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Affinity Essentials Lesson 6: How type works

1 Min read Published
Affinity tutorial editorial typography layout demonstrating text hierarchy, spacing, and alignment across a design.

Understanding Type in Affinity

If you control type, you control attention. In this lesson, you’ll get hands-on with Affinity’s type tools and learn how to shape, refine, and control text for maximum impact.

Using an editorial design by artist Isabela Humphrey as your foundation, you’ll work with frame text, artistic text, and tables to build flexible layouts. We’ll then show you how to align and distribute elements with precision, adjust leading, tracking, and kerning for stronger legibility, and experiment with variable fonts for more granular control.

Lesson objectives

By the end of the lesson, you’ll be able to:

  • add and format frame text, artistic text, and tables
  • align and distribute text elements with precision
  • adjust leading, tracking, and kerning for improved legibility
  • experiment with variable fonts and editable axes
  • create and apply character and paragraph styles
  • manage typography confidently across your designs

Lesson resources

Before you begin, make sure you’ve downloaded Affinity and logged in using your Canva ID. You’ll also want to download the Lesson 6 source file to follow along.

About the author

Katy McCabe is an Education Program Manager and former teacher with six years of classroom experience, alongside a background as a creative technology product expert. She’s passionate about helping educators introduce Affinity to their students. Outside of her work in education, Katy can be found in her tattoo studio, where she works as a licensed tattoo artist.

Education Program Manager
Education Program Manager

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