Author | Jackie

When you buy digital planner kits, you often get covers and/or stickers included. Not only do customers love an accessory or two in their digital planner kits, the added value helps your kit stand out from everyone else’s.

You may be wondering how Affinity Publisher - a desktop publishing app - is suitable for digital stickers. Surely those are designed in more illustrative apps like Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator or Procreate?

Well yes, illustration software is a more natural go to, but that depends on the type of sticker you want to produce. 

If you are creating graphic stickers - characters, flowers, vector art, drawings, etc - you will need an illustration software package like Affinity Designer, Procreate, or Adobe Illustrator.

But, for tags, notes, journals, to-do lists, shapes, labels, etc, Affinity Publisher is perfect and has all the tools and features you need.

Affinity Publisher Pages

There are many benefits to using Affinity Publisher to create your digital planner.

For making stickers, the main benefit is the ability to create different page sizes in a single document. 

In the image below, you will see that this one document of digital notes stickers includes pages of different sizes: square, portrait and landscape. And when you export your final stickers, they will be exported in their various shapes and sizes in a single export.

All you need to do is turn them into a digital sticker sheet for Goodnotes or similar, zip up the individual stickers, and package with your digital planner! The perfect way to add real value to your digital stationery products.

Faster Design Workflow

If you’ve made a digital planner in Affinity Publisher before, you will know the power of Master Pages, Global Swatches, and Text Styles. These powerful settings can also be applied to digital sticker design files.

Whether you are working with a premade template or creating your own digital sticker design files, setting things up from the get go with Master pages, Global Swatches, and Text Style will save you a lot of time.

The image below shows a before-and-after. Changing the colours of this digital sticker template took me 5 minutes. I used the digital stickers template taken from my Make Your Own Digital Planner course plus Global Swatches. FIVE MINUTES!

Did I also mention, Templates are your best friend!

Useful Panels and Tools for Designing Digital Stickers

So, which Affinity Publisher Panels and Tools do you need to know your way around to create digital

stickers?

1 | Stroke Panel

This is where you can set your line thickness and colour, essential for creating lines on note stickers. You can also select dashed lines and have round or square ends to your lines.

2 | Character Panel

This is for all your font settings. Choose your font family, size, and weight. Once you’ve set your font characteristics, I would recommend using Text Styles to create global, editable styles.

3 | Swatches Panel

This is where you will set your background colour for your stickers. If you are creating note stickers to complement a digital planner you’ve designed, you will want to use the same colours for your stickers. And, it goes without saying, use Global Swatches! 

4 | Rectangle Tool

Use this tool (or any of the shape tools) to create your background sticker shape. You can also use this tool to draw checkmark boxes/circles, tags and labels. Affinity Publisher has a great range of premade shapes. When dragging out a shape, make sure to hold your shift key down to constrain the proportions of the shape.

5 | Frame Text Tool

Create text frames to add numbers or titles and prompts to your stickers. Use for text labels and date icons. You can also rotate text frames which can give a unique look to stickers or make better use of a small space.

6 | Pen Tool

Great for creating straight lines. Use your Stroke Panel to change the properties of any lines you draw and the Swatches Panel to add colour.

Creating a Simple Lined Sticker

In this example, we are creating a lined, square sticker.

1. Use the Rectangle Tool to create your background. 
2. Choose your sticker colour from the Swatches Panel.
3. Use the Pen Tool to draw straight lines across the stickers, holding down shift as you draw to make sure the line is horizontal.
4. You can vary the thickness of the lines to create a ‘heading’ area by using the Stroke Panel.
5. Use the Frame Text Tool to create a heading.

Exporting

Exporting your digital stickers couldn’t be simpler. If your stickers don’t require any transparency i.e. aren’t shaped at the edges for example a circle sticker, you can export them as JPEGs.

Choose PNG if they are shaped to make sure retain transparency where you need it.

Once exported you can zip up the individual JPEG or PNG stickers. Better still, customer love Sticker Sheets. These are usually made for Goodnotes, but can be made for Noteshelf or Notability if that is what your customers prefer.

Conclusion

Although using desktop publishing software like Affinity Publisher to design digital planners makes sense, using it to create digital stickers isn’t obvious.

As you can see, Affinity Publisher makes it easy to create an endless range of note, journal, flags, and label stickers. It is great value for money and perfect software for a digital stationery designer.

Affinity Publisher offer a free trial period. Plenty of time to try-before-you-buy and it is a one-time purchase, no ongoing subscription costs to worry about! You can find out more about Affinity software here on their website.

Find out more about designing your own digital planner and sticker kit using templates and Affinity Pubisher...

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