Free is one of my favourite price points and, boy, do I have some exciting news for you!

Hi, I'm John Lacey and this is Build A Presentation Muscle, the podcast about showcasing your expertise through content creation.

I don't know if you're familiar with the Affinity suite of Apps but they consisted of:

• Affinity Designer - for vector image creation
• Affinity Photo - for raster image editing
• Affinity Publisher - for desktop publishing

They were available to purchase for a one time fee. In a world where so much software now requires a monthly subscription, this was HUGE, and this software is genuinely super powerful and useful.

Affinity actually removed the ability to purchase the apps from their website and a lot of people feared the worst.

But much to my surprise, they've returned with a single app that combines all of this functionality and they have made it completely free.

You will need a Canva account to use the software —Affinity were acquired by Canva some time ago— but you can use a free Canva account.

Paid Canva users will get some additional AI functionality but as someone who doesn't love AI, I can definitely live without this.

I purchased the version 2 suite back in 2024 and have been loving it ever since.

The new single Affinity app is not missing any of the functionality I have come to know and love.

Content creators often need graphics software to do things like create video thumbnails and podcast artwork, banners, livestream backgrounds and overlays and documents more generally.

You might need to spend some time learning how to use this powerful software and for this I definitely recommend the university of YouTube. There are so many great tutorials out there. And this is software that will support you as you continue to learn and grow.

So if you haven't already checked this out, head over to affinity.studio to get started.

Hi, I'm John Lacey, and this is Build a Presentation Muscle, the podcast all about showcasing your expertise through content creation.

• The elephant in the room: Where this podcast has been.
• Can you build a reputation through content creation?
• Getting back to basics: build a body of work, showcase that work, and avoid distractions and practice self-care.
• This is all an experiment, and experiments can fail.

For more information about this podcast, check out JohnLacey.com

To subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@LearnLivestreaming

We all start somewhere, and it can be painful to be a beginner, personal growth can be very (ahem) "character building."

And I don't tell you this to scare you. In fact I tell you this to reassure you.

No matter how you feel about where you are right now, if you apply yourself and practice you will improve over time.

Hi, I'm John Lacey and this is Build A Presentation Muscle, the podcast about showcasing your expertise through content creation.

https://johnlacey.com/build-a-presentation-muscle/we-all-start-somewhere/