrator. It also has an Artboard that Affinity Publisher doesn’t have. The Artboard allows you to layout all your screens, pages, menus, and more across unlimited Artboards so you can focus on specific elements of your designs separately.
Affinity Publisher also has some very nice design features, such as allowing you to create illustrations in 3D.
You can learn how to create a realistic ring binder as well as digital stickers in Affinity Publisher in my signature program Digital Planner Academy.
#7 – Creating Seamless Patterns in Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher
Affinity Publisher does not have a tool in the program that will make your work professional. However, you can create patterns manually with it. So, it depends on if you’re able to master the manual design whether or not you will have a professional-looking outcome.
Affinity Designer has an advantage with its Symbols tool that allows you to create a seamless pattern in live view for a more professional design. Take a look at the picture below.
#8 – Cropping and exporting in Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher
Both Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher allow you to crop and export your designs, however, Designer has an advantage with the “slice” tool where you can crop a certain shape and export it without the need to export the whole document.
Affinity Designer supports all major image and vector files, including PDF/X4, EPS, SVG, and PSD support.
Affinity Publisher boasts “unrivaled compatibility,” allowing you to import and export to all major raster and vector files, including layered PSD, PDF, and EPS formats
Both programs allow you to export into the following file types:
EPS
JPEG
PDF
SVG
PSD
PNG
TIFF
GIF
Final thoughts!
Both Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher are incredibly useful tools and essential programs if you want to pursue the business path of becoming a digital product designer. If you’re planning to open an Etsy shop and sell digital products or start a digital planner business, having the right tools can make a huge difference in the quality of your products.
However, if you are looking for one specific program that will give you the best bundle of tools you need to get started, then I would go with Affinity Publisher as they allow you to add links to your digital planners which is the main feature you’ll need to create your products.
To help you get started as a digital designer, check out my Digital Planner Academy, my signature program to start your digital planner business today. You’ll learn how to design your digital products via easy-to-understand software hacks, tricks and tutorials so you learn what you need and skip what you don’t.
Read these blogs next:
For more program comparisons, check out this blog to compare Affinity Publisher vs. Keynote.
Learn more about different programs that make it easy to create digital planners by reading this blog.
