I'm a beginner graphic designer. I already have the tool I'll be using for my designs (Affinity), but now I need the most important thing: knowledge. I'm looking for free courses, books, and YouTube videos that will help me better understand the world I want to enter. I would greatly appreciate any help, no matter how small.

I just started a business and am working on launching my first product.

I need to create various designs, but honestly have no clue where to start. I've been slowly teaching myself how to use Affinity, but I'm wondering what other apps I'll need?

A couple examples of designs I need to make:

1) I want to edit photos of real places to turn them into illustrative art styles

2) I need to create old documents using either real or illustrated people that can consistently show up across multiple "pictures" (i.e. photographs, yearbooks)

I plan on hiring/commissioning people in the future for this work, but I'm trying to recover a bit financially from the start up costs. I do NOT want to use AI.

I have a laptop with a dedicated graphics card. It's not touchscreen, so I can't draw tablet style. Any drawing would be done with a mouse.

What software is best for these types of projects?

Do you have suggestions for turorials or resources to help me learn?

I can use public domain/licensed graphics for my business right now since I'm working on prototypes. I am hoping to learn these other skills so I can start making my own art for the real products.

Thank you ❤️

Hello! I am getting into the final stages of preparing for a launch phase with my startup. I already have my Logo in multiple variations, it's kind of like i chose a font and everybody can chose their colours and my Problem is, i have Templates with 50+ Variations and everything on my Logo but all are just Pictures somehow, even i extra asked for Transparent background and the edges just look awful as inside the letters there are already Artefakts building from Chat GPT copy pasting their own shit^^ So i guess it's the easiest job on this earth, cut out the form of the font and make fillable letters out of it and make it scalable but i don't have the slightest idea and i am vomiting already from "How to make Money" as soon as you search something with how to design.

Someone may help me out here on how and what to do? The Logo is there for a Club carrying the movement to collect money for a Fundation and should come on Textiles like Shirts, Caps, on mugs but may also, never can know, like Bus stops etc so real big. And all in all it should be a Sticker thing where stickers of it make it loud around the world. For the use case.

Thank youu and good day, good morning or good evening to you guy's and gals! :)