Welcome back, friends. Today, I’m diving into a topic that is already stirring a great deal of excitement in our community—Affinity Designer 3, its new integrated approach, and what it means for us as artists, designers, teachers, and business owners.
As many of you know, Affinity Designer has been the heart of my workflow for years. With the release of version 3, I’ve spent time testing, exploring, and considering how this shift will impact both my own work and your learning journey.
You can listen here.
🌟 Why Affinity Designer 3 Feels Like Such a Big Step
Affinity Designer 3 isn’t just another update—it’s part of a much bigger transition happening in the creative world. The combination of:
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A one-time purchase
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Professional-grade tools
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A more streamlined workspace
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Canva stepping in as the new parent company
…means we’re entering a new chapter where powerful tools are becoming more accessible than ever before.
For many years, I taught Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop because they were the standard. But subscription-based pricing continues to limit independent artists. Affinity Designer offers professional tools without the financial strain, and version 3 strengthens that position even further.
🌿 My Current Setup: Designer 2 on iPad, Designer 3 on Desktop
Right now, I’m still teaching and doing most of my professional work inside Affinity Designer 2 on the iPad. This keeps everything consistent for students, especially for template-based classes.
But behind the scenes, I’ve begun working with Designer 3 on desktop—not to relearn everything, but to:
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Test my templates
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Record upcoming classes
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Learn the interface changes
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Get comfortable before the iPad version arrives
Every file I’ve opened from Designer 2 has transferred flawlessly to Designer 3.
The only caution is that once saved in version 3, those files cannot be reopened in version 2—so I always keep backup copies.
💸 Affinity Designer vs. Adobe Illustrator: A Clear Shift
One of the biggest reasons I believe this update matters:
affordability and access.
For years, creatives have had to balance their passion with pricey tools:
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Monthly subscriptions
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Multi-app bundles
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Increasing fees year after year
With Affinity’s one-time purchase model, artists can learn, explore, and create without standing at the door of their creativity asking, “Can I afford this?”
Designer 3 makes that independence even stronger.
🔮 The Canva Partnership: A Connected Creative Future
Another area I find fascinating is Affinity’s new connection with Canva.
Imagine the possibilities:
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Creating a pattern in Affinity Designer
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Opening Canva
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Dropping it straight into a mockup, slide, or social post
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With no exporting or resizing
A seamless ecosystem would transform workflow efficiency for:
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Teachers
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Digital product creators
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Surface pattern designers
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Small creative businesses
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Anyone who juggles design and marketing
This integration feels like a glimpse of where the future of digital creativity is headed.
🧰 Designer, Photo & Publisher in One Workspace
One of the biggest changes in Designer 3 is the merging of:
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Affinity Designer
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Affinity Photo
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Affinity Publisher
All under one roof.
This brings:
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Seamless switching between tools
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More intuitive workflows
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Customisable studios
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Less friction in complex projects
Several students in my community, like Jasmine and Melanie, have already created blended vector + pixel workflows that would have been difficult several years ago. Designer 3 only enhances that freedom.
🎓 How This Affects My Teaching (and Your Learning)
Good news for my students:
All my courses remain fully compatible.
Whether you are in:
Every tool, process, and template still works beautifully.
While the interface will look a little different, the principles behind everything I teach—composition, colour, repeat building, and layering—are exactly the same.
And please, don’t feel pressured to upgrade immediately. Especially if you're working on the iPad. Stay in version 2 until you feel comfortable and ready.
🖌 A New Wave of Creative Independence
This moment reminds me of the shift we saw when Procreate became widely accessible. Overnight, professional-quality creation became available to anyone with an iPad and a stylus.
Affinity Designer 3 is offering a similar kind of independence across a wider field: vector, pixel, and layout work.
Artists now have tools that are:
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Affordable
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Flexible
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Customisable
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Truly powerful
And you can own them outright.
This is a huge step forward for our industry.
💬 I Want to Hear Your Experience
Have you tried Designer 3 yet?
Are you waiting?
Are you doing a hybrid setup like I am?
I’d love to hear your first impressions.
You can message me on Instagram @deloresart, use the chat box at deloresart.ca, or email me directly.
Your experiences will help shape upcoming episodes and future classes.
If the player doesn't show above you can listen here.
TRANSCRIPT:
Delores Naskrent: [00:00:00] Hey friends, it's Delores here. Welcome back to the Creative Juggle Joy, where we talk about creativity, business, and everything in between. Today I wanna chat about something that's causing a lot of excitement, the release of Affinity Designer three, and what it means for us as artists, as teachers, and as creative business owners.
Now you all know how much I love teaching in Affinity Designer. It's my home base for vector, even pixel and surface pattern design work just about everything I do now, let's talk about how I'm feeling what I've learned so far and why I think this change is gonna be a really, really good thing.
Right now, I'm still working mainly in Affinity Designer two on the iPad. That's the version I know best, and all of my [00:01:00] current templates and classes are built around it. Also, all of the professional work that I do. I think I'll be staying here for a bit at least until Designer three arrives for the iPad so everything stays consistent for my students.
At the same time, I've been easing into the desktop version of Designer three. Not because I have to relearn everything, but to get comfortable, using my own templates and documents, on the desktop, and then also to start to record a few classes there. So I always have that.
In the back of my mind that I wanna do the recording, but I also want to be able to do some of my work on here. Honestly, I hardly ever use Adobe Illustrator anymore, so I am really wondering whether I am going to be even keeping the Creative Cloud. I've opened every single document that I've tested from version two to version three has [00:02:00] worked perfectly fine.
The only caution I have if you're gonna try this, is that once you save it in three, you can't go back. So I always. Keep a backup copy if I think I will need to go back into version two. That little bit of testing has actually made me feel really confident. At first, I was a little bit paranoid to do that, but it tells me that all of my creative systems are safe.
Now let me tell you what really got me excited. I personally believe. A affinity designer is about to leap ahead of Adobe Illustrator. Yep. You heard me right. It all comes down to pricing and accessibility. For years, independent artists have struggled. With subscription models, they can be super costly especially if design isn't your full-time job, if you are one of those people who is still working full-time [00:03:00] and then has a creative Cloud subscription to keep up with, it's actually a pretty chunky monthly payment.
I was really. Happy when Affinity had the one-time purchase model. I thought that was a really great thing for the industry and that's why I started to teach on it so much more than I did with Illustrator. Yes, I did start with Illustrator. I taught Illustrator for many years and Photoshop as well.
So the whole time I was teaching high school. The industry standard was the Adobe products, so that's what we were teaching on. And now, with Canva stepping in as the new parent company, we're really not sure what's gonna happen. We're stepping into a new era of creativity. One where the tools are.
Powerful. Just as powerful as the Adobe products. But they're also affordable and [00:04:00] integrated. So think about that for just one second. We've been talking a lot about it in our Thrive meetings and in the Affinity Designer Foundations course I've been teaching, many have said how much relief they feel owning the software outright.
They can focus on learning and not on worrying about if they're gonna make enough money to pay the monthly fees. That is one big thing. The other thing that I was really fascinated by, and I. Think there is a ton of potential in is their partnership with Canva. Imagine for a second, like you design a repeat pattern, let's say an affinity designer.
Then you open up Canva and drop it straight into a mockup or create a social post around it or a presentation if the two softwares can work really well together, [00:05:00] and it's quite seamless. Can you imagine that? So that there'd be no exporting and no resizing. I think that's the world. We're heading towards a really connected creative ecosystem, and I know that version three is a big step in that direction.
One of the things that has been really fascinating to me is that there's no longer separate apps for photo or publisher. Everything now lives in one space. So we've got designer, photo publisher all in one space. Just think about that. You can move from illustration to layout, to editing, all without switching programs.
It's, it's gonna be really cool. You could even customize your workspace to match your personal design studio flow, your workflow. We were talking about that in an. A recent meeting and one of my [00:06:00] students, Jasmine Goodwin, has a short YouTube video where she explains how she has customized her workspace, to really compliment the work that she's doing.
It makes it way more efficient. If you haven't checked her out, you definitely should. That's Jasmine Goodwin on YouTube. I personally think it's creative freedom at its best. And honestly, it's exactly what lots of us have been dreaming about, right? So let's talk about how this affects my teaching and your learning.
All of my classes, whether it's Affinity Designer Foundations, Mastering Surface Pattern Design, the Template Club or the membership, will still work perfectly in version three. I am sure there'll be, a little bit of initial confusion sometimes as to where a particular tool is located or how to [00:07:00] really find things in the sub menus
but everything will. Be doable. The tools might look a little different, but the core principles that I teach, the composition, the color, the layering, and the repeat building will all remain the same. And I have tested it, so I know my templates are gonna work the same. So if you're worried about compatibility, don't be.
Everything that you have learned thus far is still relevant. In fact, you can go into my school and you can take all of the Affinity Designer two based courses, and the information will be 100% relevant for Affinity Designer three. In my weekly Thrive meetings, we've talked a lot about not feeling the pressure to upgrade right away.
I'm gonna say that again, do not feel the [00:08:00] pressure to upgrade right away, especially if you are an iPad user. I personally believe that right now until we get the version for the iPad. Stick with what's familiar and learn the new tools only when you're ready. For me, I'll be blending both versions for a while.
I'll be using version two on my iPad just like I always have, but I'll be exploring version three on the desktop and of course recording some classes. This way I think that when the iPad version lands, I'll already know how to guide everyone through it.
In a way, it's similar to when procreate first exploded onto the market. It made professional art tools accessible to everyone. Prior to procreate being released, people illustrated in [00:09:00] Photoshop. C brushes were created in Photoshop. Remember Kyle Webster and his fantastic suite of brushes that we all know and love so much?
Well, they're all replaced now by what we do in procreate. I'm sure there's dozens and dozens and hundreds of people who are still using Photoshop for their illustration, but there are thousands. Like literally thousands, probably millions of people now using procreate. What it did is it made professional art tools accessible to everyone, and now Affinity Designer is doing that on a larger scale.
It's uniting illustration and photo and layout all under one roof. And what excites me the most is what it represents. Think about it, it's creative independence. Artists are realizing they can [00:10:00] own their own software, control their processes, and still produce world class work. I know people who work exclusively in procreate and they create anything that they want.
Some of them are surface pattern designers. Some of them are illustrators, some of them are animators. Inside our own community. I've seen students like Jasmine that I was talking about, and Melanie customize their own Affinity studios, combining pixel and vector tools into smooth and personal workflows.
It's, inspiring. I'm so proud of them. It proves that these tools are only getting better and more and more personal for every artist who uses them. For me, this personally feels like a breath of fresh air. It's not about chasing the newest thing. It's about building on something that I already love.
I feel [00:11:00] energized. I'm ready to explore. I'm ready to teach for the desktop for the first time in Affinity Designer, and to see how these improvements can make creating even more joyful. I know it'll be a learning curve. It it always is, but that's part of what keeps me curious and excited. To me, this version feels like it's really designed for creators who wanna grow with their tools.
Now, I would love to hear from you, have you tried Affinity Designer three yet? If you have what was your first impression? How did it feel using it? Are you upgrading right away or are you waiting like me, or are you gonna do a hybrid of, combination of working on the iPad in version two and on the desktop in version three?
How are you gonna manage that? I know how I'm going to, but I wanna know how you're gonna manage it. You could send me a message, on Instagram at Delores Art, or I have a chat. [00:12:00] In my, on my main website, Delores art.ca, there's a chat in the lower right hand corner. You could just go in there and send me something or email it to me.
I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to include some of your experiences in upcoming episodes. This change, like I said, is going to affect all of us, and I would love to think it's going to change. The way we create digital art. This is the next chapter and I would love to hear from you so that I could talk a little bit more about it in upcoming episodes of the podcast.
So that's where I'm at. Still loving in version two on the iPad testing version three on the desktop, and feeling genuinely excited for what's ahead. I have so much I would love to share with you. I have been working on so many new things, and part of what keeps me [00:13:00] going is knowing that I'm helping you speed up your workflows even more than ever.
And for me, it's like I'm a kid in a candy shop. If I get to use new software or an update of a software. It's the funnest part of my day is just experimenting. So I'd love to hear your ideas, and if you have ideas for classes that I haven't done, or things I haven't really done for you before, please add that to the comments you're making.
And as always, keep creating, keep juggling, and most importantly, keep finding joy in the process.