How to Use Affinity Designer Text Styles

Text Styles are presets that can be applied quickly and efficiently to a large amount of text. This is essential for projects that use text and require the ability to update across the platform. In this tutorial we will give a brief overview of how to use Affinity Designer Text Styles.

For this tutorial we will be using a rustic typewriter font called Front Porch. We have an awesome selection of Typewriter Fonts if you want to use another font.

Step 1 - Set up your font for Text Styles

To begin, once the document is set up we want to create our text and adjust the font. We have used the Frame Text Tool to constrain our text. If you don't know how to do this you can follow our tutorial on using the text tools in Affinity Designer. For this tutorial we will be working with a character and paragraph example. Type out your text and change the font as needed.

Step 2 - Locate the Text Styles Panel

The Text Styles panel is found on the right side of the screen. If it's not visible, go to the View menu at the top and select Studio. Click on Text Styles to activate it. A tick will show up next to Text Styles so show that the panel has been opened.

Alternatively, you can access the Text Styles at the top of the screen when the Text Tool is used. You can also adjust your text position and size if needed. However you choose to access it, you will notice two symbols.

The Paragraph Style is shown as ¶. This affects the properties of the paragraph. The Character Style is shown as a small letter 'a' with an underline (a). This affects the properties of characters, words, sentences or lines in a paragraph. Paragraph and Character styles can be used together.

The top text will be treated as the Character while the text below it will be treated as the Paragraph. When opening the Text Styles panel the Character and Paragraph will most likely be set to No Style.

Step 3 - Apply the Text Styles

We will be accessing the Text Styles Panel on the right hand side. With the text selected, click on the Text Styles panel to open the menu options. Under the panel, No Style for both Paragraph and Character are highlighted in blue.

The Character options will be dependent on whether or not Bold and Italics are included. Some fonts, like ours, will only have regular text available. But if Bold and Italics were available, then it could be applied under the Text Styles panel.

For the example below, we selected the Heading 1 Paragraph Style and Emphasis Character Style. Emphasis is the Italics option for the font if there is one. Now, the only reason why Emphasis is showing on the font is because the font was changed to Arial. This is due to the style changing the font without asking us. We will fix this in the next step.

You will see that the Paragraph and Character selection is highlighted in blue. At the top of the Text Style Panel you will also see 'Heading 1 + Emphasis'. This indicates that both a Paragraph and Character Style has been selected and applied.

The paragraph was adjusted with Table Body Paragraph Style and Strong Character Style. As with the text above it, the Styles will also adjust the font and set it to Arial. Let us change this in the next step.

Step 4 - Create Text Style to keep font

To make certain your font is kept when using Text Styles, we will quickly create our own. There are a host of options available for each style but for this step we will just adjust the font.

Create Paragraph Style

First, select the text you want add the Style to. We chose to start with the paragraph text. At the bottom of the Text Styles Panel click on the +¶. This will open Create Paragraph Style with options left hand side. Be sure to tick Apply Style to Selection at the bottom to see real time changes. Click on Font underneath the Character option.

You can change the Style name, we made ours Table Body Custom for this tutorial. We will base our settings on the preset already available. Further down, under Character Font you can change the Font Family, Font Traits (Bold, Italics) and Font Size. Font Weight and Width are greyed out for this font due to no Bold or Italics options. We adjusted the Font size to 20pt.

The Style Settings details will also show at the bottom of the Create Paragraph Style panel. Click Ok and the new style will show in the Paragraph Styles under the Text Styles Panel. The Style will also represent the changes with a preview. In other words, the style name will be shown as the selected font.

Select the character (Font Bundles) text and create another paragraph style. This time we saved it as Heading Custom, changed the font and adjusted the size to about 64pt.

Create Character Style

In the same way that the Paragraph Style was created we will also create the Character Style. Click on the paragraph text to select it. Then, next to Create Paragraph Style, click on the +a icon, Create Character Style. This will open the panel where you can adjust the font.

As our font doesn't contain Bold and Italics, this option will have no effect. However, if you want to use a font that does, this is how you create a new Character Style. Once you click Ok, the Character style will show on the right. Repeat this if needed for any other text that requires different settings.

Step 5 - Edit the Text Styles

Now that we have our custom Text Styles set up, we can edit them further. Double click the Paragraph or Character style you want to edit. The panel will open up except this time it will say Edit text style and not Create (Paragraph/Character) style.

We want to prevent the adjustments possibly affecting the paragraph text. So we selected the Heading Custom for the Paragraph Style. No Style was selected for the Character Style. This is for the Font Bundles wording.

Go to Color & Decorations on the left under Character. Here you will be able to adjust the color of the style, highlight and more. Checking Outline then clicking the down arrow will open up the Outline options. You could almost see this option as a Stroke. We adjusted our settings as seen in the image below.

Make sure that Apply to Selection is selected at the bottom to see the changes. Click Ok to save the changes.

When you look under the Text Style options on the right, you will see the style preview. Make adjustments to the Table Body style for the paragraph. Again, look on the right hand side to see the preview.

You can work your way through the different options under the Edit Text Style panel. However, these become more far more advanced as you go along. The steps in this tutorial have shown you the basics, which is usually good enough for quick editing.

The Text Styles can quickly be applied to any text in the document. It saves you time with a simple click if you want to bulk edit text. We hope that this has helped you understand how to use Affinity Designer Text Styles.

Next up, check out our other Affinity Designer tutorials on creating a paper cut effect, making an Instagram carousel post, and using color palettes.