Affinity Studio Tutorial - Typography (an Introduction)

[Angela Toucan]

Typography is defined as the art and technique of arranging text so it is readable, visually appealing, and communicates a message effectively. My knowledge of typography is still fairly basic but I do use the basics a lot in my scrapbooking pages. I plan to learn more about typography this year.

In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to:

• Set an indent for the first line of a paragraph or add a gap between paragraphs to make them stand out
• Adjust character settings to make blocks of text more legible, or better fit your space
• Add Special Characters - those letters/symbols you don't have on your keyboard but want to include in your text
• Create Drop Caps inside a block of text

Affinity Studio is set-up so that tools and features are collected together into Studios based on the most common tools needed for different uses of Affinity. One of those is the Typography Studio which provides essential tools and panels for controlling the formatting and positioning of text. By default, the Typography Studio is hidden, but it can be unhidden very easily.

To choose which studios are shown on your installation of Affinity click on the 3 little dots to the right of your studios buttons and select the ones you want turned on or off. In the image below you can see which ones I use.

In my examples I have used filler text for any blocks of journaling text. If you want to fill a text box with filler text it's easy. Create your text box, then go to Text - Insert - Filler Text.

Let's use the Typography Studio. It can look a little scary when you open it for the first time, but it's not and I'm going to show you how to use it.

Adjust paragraph settings to make paragraphs stand out​

There are several ways to make paragraphs stand out. The two main ones are to have a space between the paragraphs, or to have the first word of a paragraph indented. We can do these using the Paragraph Panel.

Adjust the width of the space between your paragraphs

Indent the first word of your paragraph

Adjust character settings to make blocks of text more legible, or better fit your space​

Here I have a block of text using the chickens font by Heather Joyce. Here the lines are too far apart from each other making a large block of text harder to read than it needs to be.

With the text box selected, decrease the space between the lines by adjusting the spacing for the "Leading Override" in the Character Panel. Use the down arrow next to it, or edit the value in the number box.

Not only is that now easier to read, it's also visually more appealing.
Similarly we could use that method to increase the gap between lines of text that are too close.

You can also adjust the distance between letters and words using the settings in the Character panel. Experiment with the settings to get your text how you want it.

• Kerning: Adjusts the spacing between specific pairs of letters to make them look more balanced
• Tracking: Spreads letters out or pulls them closer uniformly making the text more spacious or denser
• Leading Override: adjusts the distance between lines of text
• Shear: Shears the text so that it is slanted rather than straight
• Horizontal Scale: adjusts the width of the letters
• Vertical Scale: adjusts the height of the letters
• Baseline: Lifts or lowers text relative to the baseline of the text - you are unlikely to use this much as it's an advanced typography feature for serious desktop publishing.

Add Special Characters​

Sometimes I want to include characters that are not on my keyboard. Most standard fonts (not all custom fonts) have lots of different characters or "glyphs" included. We can access them via the Glyph Browser on the right hand side.

Simply click on the text in the position you want to add your special character and then double-click on it in the glyph panel.

Create Drop Caps inside a block of text​

The Drop Caps Tool is inside the Paragraph Panel

Simply tick the enabled box, and specify how many lines deep your drop caps letter needs to be.

You can make further adjustments if you want to - experiment with the settings.

 

[Gaelle]

Thank you very much @Angela Toucan