Ten years with Affinity

The Affinity suite of design apps is finally catching on with mainstream design as people revolt against Adobe. I’m so happy to see this. I reject the notion that there should be a single brand which designers must use to be “real,” and it seems that this notion is spreading. Better late than never.

I started university about ten years ago, trying to pivot from a freelance web designer to a more versatile designer with an actual career (didn’t happen and now I have neither).

I found Adobe hard to use – while long term users might have thought it was perfectly usable, it wasn’t. The interactions often make zero sense to me and that was a huge obstacle (I still find it difficult to learn things that don’t make sense: my brain just rejects them immediately). It’s obvious that Adobe has been designed in the vacuum of its own monopoly.

So I I started out with Affinity Designer, which was clearly different, not least in value proposition. While less “powerful,” Affinity Designer ran better and was faster to learn.

Let me preface this post by admitting I’m not a power user. I don’t use macros, I don’t know shortcuts. I’m happy to work slowly and don’t really use the software in a professional workflow to speak of. I’m sure it can be used in such an environment, but not by me.

I expanded the suite to include photo, and when it launched, Publisher. All apps were a pleasure and the interoperability was also neat. The apps haven’t changed a lot in this time – the features that have been added are barely noticeable for my uses. I did notice a few cool things such as pattern layers, which was helpful when creating textures for Glitch Arena.

I have some issues with the communication around pricing. It’s marketed as a one time forever purchase, while in fact you are buying a version (albeit forever). But if you want to stay up to date, you will need to repurchase. This is better than a subscription model any way you look at it, but the versions are definitely speeding up. The first stuck around for almost a decade, but the second has been around for less than two years but is already past version 2.5. At this rate version 3 will hit in around a year’s time, so lets say that having complete access to the Affinity suite will cost you around 250 for three years – that’s around $7 per month. This is around 10 times less than the full Adobe creative suite, so is a better deal for visual designers if Affinity satisfies their needs.

All in all I prefer repurchasing to having a subscription. I have the option of keeping legacy versions which may be just fine, if I’m not professionally using them (I’m not). And in this case, I’ll still have the software when I need it for the odd thumbnail or logo.

As mentioned, I’m a failed designer. In an effort to resurrect my car-crash career, I did think for a time that perhaps using Affinity rather than Adobe was hurting my chances. So I signed up for Adobe. I quickly had second thoughts, and had to quit the plan due to financial hardship. Only after confirming I was really quitting, and turning down cheaper pricing, did Adobe snarkily hit me with a gotcha – I would be billed (automatically) for the plan anyway. If I knew this upfront I might have accepted the reduced pricing. This was a dick move by Adobe, and an unnecessary one. Fuck them, forever.

Affinity was recently bought by Canva. I hope this helps them grow their suite and increase choice and accessibility for other designers and artists in the same way it has for me.