In this Affinity Designer tutorial, we will begin building the gird layouts for our digital planner template kit. These are the Manuscript grid layout and the two and three column grid layouts. Let's work on the two column grid layout.

As you know from the previous tutorial where we created the artboards, the baseDocument was the first artboard that we created. In the baseDocument, the Page Base canvas size is 612 pixels by 792 pixels. Also the Page Content area has a size of 468 x 648 pixels and is surrounded by a 72 pixel margin. These measurements create the foundation for our grid system.

When we created the artboards for our template kit (see screenshot), we just duplicated the baseDocument for each artboard, to insure that the Page Base and Page Content layers remained in each artboard. Now we will make the adjustments needed to create the twoColumnLayout and threeColumnLayout artboards.

twoColumnLayout (see screenshot)

We will create two versions of the twoColumnLayout. The first version will have two columns of the same size. The second version will have a small left column and a larger right column. There are other versions for the two column layout but these are the most popular.

Equal Columns

For the two equal columns, both columns will be 224 pixels wide and 648 pixels tall. Between the two columns will be a gutter that is 16 pixels wide. Therefore, the columns and gutter will fill the Page Content area completely.

Open your 002_digitalPlannerTemplateKit document in to Affinity(R) Designer.

1. Select the twoColumnLayout artboard. Go to the Layers panel and duplicate the Page Content layer and rename the duplicate layer Column 1 - 224 wide.


2. In the Transform panel, set the Width to 224 pixels and the Height 648 pixels. Set the X value to 72 and the Y value to 72, to position the column on the left side of the layout (see screenshot).

Now we will duplicate this layer.


3. In the Layers panel, duplicate the Column 1 layer and rename it Column 2 - 224 wide.


4. In the Transform panel, set the X value to 312 and the Y to 72 (see screenshot).

Now we will group these two layers together.


5. In the Layers panel, select both Column 1 and 2 and group them. Name the group layer Equal Columns Layout - 16 px apart (see screenshot).

Next

Create a Digital Planner Template Kit - Series Index

Screenshots used by permission of Serif (Europe) Ltd. This article is not endorsed by Serif Ltd.
Screenshots used by permission of Time Base Technology Limited.