{"slug": "affinity-designer", "name": "Affinity Designer", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 7, "warners": 0, "score": 4.29, "rising": -1.31, "first": "2026-01-11", "latest": "2026-06-26", "why": "I have been very happy with Affinity Designer (equivalent to Adobe Illustrator)", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I have been very happy with Affinity Designer (equivalent to Adobe Illustrator)", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "affinity.studio", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.affinity.studio", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Affinity Designer"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 779105633, "item_id": 48694102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48694102", "by": "JKCalhoun", "date": "2026-06-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the one that I had done by hand in Affinity Designer", "excerpt": "I am fascinated with nomograms ever since I stumbled upon them. I spent some time earlier this year creating one for two resistors in parallel. I had seen it in an old book [1] but it was of poor quality. (I tried to get Gemini writing to write code to generate an SVG file\u2014but it was pretty poor compared to the one that I had done by hand in Affinity Designer.) [1] https://www.worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/Tech", "context": "", "use_case": "Drawing nomograms", "switched_from": "", "story": "What Is a Nomogram and Why Would It Interest Me?"}, {"id": 765124096, "item_id": 47820256, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820256", "by": "alwillis", "date": "2026-04-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You can go that route with Affinity Designer", "excerpt": "> I miss the days of having a native desktop design app with a perpetual license. You can go that route with Affinity Designer [1], owned by Canva, who partnered with Anthropic on Claude Design [2]: We\u2019ve loved collaborating with Anthropic over the past couple of years and share a deep focus on making complex things simple. At Canva, our mission has always been to empower the world to design, and that means bringing ", "context": "", "use_case": "native design app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Thoughts and Feelings Around Claude Design"}, {"id": 763163825, "item_id": 47697739, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697739", "by": "misswaterfairy", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been very happy with Affinity Designer (equivalent to Adobe Illustrator)", "excerpt": "Canva have promised that Affinity will be 'free forever' so make of that what you will, unless you want cloud AI functionality which requires a subscription. The Affinity software itself is free. I have been very happy with Affinity Designer (equivalent to Adobe Illustrator) which I purchased some time ago before the acquisition. I haven't used Affinity Publisher much, and found a few minor things frustrating (paragr", "context": "", "use_case": "vector design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026"}, {"id": 750904624, "item_id": 46931539, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931539", "by": "teaearlgraycold", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Affinity Designer 2 for $63", "excerpt": "I mean it's kind of hard to say because almost all software I use is free, a lot of it is FOSS. The software I bought outright in the last couple of years was well priced because of competition (ex: Affinity Designer 2 for $63 - the new version is free although I stick with v2).", "context": "", "use_case": "vector design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Software Factories and the Agentic Moment"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["vector design", "drawing nomograms", "native design app", "email obfuscation svg", "icon and graphic design"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48689277", "title": "What Is a Nomogram and Why Would It Interest Me?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818700", "title": "Thoughts and Feelings Around Claude Design", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47653990", "title": "Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47609694", "title": "Email obfuscation: What works in 2026?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46924426", "title": "Software Factories and the Agentic Moment", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46577242", "title": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026)", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 779105633, "item_id": 48694102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48694102", "by": "JKCalhoun", "date": "2026-06-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the one that I had done by hand in Affinity Designer", "excerpt": "I am fascinated with nomograms ever since I stumbled upon them. I spent some time earlier this year creating one for two resistors in parallel. I had seen it in an old book [1] but it was of poor quality. (I tried to get Gemini writing to write code to generate an SVG file\u2014but it was pretty poor compared to the one that I had done by hand in Affinity Designer.) [1] https://www.worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/Tech", "context": "", "use_case": "Drawing nomograms", "switched_from": "", "story": "What Is a Nomogram and Why Would It Interest Me?"}, {"id": 765124096, "item_id": 47820256, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820256", "by": "alwillis", "date": "2026-04-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You can go that route with Affinity Designer", "excerpt": "> I miss the days of having a native desktop design app with a perpetual license. You can go that route with Affinity Designer [1], owned by Canva, who partnered with Anthropic on Claude Design [2]: We\u2019ve loved collaborating with Anthropic over the past couple of years and share a deep focus on making complex things simple. At Canva, our mission has always been to empower the world to design, and that means bringing ", "context": "", "use_case": "native design app", "switched_from": "", "story": "Thoughts and Feelings Around Claude Design"}, {"id": 763163825, "item_id": 47697739, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697739", "by": "misswaterfairy", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been very happy with Affinity Designer (equivalent to Adobe Illustrator)", "excerpt": "Canva have promised that Affinity will be 'free forever' so make of that what you will, unless you want cloud AI functionality which requires a subscription. The Affinity software itself is free. I have been very happy with Affinity Designer (equivalent to Adobe Illustrator) which I purchased some time ago before the acquisition. I haven't used Affinity Publisher much, and found a few minor things frustrating (paragr", "context": "", "use_case": "vector design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026"}, {"id": 761778816, "item_id": 47611176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47611176", "by": "fmajid", "date": "2026-04-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use SVG where I created a text object in Affinity Designer and converted it to curves", "excerpt": "I use SVG where I created a text object in Affinity Designer and converted it to curves so the SVG doesn't have text any more, just vectors for the glyphs of it. Seems to work pretty well at keeping spammers at bay.", "context": "", "use_case": "email obfuscation SVG", "switched_from": "", "story": "Email obfuscation: What works in 2026?"}, {"id": 750904624, "item_id": 46931539, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931539", "by": "teaearlgraycold", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Affinity Designer 2 for $63", "excerpt": "I mean it's kind of hard to say because almost all software I use is free, a lot of it is FOSS. The software I bought outright in the last couple of years was well priced because of competition (ex: Affinity Designer 2 for $63 - the new version is free although I stick with v2).", "context": "", "use_case": "vector design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Software Factories and the Agentic Moment"}, {"id": 745283249, "item_id": 46580203, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46580203", "by": "pyxisapp", "date": "2026-01-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I started learning affinity design", "excerpt": "An iOS app made for saving locations. It\u2019s called Pyxis: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/travel-journal-pyxis/id6639617144 I\u2019m not a developer by trade but I\u2019ve been learning iOS dev for about 6 years now. It\u2019s become my project that I just keep working at since I personally use it a lot. The app lets you save your favorite locations, add notes to them, add photos, check weather, tag them for better organization, and a", "context": "", "use_case": "Icon and graphic design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026)"}, {"id": 745223761, "item_id": 46576485, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576485", "by": "MrPowerGamerBR", "date": "2026-01-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer.", "excerpt": "> Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer. While I haven't experimented with it that much yet, Affinity (the new one, the one after the Canva acquisition) does work in Wine 10.20. Now, I won't say it is a smooth experience, one of the workarounds that I needed to do is use Wine's virtual desktop so Affinity's tooltips are rendered correctly instead of being pure black, and the GUI does seem to not render c", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too"}]}