Better Tools

I’ve been told you get faster at Design over time. For me, that window was very small. I don’t know if my production speed has increased at all since I graduated school. The mental, creative part is certainly not any easier. Any time I’ve gained over 14 years is minimal. It has not made me more profitable. If anything, I may be losing time now because every time I use the Pathfinder tool in Adobe Illustrator, I have a million new anchor points I need to figure out how to eliminate!

There is a lot of time to gain in administrative work. Building presentation decks, invoicing— that sort of thing. I’m always tweaking things, trying something new, or making templates to gain time there. But in speaking of just doing the Design work, I have always felt it more practical and enjoyable to focus on improving quality. The tools I use in making the work have not changed outside of software updates for 15 years.

I’m interested in making better-crafted things because that’s fun for me and also makes me more valuable as a Designer. Learning is a big part of accomplishing that. Investing in better tools is another. So this year, I made a change.

Fortunately, better tools are a cheaper option for Creative professionals today. Procreate is a one-time purchase of $13, and Procreate Dreams $20. A Xencelabs Medium tablet is $224 to their competitor Wacom’s $380 equivalent. The Affinity suite is another one-time purchase at $165. (Adobe costs about $660 a year and you’re going to need the $150 annual fee for Astute Graphics to make Illustrator functional).

At the risk of sounding like a commercial, I’m writing this because the Affinity suite is now my primary Design tool—plus paper, ink, and graphite which will always be my foundation.

I started using Affinity because the idea of reinvention through new tools was exciting, but to be honest, the result doesn’t feel like creative reinvention. It just feels like I purchased higher-quality tools at cheaper prices. Working in Affinity is a fresh take on Adobe’s big 3 Design software, leaving Adobe feeling clunky and dated. I also got one of those Xencelabs tablets which is nearly identical to Wacom but with a nicer stylus, and it comes with two!

Also, Procreate and Affinity have both committed to never using generative AI in their products. I’m very happy to support companies like that. I am excited to dig into Dreams once it is available.

Is it hard to use new tools after having the same ones for over a decade?

NO!

Plugging in a new tablet is no effort at all but even switching to Affinity has been intuitive. If you do it, you’ll probably lose some of your favorite plug-ins. You’ll have to find a replacement for your favorite PS brushes or Lightroom treatments, but that’s fairly simple. The thing to remember is that the learning curve is not steep. You already know what you need to do to make the things you need to make. The exact steps of doing it in different software are close enough to the same but will be slow when first starting. Like moving to a new neighborhood, it just takes a little time to learn the new environment.

Everything you gain is worth it. In using reliable software, you might even gain some production time.