Bold.af: the Affinity rebrand blends personality and precision, relaunching with a bang

Today, professional creative software company Affinity has unveiled a complete rebrand in tandem with a product relaunch. After being acquired by Canva in March 2024, the software brand had a tricky brief for its new visual identity – to feel part of, yet distinct from, its louder, more mainstream big sister. Headed up by Canva’s creative director for Europe, Tom Carey (previously of Wolff Olins and Meta Reality Labs, and who once worked on the Sydney Opera House redesign) and created in collaboration with Design by Twist, the rebrand manages to toe this line cleverly, while also feeling very different to other brands in the design software space.

“It needed to feel connected to Canva, because otherwise what’s the point?” Tom tells It’s Nice That. “But it couldn’t just feel like a version of Canva. To get creatives on board, it had to feel independent and stand for something.” It also needed to depart from its previous “angular” identity and look different to other professional design tools, which Tom says are “really complicated, getting more and more corporate, and costly for individuals and brands”. To the latter point, the brand has announced as part of the relaunch that it’s now free to use.

In order to challenge industry standards, and reflect its ethos of “for creatives, by creatives”, Affinity’s brand identity has a sense of playfulness. It leads with a lower case serif ‘a’ logomark and symbol, crafted in collaboration with designer Rob Clarke. “There’s lots of uppercase, geometric, graphic brands in the world of software,” Tom explains. “We wanted to have something that felt more approachable and wonky.” It features swooping curves, meant to represent the expression of artists and illustrators who use the product, and super sharp and precise points, a shout-out to their graphic designer fans. “Trying to get all that out of a symbol was challenging, but we landed on something recognisable for that desktop row of icons.”

Its typeface, Affinity serif, was made in collaboration with Ohno, a bespoke adaptation of its typeface Swear, and comes in six weights. “When used light and small, it’s super precise and premium; in its big, fat, expressive italic form, it looks more bold and a bit weird,” Tom explains.

Overall the tone of voice is packed with wit and in-jokes, from its copywriting down to its new file name, .af – which apart from being on every file you export from the programme, is also used in myriad, tongue-in-cheek ways across merch, such as its “Sketchy.af” notebook.

The colour scheme is a nice touch as well: rather than straightforward monochrome, its palette includes charcoal, graphite, putty, paper – tactile, material-based colours inspired by artists, with a lime green colour for a “punch of punk”. This also acts as a helpfully muted backdrop to all the very vibrant original artwork Affinity has commissioned for the product, letting creative work take the limelight (as per its ethos). Across the rebrand you can also spot the brand’s six ‘ethos tags’, created by Made By James.

The rebrand was done with a panel of design professionals and an advisory board featuring the likes of Debbie Millman, Eddie Opara and Lisa Smith. With so many opinions chiming in and considerations for the brand’s new identity, Tom says his approach was to get two prototypes “down on paper” as early in the process as possible, one that was distinctly Affinity and one that was like a pro version of Canva. “Rather than people debating words on a page, like ‘it should be 70 per cent Canva or 30 per cent Canva’, I wanted to share designs early, show what that would look like, because as soon as people see stuff, they change their minds. It was a really informative exercise.”

The final design system is modular and adaptive, a toolkit that Tom likens to jazz – with design elements acting as instruments to be played. Learning from his past experience, he and his team were aiming to create a strong brand DNA with emotional intelligence that can flex and change tone according to audiences, from a typographer to an illustrator. Also, one that can sit alongside Canva, as its refined sibling, who has recently come out of their shell.