Creating complex shapes with Compounds

Affinity Designer Video Tutorial

Here are two quick video tutorials on using the compound functionality in Affinity Designer. There might not be a “shapebuilder” tool similar to Adobe’s but you can do a lot with compounds in Affinity Designer. It offers the Boolean ‘Add’, ‘Intersect’, ‘Subtract’, and ‘Xor’ in a non-destructive manner. The resulting shape act like normal vector shape [with very few exceptions – e.g. use the compound shape as a clip].

I love to play around with compounds, now that I have found and embraced them. The use of Boolean operations is always a bit tricky when there are complex objects in play. Stray shapes and random nodes happen. Fonts cause a lot of issues and require time to fix. Compounds are not the All-in-One solution but use them wisely and they save you a lot of time and grief.

Let’s take a look:

My second video was triggered by a post on social media that I stumbled across in an art group. The creation of the design was done in a destructive and rather elaborate way. So, I looked for a simpler, cleaner, and non-destructive approach. Eventually, the simplicity and the beauty of it surprise me.

I hope you find these video tutorials on creating complex shapes with compounds helpful. It’s a gem of a tool hiding in plain sight. Give it a go, play with it, see what it can do to help speed up your design process. Even if it’s just about keeping things editable, it’s well worth it in my humble opinion. Enjoy!