A New Affinity
It’s quite rare within software design that someone really shakes up a whole community and awakens them to an alternative, utopian vision of what software design should, or could, be. After spending a couple of weeks with the completed version of Affinity Designer, and having played extensively with the Beta version, it’s clear that Serif have really found a crowd that is actively seeking change.
Thanks Adobe
The ‘love in’ that is surrounding Affinity Designer at the moment has as much to do with a bitter discontent for Adobe as it has to do with its great UI, buttery smooth software and jaw dropping price.
A quick peruse on creative industry forums shows the frustration and anger for Adobe, with many feeling that Adobe are holding creatives to ransom with the introduction of the Creative Cloud software. This is not news, and I will neither be the first or last person that mentions this in a blog, however the emotional response from the design and creative industries that live and die by Adobe’s business decisions shows that Adobe has priced their product as a pseudo-Monopoly. It is this pricing structure that hurts small creative studios and freelancers, some of which now make do with using legacy versions of Adobe’s software. Although others may disagree, the subscription business model has some great benefits and Adobe could have taken advantage of a dormant market by playing a long, suffocating monopolisation tactic, rather than going for the jugular on non existent competitors.
Instead, it is this same business decision that has left the door open for competitors to enter the market against Adobe. By leaving freelancers and small studios out in the cold, the market has been crying out for a competitor to come in and price themselves at a more suitable level than is currently offered. Think, if Adobe had priced its full Creative Cloud software bundle in the £20–30 range how would the competition have fared? Entering the market against that suite of products, at that price, would have been daunting at best.
Instead, we have a new kid in town. And I have a feeling that Serif are only just getting started.
Affinity.
Super cheap software (£29.99 when I bought it), with free updates, and a suite of products to follow (both Photo and Publisher are due in 2015) seems almost too good to be true, so I was sceptical about its real world usage. There are some things that are currently missing that means I won’t be cancelling my Adobe subscription anytime soon (see below), however on the whole, Wow. What a product, what a team, and I am so excited for the future of the Affinity suite.
There are some things though that really stand out to me. Firstly, I just love the name Affinity. It has a great brand message and has the legs to extend beyond Designer. I’m also super pleased that Serif didn’t feel the need to brand it with their own legacy branding. Serif always reminds me of Early 2000's, Windows computers with sub par GUI’s and badly taught IT lessons (not that the IT lessons were their fault, I’m looking at you Mr Gayner), so I’m pleased that they have distanced themselves from this decidedly slick and professional software. If you haven’t checked it out already go and download the first edition of Affinity Review where they detail exactly how they named their product. On that point, In house magazines describing their processes and shortcuts; That’s a dream and made a huge difference in my perception of where the company was heading.
Secondly, I’ve never used software that is so, so silky smooth. Zooming is a dream, and I find myself stopping and marvelling at the genius programming that must have gone into this programme to cut down on the laggy and bulky code that bugs even behemoths like Adobe Illustrator. It really is somewhat of an awakening to use; At one point I had Affinity open for 10 days without shutting it down. And despite going back to Illustrator occasionally (Typing on a path is my number one wish in Affinity, but more on that below), I find myself itching to convert everything to curves and import into Affinity to finish it off. That is really something I’ve never experienced with software (apart maybe from VSCO Cam).
The concept of Affinity Designer is also really quite unique, and on the whole, ridiculously impressive. Combining both Vector and Raster graphics into one piece of software is awesome, and has stopped me jumping between Photoshop and Affinity on more than one occasion, but the export screen is where I really hate going back to using Adobe products.
The ease of exporting UI elements through using slices is particularly useful, and the one click ability to be able to save 1x, 2x, and 3x versions of each slice or layer is even better. It’s a weird sensation to describe, but it feels like Affinity was designed for the here and now, rather than built upon traditional legacy uses.
There’s almost too many things to list that I love about it so I’ll quickly add a few more here;
- A crop tool! An actual, functioning crop tool!
- A Fantastic gradient tool.
- Abstract shapes AND a decent pen tool. This has cut down on creating trapezoids from Pentagons significantly (another dream).
- Nice text tool, although the ability to dock the character tab would be great.
- Preset colour profiling docked when exporting. Really nice to quickly check what your colour management and resampling settings are without opening another window.
There really are so many great things with Affinity that the best way to find out is to go and download the trial software and see for yourself. It really will blow you away.
3 Magic Wishes
Despite this, rather glowing, review Affinity Designer isn’t perfect. It is still relatively bare in terms of features (at least in comparison to Adobe products), which means that at the moment I would not currently consider removing Illustrator or Photoshop from my workflow.
However with a few extra features, I may consider switching permanently to Affinity based products.
1. Type on a Path — If anyone from the Affinity Designer team is reading this, please, please, please introduce this feature soon. When designing logos I often try out a variant with text on a curved path. Despite being able to simulate this in Affinity, it is tedious, especially when mocking up variants of concept logos. It is one of the only things that keeps me dipping my toes back into the Illustrator waters.
2. Smart Objects — This is something that I know will be on the current roadmap (as with #1) however since using mock up objects in Photoshop makes up a relatively large portion of my concept and portfolio work, I currently cannot help having Photoshop open alongside Affinity. Being able to edit smart object layers (the .psb ones) and for them to update within Designer would be superb. This is probably where I would seriously consider uninstalling both Illustrator and Photoshop and stop relying on them for my current workflow.
3. Photo and Publisher — This is for the future but something that will seriously change the design software landscape. Photo as a competitor to Lightroom, or a blend of LR and Photoshop, would be massive for someone like myself. To seamlessly integrate my hobby work (photography) with design software is currently something I love when using PS and LR, and to have this when using Photo and Designer would be extremely useful. For Publisher I would love for the interface to just suck less than InDesign. I have never taken to InDesign (maybe because I have never had to use it) in the same way I have with other Adobe software, however using it is unavoidable in some occasions. Having a real alternative, that seamlessly links my vector graphics software and photography sets would be invaluable.
If you have yet to try Affinity Designer, at the very least go and download the trial version of the software. You owe it to yourself to explore something that isn’t based around Adobe’s current monopoly. For a version 1 piece of software it is simply jaw dropping what the team have been able to produce, and to think that their roadmap is already laid out and we know that the features we want are being built already. What more could you want?
Billy Williams is a 22 year old graphic designer and branding specialist based in Bristol, UK. For more work please visit www.billyryanwilliams.com. Or tweet at me @billyryanwill.
Affinity Designer is available from the Mac App Store. The price varies by geographical location.
