Canva

[Chills]

8 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Who exactly are mid-range professionals and high-end professionals in this context please?

For example, do they have a degree from an art school or a Master degree or what please?

William

 

Obviously they are variable fuzzy edged groups.  Your comment shows you will have trouble grasping the concepts, so I won't bother.
It has more to do with what and how they do it and in collaboration with whom than their specific academic qualification.

[wonderings]

16 hours ago, SirPL said:

I'm not saying you're wrong, simply that I still don't see a direct benefit for Canva, unless Serif is not fully transparent when stating that "nothing will change for current users".

The benefit to Canva is increased revenue. They have a business plan for Affinity in which to increase their brand recognition and marketshare. Canva, like every other company out there is in it to make money, so they obviously have some ideas on how they are going to do it. I think the easy thing is continued version updates with new features that improve life for users as well as attract new users. 

[R C-R]

13 hours ago, SallijaneG said:

Just another reason to NOT pay for Amazon Prime—much like what happened to cable TV.  Showing my age again, how many here in the U.S. remember the sales pitch: pay for cable, no ads!  How long did that last?

As I remember it, only the 'premium' channels like HBO ever promised no ads, & that still applies. As for paying for Amazon Prime, it has saved me hundreds of dollars a year on purchases & shipping costs & gives me access to tons of high quality TV shows & movies I could not otherwise get, so for me it is well worth the cost.

BTW, even without paying the extra charge for ad-free viewing, the ad breaks are far fewer & shorter than on broadcast or non-premium cable channels. That's one reason I look for & am willing to pay for services that let me avoid the ever more present & disruptive commercial breaks on U.S. TV.

[William Overington]

In the United Kingdom, when advertising on television was first allowed in the mid-1950s, there was the concept introduced of the natural break, as advertisements were only permitted between programmes and at natural breaks within them.

William

 

 

[William Overington]

3 hours ago, William Overington said:

Who exactly are mid-range professionals and high-end professionals in this context please?

For example, do they have a degree from an art school or a Master degree or what please?

William

 

Can anyone answer this please?

I am one of the hobbyist users of Affinity products and when I use Affinity products it is usually as a tool to produce some output such as a PDF document in relation to some other, basically hobbyist, non-Affinity project that I am doing.

I am interested to know please in what ways those various users of Affinity products who are regarded as professional users of Affinity products use Affinity products.

William

 

 

[Aurea Ratio]

[Alfred]

Just now, William Overington said:

I am interested to know in what ways those various users of Affinity products who are regarded as professional users of Affinity products use Affinity products.

You can find many examples in the ‘Share your work’ section of these forums, and also by searching on sites such as Behance and Dribbble.

[William Overington]

8 minutes ago, Alfred said:

You can find many examples in the ‘Share your work’ section of these forums, and also by searching on sites such as Behance and Dribbble.

Thank you, but I was not meaning in that sense, I was meaning in that are they working on illustrations for magazines like Elle and the like, or newspapers, or what? I am retired and just using Affinity products at home, I am wondering what sort of numbers of people are using Affinity products "at work" and is that work always as an independent designer, or as an independent artist producing original art, or are they salaried staff in large companies, and if so, for what are they using Affinity products, perhaps never posting their type of work in the Share your work forum. Is some of it everyday stuff such as catalogues of spare parts for cars and so on?

William

 

[jackamus]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

As I remember it, only the 'premium' channels like HBO ever promised no ads, & that still applies. As for paying for Amazon Prime, it has saved me hundreds of dollars a year on purchases & shipping costs & gives me access to tons of high quality TV shows & movies I could not otherwise get, so for me it is well worth the cost.

BTW, even without paying the extra charge for ad-free viewing, the ad breaks are far fewer & shorter than on broadcast or non-premium cable channels. That's one reason I look for & am willing to pay for services that let me avoid the ever more present & disruptive commercial breaks on U.S. TV.

Years ago I stopped watching TV and films put out by the controlled media of Hollywood and governments and their agencies because I no longer want to be brainwashed by them. This has given me a lot of extra time to be able to THINK and not strangled by wall-to-wall TV, sports and entertainment!

When you start thinking again that's when you see just exactly what kind world you are living in!

Filter .afdesign

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

Thank you, but I was not meaning in that sense, I was meaning in that are they working on illustrations for magazines like Elle and the like, or newspapers, or what?

Surely you must understand that there can be no reliable way to get numbers for anything like that. Most pros do not, nor would they have any reason to, explain what apps they use for any particular project.

[SrPx]

Not even in 2D, be it web, print/corporate image, game graphic work, film, etc. Despite having lots of indy studios working with other software (Affinity and many more), the very high end, large firms, etc, it's pretty much Adobe (like Autodesk, Houdini, custom solutions in 3D/animation) territory. Despite being a fact that you can do a lot of high end work with Affinity (as you can with Blender in 3D, but until film companies start doing large productions using Blender, that area of the field is exclusive of certain tools. The technical capability of the tool is only part of the equation).  I think Canva is well aware of the current market for Affinity. And IMO, they might want to add new niches or increase/evolve some. As for knowing about Canva (I'm talking about several comments, not just this quoted text) I very well knew about its existence since very long ago. When working with small business owners, and not only having them as clients, also watching and reading material related to marketing, business matters, etc, Canva is everywhere. Tons of times I have handled stuff for some step needed in these users and companies' Canva based workflows, or added/fixed stuff which they started there. It quite makes sense the addition, to empower and help it grow (so, the opposite future of what some predict), from what I have been seeing for a long time with Canva's users. I think they want to expand to a bit higher niche than their current, and compete there, or that their current users are increasingly needing more functionality.  Or maybe both.

Whether more or less integrated in Canva itself, that would be hard to know, right now. But that they really want that level of functionality and nuanced work, for me that's plain clear.

About competing with Adobe... I said it earlier. I doubt any of the alternatives (including Affinity) is realistically hoping to dethrone any time soon the king of the industry (industries) in decades-long pipelines and ways of working which got established through decades in companies of all sizes, custom plugins, familiarity of high end firms and clients, etc. It is a huge ecosystem that, even if it wouldn't upgrade (but it upgrades, a lot, and very fast, I keep up to date with that, even if just a bit, enough to realize it), it would be extremely hard (or impossible) to be really threatened in the high and mid-high end (but... companies. Some freelancers are in my book very "high end", and I know a few that already moved fully or partially to Affinity). At least for some time. Honestly, though, Corel Draw and Xara have been strong competitors in certain areas many years before Affinity appeared, and are still alive, though slightly niche, not a serious worry for Adobe. But they have quite a chunk of users over the world. The same happens with specific apps for certain functionality, which are even better suited than Adobe's for certain activities, (specialized tools, I call them) but this did not put Adobe in danger, either, as a whole. Monopolistic players (monopolies are always bad for us) usually only have themselves as a threat, or regulation/governments, if anything. But Adobe is doing pretty well.

Long plans can be ambitious, though (till some point, being realistic), the free for schools and non profits thing is really smart. If it is a strategy. If it is not, kudos for the gesture, anyway... that is similar to how Adobe and Autodesk made most of their huge user base. Not them directly, but it was already so common in many graphic workers' machines (in "that type of license", I don't condone it), even at companies, and I have seen huge industry standard apps and companies fall before (often due to their "way of the dodo" behavior more than by competitors' actions...ie, Mirai disappeared by its own). Like I never saw coming XSI would stop being the leader or a very key tool for the film industry, and it happened. Autodesk ended up "acquiring to eliminate" it, and so it happened (there was a serious overlap!! Maya and XSI, and 3D Studio till some extent), but people feared the same with Maya when this happened, as it was also acquired by Autodesk, too, while the same company acted very differently with Maya. This software had a huge users/companies base, was much a better tool for character animation than 3D Studio (although, 3DS was good for that with certain addons), had a solid foot in plugins, scripts, pipelines in animation (games and film) based companies, heavily production tested... and so, all this made no sense to kill it after acquired, so it kept strong and updated, despite all the dark predictions. There were also bad predictions with the buyout of Youtube by Google, back in the day (2006, if I remember well... 18 years ago....). More even the case as Youtube was losing money (btw, Twitch was acquired by Amazon, and it was also losing money. Did not kill it and still is the main game streaming platform), due to Youtube's servers costs in video and stuff, it was a non profitable company!.  And that seems to have worked out darn well (in terms of numbers, or in convenience for Google), currently is the second search engine in the world, and many marketers think of it as the the best tool for promotion. Some of us had thought it would just close their offices, be done and that services similar to Vimeo would take over, as Youtube costs are immense. 18 years ago, though....

So, it's a mixed bag, not always in one direction.  I dunno, people is free to think whatever, but I always think about if the buying company has an actual something that is really competing with the acquired product/service (and so, 'acquires to annihilate' ), or if, quite the opposite, needs badly what the acquired company has. Google knew that the future of content and promotion was in video, and Autodesk had no interest in killing the best (some would say that this was indeed XSI, though... I had the Foundation version. At least way less intuitive than Maya, in the UI, for new users)  character animation tool available and so, lose all that business.    

But higher end is super hard to compete with, IMO. The way I see it though, many bosses that I had, small business clients, marketing departments, etc, have a very hard time trying to navigate through Illustrator and Photoshop UIs, while for them Canva is intuitive from the start (one of the main advantages of Affinity is also good UI), and they keep using it. That very low end (but massive! BTW, wasn't the number mentioned 175 million, not 100, neither 75?) market is where they have an enormous chunk of users, and I guess Adobe is not particularly happy about it. I am not saying that's a good or bad thing, but it is a fact, to me. 

[  About the "professional" thingy, well, at least in art, I have a Fine Arts degree, and besides I really learned painting much before going to college (almost free in my country), and a lot of people finishing those studies can't really draw or paint (sad, but it's that way), as it depends on certain level of personal effort and compromise, mostly, than in any academic studies (you can learn the same on your own! even if harder) and in a way you could say comparable to a master in the US, the fact is that I never considered that this made me a professional in any way. I think a professional is a person able to both solve the problems and do the activity required for an specific profile at a company or to cover a market niche successfully (if working by your own as a business owner or freelancer, etc). Also, a person that has the skills and training (by your own, with courses, or college) needed for what the job profile requires, and who has a background (knowledge and technical capabilities) good enough to adapt to any situation in that field. These skills are most likely coming from a mix of personal study and practice, and the actual professional experience. Still, in many jobs in programming, academic titles are required to even get to the interview, but IMO there's always a place for the individuals who are serious about their job, and good at it, with or without college studies. If not in one company, it's in another]

About the main issue, I think a) there are other alternatives, but in terms of export for professional work, stability (yep, some of the competitors, which are very few in doing all what A. does, are a bit of a fest of bugs and lacking key features) and feature set, many of them are still behind what Affinity has. A very small few are in very good shape, though, but for a lot of the Affinity user base, price counts quite. I have paid even 2.5k for a software license decades ago, but these days people even doubt it when it is 300 - 800 $. The other alternatives and FOSS could be used, though, if Affinity ceased to exist (I mean, I certainly would use them). b) the possibility of Canva wanting Affinity to get a medium user ground is very likely, hence not much sense in putting all that money to not use what you just bought. They have absolutely nothing to have that functionality. And yep, I agree with those that think they will make it  (even as an standalone suite of apps) highly connected with the cloud. I do not think they will trash the permanent buy possibility, as neither did Celsys, which keeps releasing a very nice ClipStudio full version once a year, for those willing to update it (I did, while I really did not need it, but it's affordable. Still, I like to have the freedom to decide not doing it).

Affinity's presence now as an "alternative" on internet articles, forums, reddit, etc, is huge (as Canva's. IMO, some people here did not know about Canva because we are immersed in our bubble of usage, and rarely need to go outside that, it is happening also a bit with social media) and mainly the whole user base is about the permanent purchase option. So, I don't see Canva going against that, it would not be wise from a business perspective, if it would mean losing 2.5 (random number) of the 3 millions users, and surely all the marketing that made Affinity big, once they'd make such thing. So, nah, I don't think they will. 

[wonderings]

2 hours ago, William Overington said:

Thank you, but I was not meaning in that sense, I was meaning in that are they working on illustrations for magazines like Elle and the like, or newspapers, or what? I am retired and just using Affinity products at home, I am wondering what sort of numbers of people are using Affinity products "at work" and is that work always as an independent designer, or as an independent artist producing original art, or are they salaried staff in large companies, and if so, for what are they using Affinity products, perhaps never posting their type of work in the Share your work forum. Is some of it everyday stuff such as catalogues of spare parts for cars and so on?

William

 

This is a thread about the acquisition of Seriff by Canva, you should probably start another thread seeking out info like that in another section of the forum. 

[William Overington]

20 minutes ago, wonderings said:

This is a thread about the acquisition of Seriff by Canva, you should probably start another thread seeking out info like that in another section of the forum. 

Thank you. However, we are looking in this thread at the potential market for Affinity products, what roles people who may or may not consider Affinity perform, as Affinity products are now or how Affinity products could become as a result of the acquisition of Affinity by Canva.

William

 

[William Overington]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Surely you must understand that there can be no reliable way to get numbers for anything like that. Most pros do not, nor would they have any reason to, explain what apps they use for any particular project.

I am not seeking numbers, I am asking what kinds of roles and activity are regarded as mid-range professionals and high-end professionals.

And, following on, what facilities that Affinity products do not have at present would they be seeking to become implemented in Affinity products.

William

 

Edited April 15 by William Overington
Addition of an additional paragraph at the end

[pixelstuff]

14 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I am not seeking numbers, I am asking what kinds of roles and activity are regarded as mid-range professionals and high-end professionals.

And, following on, what facilities that Affinity products do not have at present would they be seeking to become implemented in Affinity products.

William

 

Obviously, high-end professionals use Adobe software, if you don't use Adobe then you are not a high-end professional. The no true Scotsman fallacy. 

[Aurea Ratio]

Is there a separate forum for serious customers who use the software for serious purposes? I ask because every time I visit the forum, I get the impression that there are incredibly many people in this forum who use it more as a warming room and for social purposes. Even this thread about something really pervasive, which can have drastic or significant consequences for several million customers, ends up wildly unserious.

There is more focus and serious users in even smaller open source forums, so I am speechless at the absence of a forum with a network of serious users of the software when the forum is hosted by the company behind the programs. It is just not helpful or trustworthy for allegedly professional software, and the content becomes significantly more serious and focused when you visit Reddit or other places.

Anyway, I'm going back to passive spectator mode, I'm probably not the only one holding back on asking about professional or advanced challenges when it's the same few who always answer here, not the right few in the specific context being asked about, and moreover, not the professional few in that context.

Having stated one's opinion thousands of times does not confer professional expertise. That's what the internet has proven.

[pixelstuff]

9 minutes ago, Aurea Ratio said:

Is there a separate forum for serious customers who use the software for serious purposes? I ask because every time I visit the forum, I get the impression that there are incredibly many people in this forum who use it more as a warming room and for social purposes. Even this thread about something really pervasive, which can have drastic or significant consequences for several million customers, ends up wildly unserious.

There is more focus and serious users in even smaller open source forums, so I am speechless at the absence of a forum with a network of serious users of the software when the forum is hosted by the company behind the programs. It is just not helpful or trustworthy for allegedly professional software, and the content becomes significantly more serious and focused when you visit Reddit or other places.

Anyway, I'm going back to passive spectator mode, I'm probably not the only one holding back on asking about professional or advanced challenges when it's the same few who always answer here, not the right few in the specific context being asked about, and moreover, not the professional few in that context.

Having stated one's opinion thousands of times does not confer professional expertise. That's what the internet has proven.

I think in most scenarios the company website contains mostly questions focused on specific tools in their specific apps or bugs in their software. When people are asking general questions about industry practices they go to general forums that are not tied to a specific company. Because like R C-R suggested, unless you are writing a tutorial or collaborating on a shared project, the actual tool is less important than the final product.

[William Overington]

7 minutes ago, Aurea Ratio said:

Is there a separate forum for serious customers who use the software for serious purposes? the internet has proven.

You could start a thread in this forum with a title such as the following.

A thread for serious customers who use the software for serious purposes

You could write the first post in the thread explaining how serious customers and serious purposes are defined for the purposes of the thread.

William

[William Overington]

I know someone has laughed, but it is a genuine suggestion for a thread that hopefully will provide the discussion that @Aurea Ratio seeks. Not a separate forum as such, but the best available with the forums that exist at present.

William

 

[walt.farrell]

41 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I know someone has laughed, but it is a genuine suggestion for a thread that hopefully will provide the discussion that @Aurea Ratio seeks. Not a separate forum as such, but the best available with the forums that exist at present.

 

A single topic for serious users will not do much good. It would be huge and hard to read. Most topics here are for serious users, each user just needs to ignore the topics that are not relevant to their purposes.

[William Overington]

Well, it could be tried and see what happens.

William

 

[Aurea Ratio]

I need serious customers who together form and create a serious forum. Can't you see the absurdity in a serious thread surrounded by the usual? No, I miss real professionals or deeply serious and experienced creatives who are completely focused on creating and not on filling letters on the internet.

I have realized - and it seems others here have too - that this is just not the case here. I don't know how the forum ended up mostly as a club for a few and as a zone cleansed of deeply serious and professional people. Perhaps that reflects reality.

But look, if I keep responding here, it will just become another serpentine spiral of wasting time and nonsense. I'm just saying again, there's a lack of a forum for those of us who use these programs to create at a high level, and who only need to use this forum occasionally, hoping to get responses from like-minded people - and from those with specialties or serious experiences out there where delivery happens, not the same few who know the programs inside out.

There are a few here - and full respect to them - but they are far, far too few, and they are drowned out by club members who drown serious people and experiences in assumptions and opinions and top-drawer advice.

I hope I can navigate the Canva takeover and development in a serious place well away from this forum.

Take good care of Affinity, Serif. It is a valuable tool for me in its current form, despite its shortcomings.

[William Overington]

7 minutes ago, Aurea Ratio said:

Can't you see the absurdity in a serious thread surrounded by the usual?

No. If you start the thread that I suggested in this forum then there is the possibility that you might as a result get the forum that you want.

Something I read long ago was "Never grumble away your opportunities."

You have deemed my suggestion as absurd.

Alright, I will try it and see what happens.

William

 

[William Overington]

Here is a link to the thread.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/202412-a-thread-for-serious-customers-who-use-the-software-for-serious-purposes/

William

 

[albertkinng]

10 hours ago, William Overington said:

Can anyone answer this please?

I hold a Master's degree in Commercial Arts and Design, as well as a Bachelor's degree in Art History and Graphic Communications. However, the tools I currently use in my work were not part of my formal education. My expertise lies in old-school software like Photoshop, Freehand, Page Maker, and Quark Xpress. What sets me apart from the new generation of graphic designers is my experience of being there when copy-pasting was a manual process. This real-world experience allows me to create and compare with a depth of understanding that others may lack. Despite my educational background, I believe that graphic designers without formal education should not be treated as inferior. Many of them possess impressive skills that could make me question my own accomplishments. Education certainly has its merits in today's world, but it is not a guarantee of success in the field of graphic design. In fact, platforms like YouTube have nurtured numerous talented designers who make a comfortable living from their craft.