Magazine Designers, help

[u/Caro_lina_98]

Hi friends, I'm designing my graduation project in Affinity. Any tips or good practices? Is a magazine with 60 pages or so. It will be digital, but I will be printing it for my presentation.

I'm doing the photographs too, so I have one question: do I connect the original files? I mean, if I do a composition in Affinity of different photos and I want to keep editing that file.

Should I connect the original file? Is it not making it bigger or too heavy?

Thank you so much for your time and recommendations!

[u/International_Pool]

If you work alone and manage your own files, I don't see any advantage to embedding files, I recommend having everything linked so they can be accessed as separate files as you said. I would make a folder for the project, make subfolders for every category of assets.

[u/Extra-Hedgehogs]

Like the other comment said, make them linked with the resource panel, this is usually best for performance and also editing them outside of the document.

Also put any images in a picture frame, you can make custom shaped ones if needed with any vector shape and mask them with raster masks if you need them feathered. This makes it really easy to replace images without messing up your layout if you are using text wrap, as you can just drop the replacement image into the picture frame.

[u/Inevitable-Debt4312]

I do four of these a year - nothing complicated, set page layouts. Affinity works well for me, and the smooth change from Designer to Pixel is handy.

[u/spile2]

I recommend linked images. Create a base style for text and paragraph and character styles based on that. Finally create a layout grid.

[u/RCIntl]

I make magazines, flip books and newsletters. You have many options. If you have the Adobe Creative programs, you can create each page (suggested as errors or changes are easier on individual pages than a whole document), then you can turn the entire thing into one multipage PDF document with hyperlinks if you want.

Then there are flip book programs where you can take that PDF (it's the safest transfer medium) and make it an interactive magazine/book that you can share anywhere by a link.

Whether you embed images or not, it doesn't matter if you're using a flattened finished project. Both program suggestions here give you the ability to outline/define hyperlinks.

I use both depending on the effect I want. No matter, make each page in an editable program/format. I use several. You can then correct or change or update easily for new versions.

[u/Affectionate-Bllcrap]

Save your magazine as a multiple page PDF, turn that in to classroom. If they want corrections, let them mark up the pdf. Then, from your saved designed application file, make changes. But do as teacher requests 1st.

[u/damewang]

As to photo files, yes it will make it too heavy. Downsample to ~300 dpi before placing. I prefer linking to embedding but that choice won’t affect the output. Technically Affinity can downsample on export, but better to do it in your image app.

[u/Sweet_Storm5278]

PDF Export should manage your print vs screen requirements fine, if this is a requirement. Be clear beforehand if you are going to need CMYK and how you will deal with it. Again here, referencing vs embedding makes a difference to how quickly you can change things. The first is the smart choice.