Acquire or Compete
Here, I’m highlighting a big change in the field of creative apps.
Figma and Adobe are big names in the field when it comes to creative apps.
Figma was founded in 2012 with the intention of developing artistic tools for browsers. Figma entered the market to compete with Adobe XD, Invision Studio, Framer, and Miro and mainly aimed to visual designers creating digital products.
Over the past few years, Figma has established a reputation as a cutting-edge and collaborative design platform and a strong rival to Adobe, the industry leader in creative tools. Adobe declared the end of their rivalry On Thursday, by agreeing to acquire Figma for $20 billion.
“It’s a big day for our teams at Adobe and Figma as we announce our plan to come together. We want to share “the why” behind this decision and our excitement for what this means for our respective products and communities. Our passion at Adobe is about empowering the world to create digital experiences across photography, imaging, illustration, video, animation, 3D and more. Whether through internal innovation or acquisitions of incredible teams and technology along the way, we have consistently aspired to accelerate every creative segment and empower everyone to tell their stories and express their ideas.” — Adobe
Adobe has a history of acquiring some of the most effective tools in the creative industry, like Frame.io, a platform for collaborative video production, and Behance, an online portfolio for creatives. Through this deal, Belsky first joined Adobe. In 1995 Adobe purchased the rights to Photoshop from the Knoll brothers. Now, Figma also added in the list . Designers should be highly concerned about the Figma acquisition since it means Adobe will continue to consolidate the power of creative apps in one place despite the fact that Figma was one of the few notable competitors to Adobe. With Figma off the market, the number of companies that could challenge Adobe’s empire has significantly reduced. This allows Adobe to maintain its monopoly.
Dylan Field, the Figma’s co-founder and CEO mentioned in his statement “I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to David Wadhwani. David is someone I’ve known for a few years now and we have a strong relationship of mutual respect; I’m very excited for us to collaborate with him on how to continue growing Figma’s business.”
How Figma is different
When it comes to designing collaboratively, Figma is lightyears ahead. Figma is fast. Files are always up to date. And it’s easy to share designs across the organization and collaborate. Figma has designed the future. It’s the modern approach to product design. Adobe fails to understand remote work where Figma is the first design tool that has genuinely adapted to it. Figma is not a substitute for Photoshop or Illustrator. It is a UX design tool, similar to Adobe XD, that is mostly used to create webpages and apps.
Although, Adobe has committed to keep Figma running autonomous of Adobe and to provide advance product design features. This news will put some fire under other competitors and designers who use software tools every day.
“By bringing powerful capabilities from Adobe’s imaging, photography, illustration, video, 3D and font technologies into the Figma platform, we can benefit all customers involved in the product design process, from designers to product managers to developers. Figma’s community will ultimately have a continuous user experience across ideation, screen layout, interaction design and content editing, allowing product designers and their stakeholders to operate at a whole new level.” — Adobe
Figma is a gift for all its users. I’m hopeful that designers can finally get a tool that doesn’t quit on them, as promised by Adobe.
