A New Spring for Designers, and a New Fall for Adobe.

I don’t think I’m alone as a design professional that felt bereaved of my tools and workflow when Adobe discontinued Fireworks. Little did I know that their decision would turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to my professional career.

After a period of mourning over the loss of my perfected workflow and my trusted toolset for many years, I quickly realised that Adobe had rid me of my dependancy of their products that I´d had my whole professional career, I felt liberated!

In my new found freedom, I found my self playing, experimenting and finding new ways. For months I shifted tools as frequent as the wind changes direction, and I felt a surge of excitement and an energy I hadn’t felt in a long time. Even though my safety net was gone, and I was not longer feeling firm ground was beneath my feet, but I was enjoying the ride towards the unknown.

Its been a loud unison chant from the industry, that designers are demanding more specialised tools that can help them design for the cascade of platforms and screens out there. Designers has for years now, shoehorned Adobe’s powerful suite to fit their needs. We are now as we speak, witnessing a paradigm shift, as we these days are seeing new quality tools emerge from the void the was created by Adobe, products cast from the mold of these exact needs that designers and developers have been craving for years. Sketch, Pixate, Invision, Framer, Codepen, Flinto, Affinity Designer, Paintcode, and the list goes on. You can now choose, the one that fits your needs and your project the best. And with that in mind, its good to be a designer these days. I will never again make myself so dependant on a toolset, and I’m enjoying my new digital nomadic life.

It’s interesting to see that Adobe is yet again put into a position where they must face competition. And the winners are the designers.

Its a new spring for designers, and a new fall for Adobe.