Graphic design

I used to do quite a bit of graphic design, especially when I was at university. I remember teaching myself basic photoshop from online tutorials in my late teens and then spending a lot of my time, once I got to university, designing posters for plays, college balls, club nights, charity events and things like that. I’ve still got a reasonable eye for good graphic design, I think, but it seems like my decades old skills have pretty firmly rusted up and - shocking as it may be - photoshop has changed a little in the intervening years.

I’d really like to be able to do my own graphic design work, both for myself and for this site, and for SWUX so I decided it was time to bite the bullet, get back on the bike, dip my toe in the water, saddle up the horse, and a dozen other metaphors. For most of what I want to do there’s really only a few choices of software that are worth considering; Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, or Figma. Back in the day I used photoshop for everything but it’s really not a good choice for much of the work I’m interested in, so it’s just these 3 options. Getting down to my priorities for these tools, I need something that is cost-effective, relatively accessible for someone coming back to graphic design, and something that can make graphics for the web as well as posters and other graphic materials.

Adobe Illustrator

By far the most powerful, comprehensive and capable option, Adobe Illustrator also integrates with all of the rest of the Adobe suite of tools. This is the choice of professionals across the world, and for good reason. It’s incredible software that can do remarkable things. In a world of endless time and money, this would probably be my choice, as it is though, it’s expensive ($22.99 per month just for Illustrator, $55.99 per month for the full Adobe suite) and it’s also got a huge learning curve. Precisely because it’s so powerful as a tool, it’s not a particularly easy piece of software to just get up and running with.

Affinity Designer

Much like Illustrator, Affinity Designer is a professional-grade piece of software that can produce amazing results. Much like IIlustrator there’s also a substantial learning curve. Unlike Illustrator, though, it’s a one-off purchase ($69.99 for Designer or $164.99 for the full set of software tools that Affinity offer). This would be another great option if time and money were a little more readily available.

Figma

Figma is really a tool for UI and UX designers and is hugely popular with anyone looking to make mockups, wireframes, and app or software workflows. It seems, though, that it’s also a pretty serviceable graphic design tool as well. It’s much simpler that Illustrator and Designer, has a great support community with templates, assets, and tutorials, and is significantly cheaper ($12 per month). What I also like is that it integrates well with FigJam which is a whiteboarding tool I’ve really come to love. I spent an hour or two this afternoon just getting a hang of the basics and I think I managed to put together a serviceable poster for SWUX.

For now I will definitely be keeping with Figma and seeing just what I’m able to learn and what it’s capable of as a graphic design tool, but further along the road it may well be that either Designer or Illustrator are the best option. Right now the Adobe suite is just prohibitively expensive and I think that anyone whose business doesn’t absolutely rely on using Adobe products probably just can’t rationalise that kind of expenditure - unless, of course, you’re a big-time, moneybags, tech company. For me, for now, Figma seems like a great option and I’m looking forward to experimenting and learning and if that then transitions into one of the other tools, then we’ll have to give that some thought when we get to it!