Creating custom gradients for your planner designs can add a vibrant and personalized touch to your work. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the process of making rainbow-style planner rings in Affinity Publisher, responding to a viewer's request for a gradient that transitions from top to bottom across the planner rings. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Setting Up the Gradient
1. Create a Gradient
- Start by adding a shape to apply your gradient to. The specific shape doesn’t matter since it’s only a temporary tool.
- Use the Gradient Tool to drag a gradient from the top of the shape to the bottom. Don’t worry about the colours at this point, we’ll adjust those shortly.
2. Add Gradient Points
- Initially, you’ll see two points on the gradient (top and bottom).
- To add more colour stops, hover over the gradient bar, and click where you want to add a new point.
- Click to add a third point in the middle. Affinity Publisher will automatically add two more midpoints—one between the top and middle, and another between the middle and bottom. This gives you five points in total.
3. Customize the Gradient Colours
- Now, you can assign colours to each point. You can use a pre-made palette or manually select colours from your swatches.
- Click on each point to change its colour.
- For a rainbow effect, use colours like red, orange, yellow, green, and blue.
4. Fine-Tune the Gradient
- Adjust the position of each colour stop to ensure a smooth transition.
- You can click and drag the points to reposition them along the gradient path.
Step 2: Save the Gradient for Future Use
1. Add the Gradient to Your Colour Palette
- Once you’re satisfied with your gradient, save it for easy reuse.
- Go to your colour palette, add the gradient as a standard fill, and rename it for easy identification.
- Remember, gradients can’t be saved as global colours, but they can be stored as part of your document palette.
2. Editing Your Gradient
- If you need to make changes to your gradient later, add it to a shape, make the necessary adjustments, and then save the updated gradient back to your palette.
Step 3: Apply the Gradient to the Planner Rings
1. Select the Planner Rings
- If you’ve watched the previous video, you might be familiar with the States Panel. This tool allows you to quickly select specific elements within your document based on their layer names.
- Open the States Panel and run a query to select all layers named "Planner Ring."
- Make sure to adjust the scope to the current spread, especially if you have planner rings on multiple pages.
2. Apply the Gradient
- With all the planner rings selected, apply your saved gradient. Initially, the gradient may apply within each ring individually, which isn’t the desired effect.
3. Adjust the Gradient Across All Rings
- To correct this, select the Gradient Tool and drag it down from the top of the first ring to the bottom of the last one.
- This will ensure that the gradient transitions smoothly across all the rings rather than being repeated within each one.
- If you prefer the gradient in reverse order, simply drag from the bottom to the top instead.
4. Experiment with Different Gradients
- If you have other gradients saved in your palette, you can easily swap them out.
- The gradient will apply across all selected rings without needing to reconfigure anything.
Recap
Creating rainbow-style planner rings in Affinity Publisher involves a few key steps:
- Create and customize a gradient using a temporary shape
- Save the gradient to your palette for easy access and reuse
- Select the planner rings using the States Panel
- Apply and adjust the gradient to achieve the desired effect
This technique isn’t limited to planner rings, it’s versatile and can be adapted to various projects within Affinity Publisher.
Thanks for reading and watching, and see you next time!
