What is a .afdesign file?
AFDESIGN is a document from Affinity Designer, Serif’s vector app. Created and opened by Affinity Designer.
- Did you know
- Affinity Designer launched in 2014 as a one-off-purchase rival to Adobe Illustrator.
- Serif, the British maker of Affinity Designer, was bought by Canva in 2024.
- In 2025 Designer, Photo and Publisher were folded into a single free Affinity app, so the standalone afdesign documents now open there.
- What Analyser reads
- Identify design-app files: Figma (FIG), Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher, CorelDRAW (CDR), MediBang Paint (MDP) and Substance. A Figma file has its container read out - format, Kiwi version and chunk sizes - but not its contents: Figma encodes the design with Kiwi, a schema-driven binary format whose schema ships inside the file and changes with the version of Figma that wrote it, so there is no stable structure to walk. Sketch, by contrast, opens in a full viewer - see Sketch above. GIMP (XCF) does too, and Krita (KRA), Procreate and Paint.NET (PDN) show their embedded preview - see Raster art above.
- Depth of analysis
- .afdesign is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .afdesign file
- Drag a .afdesign file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.