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After 4 years in the making, Serif's Affinity Designer has launched!(affinity.serif.com)

over 8 years ago from David Bachmann, Front-end developer

  • Simon Vansintjan, over 8 years ago

    I feel like there's still something missing to take InDesign's place though. A lot of the things I work can end up being large documents that can be hard to get a grip on if just working with something like Sketch or Illustrator.

    Would love to see something fit that space that plays nicely with all of these things.

    0 points
    • Chad Behnke, over 8 years ago

      That's going to be a tougher nut to crack, I think. With a lot of these illustration and design tools, the final version is agnostic toward the means that were used to create it. If you're creating a graphic that will end up as a PNG, JPG, or SVG, the website/PDF file/vendor doesn't really care if you made it in Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, or Affinity. However, especially with large-scale projects, InDesign files require a lot of different logistical points and people to touch and manipulate the documents to get them right, so more standardized software and processes are needed to support those initiatives.

      I do think it would be cool if there were an "InDesign Lite." I find myself not feeling 100% comfortable in any of the tools when you start talking about mixing a lot of photos and illustration and doing layout. I love the idea of linking files and allowing the tools that most easily manipulate each of the file types edit them. I was pumped when Adobe announced Linked Smart Objects in Photoshop! But I don't feel great at doing layout stuff in Photoshop, and InDesign is really big and bulky to me, so a piece of software that is small and good at type and grids, and mixing linked objects in, would definitely be something I'd be interested in.

      2 points
      • Vivek GaniVivek Gani, over 8 years ago

        FWIW, they seem to be working on an indesign competitor called Affinity Publisher.

        2 points
      • Nathan HueningNathan Huening, over 8 years ago

        iWork Pages == InDesign Lite. Seriously. I know it sounds ridiculous, that's exactly how I use it... Can replicate about 95% of what I need InDesign to do without much effort.

        0 points
    • Nathan HueningNathan Huening, over 8 years ago

      Honestly, I'm probably going to get a lot of slack for this, but Pages (i.e., iWork) does about 95% of what InDesign does. It's a deceptively powerful page layout app... I used both Quark and InDesign in college when I worked at the Daily Texan (Hook 'em Horns!) so I have a pretty good familiarity with both. And whether it's setting up sections, templates, or text styles, Pages does all that I need.

      Where it falls short is that it doesn't allow arbitrary canvas sizes. Also, the "Capture Pages..." functionality was crippled in the latest update, though I expect that will be re-added (kind of how Final Cut X was missing a bunch of features). It doesn't work for all my needs but it's rare that I even need to open InDesign for basic things like annual reports or catalogs.

      0 points