What is a .afdesign file?
Affinity Designer Document · Design · Serif (Canva) · 2014
An .afdesign file is a vector document from Affinity Designer, the one-time-purchase alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It keeps curves, artboards, text and effects fully editable.
What is a .afdesign file used for?
Affinity Designer spans vector and raster work in one app, and its .afdesign format stores both kinds of layers. The suite's files are interchangeable: Affinity Photo and Publisher open .afdesign directly, which is the trio's big workflow advantage.
Outside the Affinity suite the format is closed. For hand-off, export SVG or PDF for vector fidelity, EPS for legacy pipelines, or PNG for flat images; Illustrator opens the PDF route best.
What opens a .afdesign file?
The .afdesign format opens in the following apps, grouped by operating system. If one app does not work, try another from the same list.
Windows
- Affinity Designer
- Affinity Photo / Publisher
macOS
- Affinity Designer
- Affinity Photo / Publisher
Linux
- No native option; use exported SVG/PDF
Open a .afdesign file step by step
- Confirm the file really is a .afdesign. Drop it into the WhatFileType identifier, which reads its signature in your browser without uploading anything.
- On Windows, open it with Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo / Publisher.
- On Mac, use Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo / Publisher.
- On Linux, try No native option; use exported SVG/PDF.
- Still stuck? Convert the .afdesign to svg, which opens more widely.
Why can't I open my .afdesign file?
Almost always because no installed app understands Affinity Designer. Install one of the apps above, or convert the file to a format your existing software already reads. If double-clicking opens the wrong program instead of nothing at all, the file association is set to the wrong app rather than the file being broken.
The other possibility is that the file is not really a .afdesign at all. Drop it into the file identifier to check it by its bytes instead of its name. Nothing is uploaded.
How to convert a .afdesign file
You can convert a .afdesign file to svg, pdf, eps, png using a conversion tool or the export menu of an app that opens it.
Affinity Designer has no fixed magic number, so there is no signature table on this page. Its bytes alone do not prove the format: identification relies on the extension, the structure of the content and the program that created it. The magic-numbers reference lists the formats that do carry one.
Frequently asked questions
What is a .afdesign file?
An .afdesign file is a vector document from Affinity Designer, the one-time-purchase alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It keeps curves, artboards, text and effects fully editable.
How do I open an .afdesign file without Affinity Designer?
Any Affinity app (Photo, Publisher) opens it. Without the suite, ask for an SVG or PDF export; there is no third-party reader for the native format.
Can Illustrator open .afdesign files?
Not directly. Export from Affinity Designer as PDF (best) or SVG and open that in Illustrator; most vector structure survives.
What is the difference between .afdesign and .afphoto?
.afdesign comes from Affinity Designer and leans vector; .afphoto comes from Affinity Photo and leans raster. The apps open each other's files seamlessly.
Related formats
Sources
Details on this page were checked against authoritative references. How sources are ranked and what is deliberately left out is set out in the methodology.