Nearly ten years ago we had a vision – to create an all-new suite of professional creative applications that worked seamlessly together. They would be multi-platform and share exactly the same file format, and we’d utilise the latest hardware technology like multi-core processors and GPUs and build in core pro functionality from the start.

But it wasn’t until June this year when we finally got to reveal the fundamental core of that vision. Not only did we complete the suite with the launch of Affinity Publisher, we revealed StudioLink – a feature that lets users immediately switch between Affinity Publisher, Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo all within the same app.

This level of cohesion within a creative suite of apps is something that had never been done before and it’s been a complete gamechanger to the workflow of creative professionals around the world. It’s what we had been working towards all those years and is why we called our apps Affinity.

Check out Affinity Publisher and StudioLink in action:

After the huge success of the Affinity Publisher launch, we didn’t think this year could have got much better – but it has! We are absolutely thrilled to be recognised by Apple and have Affinity Publisher named Mac App of the Year 2019. There are literally tens of thousands of apps they had to choose from, so to be awarded the top spot is an incredible achievement.

Of course, we didn’t think twice about hopping over to New York for the awards event on Monday (2 December) and had a fantastic time meeting the Apple team and other innovators from around the world.

To top it off, we were honoured to be asked by Apple to create the winners brochure for the event using Affinity Publisher. This was such a cool project for us to work on, especially as one of the winners listed in it was us! You can check out how we did it below.

Remarkably, this is now the fourth major award we’ve received from Apple (more than any developer has ever received), so we have to take the opportunity to not just thank Apple for this year’s award, but for all the support, recognition and exposure they’ve given us over the years. We don’t have anything like the marketing dollars and machinery of our competitors, so for them to keep championing what we do – as they do with many small developers around the world – has without a doubt been a major factor in our success.

Finally, we want to give a big thank you to all our customers. So many of you got involved during the beta period of Affinity Publisher and helped shape the app into the winning product it is now. The fact you continue to put your faith in us, recommend us to others and enjoy using our apps is really humbling.

That said, we’ll continue to push forward with new features and improvements as hard as we can. There’s some great stuff coming in our 1.8 update (including IDML import in Affinity Publisher!) which should be with you early in the New Year…