The Strategic Questions

[designerUK]

Hi

 

I'm a professional freelance designer of 15+ years and have some questions.

 

• What will the purchase options be on this software when released? Subscription only or single purchase option with upgrade purchase as traditionally?
• What will the update regime be - will it be in my control when I update rather than pipelined regardless from the cloud?
• Will it open Adobe files as though native? (Forgive me, it's not jumped out at me on your site and I've not downloaded the beta).

 

As a freelancer a monthly subscription just does not work given the financial variance of being freelance, nor having a constant traffic over networks to cloud storage/base when working as an itinerant designer using my own kit - mobile network reception and bandwidth are not always up to it and have you tried getting a password from distant IT departments in big companies as a freelance temporary worker...?

 

I'm really hoping you really are going to take Adobe on as they need a good kicking - my personal opinion. Does anyone remember QuarkXpress... no, I get blank looks from most designers now. There was a time when every designer looked at me like I was odd for not using Quark for everything. What was Quarks mistake? Pissing off their customers by not allowing their customers control over software purchased (and therefore owned) so when an alternative came along - bye-bye Quark. It's still around but do any professionals still use it (yes, a tiny minority). The graphic design industry is characterised by small design agencies and individual contract designers - these types of business need absolute control over expenditure and interruption to work (ie: an upgrade that backfires at the worst time). Approaching the profession as though it's made up of big 20+ employee businesses is to not understand your customer. I know several agencies (all small <10 employees) who have not upgraded and are still using CS6 - there was a time when I had a problem keeping up with the agencies versions of software, not since CC. However... I need to upgrade my Mac at some point (as will they) and Mavericks is not looking good when you run CS6 - it's CS6 that's the issue so an alternative is what I'm holding out for (and I'm not alone).

 

Hope this helps, hoping for answers that'll be giant killing.

[MattP]

Hi Damson,

 

Thanks for your post. Hopefully I can answer your questions :)

 

Affinity Designer is going to be sold from the App Store for £34.99. There's no ongoing subscriptions, as you'd expect - you just pay to buy it and then it's yours. We will continue to add features over the lifetime of the product (we have a lot of plans!) and also to fix any bugs that are found and you will receive these as free updates via the App Store, just like any other App Store program - meaning that you can either tell your Mac to always install updates automatically, or you can manually decide when to apply the update.

 

We already have an incredible PSD import engine and our AI/PDF importer is being finished right now, so it will open these files and maintain as much editability and information as possible. You should expect to be able to work on a PSD/AI/PDF file without issue. We also have solid EPS and SVG import/export so these intermediate formats should enable you to receive files from anywhere else. Clearly there may be things which we don't support (our mesh gradient fills will be different to Adobe Illustrator's when we add them, so it's unrealistic of me to promise they will import as editable meshes - they most likely will not, initially at least) but we will strive to make everything work as well as possible. We are very aware that compatibility is a barrier to professionals, so we are paying this a lot of attention.

 

It sounds like you should definitely download the beta and see how it works for you :) We've still got a fair amount to do (in particular, you currently can't export back to PSD, or open AI/PDF files - but that's in development right now and will come soon) but you should find that the core tools are there and that they are solid, reliable and very productive.

 

There's actually an article about Affinity Designer here that mentions a few of those details. I'm sorry that our website did not offer better descriptions - it's just a placeholder while our real site is being finished and it will hopefully appear soon :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[designerUK]

Hi Matt

 

Thank you for your response, some very coherent and well thought through activities seem to be going on here. This makes my heart sing. Am seriously considering, as I write, whether I can find time to try your beta out - don't want to get my hopes up if they're to be dashed.

 

You are indeed correct to focus on the barriers to professionals switching. They're the hard win here. If agencies cannot open their archived files then you'll just be dismissed outright regardless of any 'killer feature' you might think you have. "Seamlessly work on all your Adobe legacy files from CSx to CCx" would immediately get my attention. I suggest making sure there's compatibility to CS6 for anyone like me who's never come to the cloud (and there's a lot of us out here). Agencies/contractors with CS6 will be able to open old CS4/5 files in CS6 > sort any glaring issues > save as CS6 > open in Affinity. This is about knowing you can cope if clients ask you to revisit artwork completed 2+ years ago. Small cloud users will be the ones high and dry when they stop their subscription (and will feel very nervous about switching - the bigger agencies will stump up for both for a time, as much to enable their staff to make the transition). CC users will be entirely reliant though at some point on your software being able to open these files reasonably well. I hope this further assures you of the importance of your focus here if there's any internal arguments ;-).

 

Hang it, I'll download the beta.

 

BTW - it sounds cheap. Makes me wonder if it's really quality print capable software, sorry if that sounds a bit wrong - it's all about perception and price affects that. Not that I'm suggesting you need to up the price of course :-) It just might need a subtle something in its marketing to address this. Perhaps something about investment... I don't know, difficult one. Professionals will ask themselves why such a price desparity between this and illustrator (I've seen £210 for a years subscription). If it is what you're pitching this as being, then a whole creative suite for a fraction of the cost of Adobe Cloud and control too.... sounding too good to be true right now. Can you tell I'm sceptical? I'll try the beta.

 

Another thought occurs, you're picking the least used part of Adobe suite in my experience. Most professionals tend to use Photoshop and InDesign day-in, day-out (mainly InDesign in terms of man hours). I'm a bit of an excepton here that I chose to learn vector software (Illustrator 3) first.

 

Regards & take care, hope this is useful info and still hoping this is a real viable alternative.

 

Thank you.

[designerUK]

Addendum: If you know your history. It wasn't until Adobe acquired Macromedia (much to my shagrin at the time) and with it, PageMaker that things changed. When Adobe acquired this software and gave it a make over, this was when the graphic design industry shifted from a Quark monopoly to an Adobe one. Quark contributed to this because they had made Quark such a pain in the arse to install that designers were by then pretty pissed off at them. Are all the same things coming together here?

[TonyB]

 

Another thought occurs, you're picking the least used part of Adobe suite in my experience. Most professionals tend to use Photoshop and InDesign day-in, day-out (mainly InDesign in terms of man hours). I'm a bit of an excepton here that I chose to learn vector software (Illustrator 3) first.

 

 

Affinity Designer is just the first application in the range. We will be launching Affinity Photo soon and Affinity Publisher next year.

[designerUK]

Hi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTyTkD1Pz_E :-)

 

Yes I appreciate that. Just need to be aware there'd not be much switching to begin with with the release of this - the money people need to understand this and not pull the plug on the project, or downgrade it, based on take-up for this. That's all.

[omegaman]

Hi

 

I'm a professional freelance designer of 15+ years and have some questions.

 

• What will the purchase options be on this software when released? Subscription only or single purchase option with upgrade purchase as traditionally?
• What will the update regime be - will it be in my control when I update rather than pipelined regardless from the cloud?
• Will it open Adobe files as though native? (Forgive me, it's not jumped out at me on your site and I've not downloaded the beta).

 

As a freelancer a monthly subscription just does not work given the financial variance of being freelance, nor having a constant traffic over networks to cloud storage/base when working as an itinerant designer using my own kit - mobile network reception and bandwidth are not always up to it and have you tried getting a password from distant IT departments in big companies as a freelance temporary worker...?

 

I'm really hoping you really are going to take Adobe on as they need a good kicking - my personal opinion. Does anyone remember QuarkXpress... no, I get blank looks from most designers now. There was a time when every designer looked at me like I was odd for not using Quark for everything. What was Quarks mistake? Pissing off their customers by not allowing their customers control over software purchased (and therefore owned) so when an alternative came along - bye-bye Quark. It's still around but do any professionals still use it (yes, a tiny minority). The graphic design industry is characterised by small design agencies and individual contract designers - these types of business need absolute control over expenditure and interruption to work (ie: an upgrade that backfires at the worst time). Approaching the profession as though it's made up of big 20+ employee businesses is to not understand your customer. I know several agencies (all small <10 employees) who have not upgraded and are still using CS6 - there was a time when I had a problem keeping up with the agencies versions of software, not since CC. However... I need to upgrade my Mac at some point (as will they) and Mavericks is not looking good when you run CS6 - it's CS6 that's the issue so an alternative is what I'm holding out for (and I'm not alone).

 

Hope this helps, hoping for answers that'll be giant killing.

 

Agree about Adobe. Cancelled my subscription back in May of this year. Still have CS3 running on Mavericks and have switched back to QuarkXpress which is now at version 10.

[houseofdeadleg]

Another thought occurs, you're picking the least used part of Adobe suite in my experience. Most professionals tend to use Photoshop and InDesign day-in, day-out (mainly InDesign in terms of man hours). I'm a bit of an excepton here that I chose to learn vector software (Illustrator 3) first.

 

I would disagree with this wholeheartedly. It depends on the profession of course, but I spend most of my day in Illustrator and InDesign, Photoshop comes after that on the list. Plus of course there are X number of full time illustrators who spend all day everyday (apart from tea breaks) in Illustrator, who may never touch programs like InDesign/Photoshop. Having a viable alternative to Illustrator is going to be a positive boon for a lot of people.

 

I havent had chance to investigate as yet but I'd be interested to see how well Affinity plays with After Effects…