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Perhaps I am old fashioned, but I am very vary about moving from Sketch to Adobe's new "Creative Cloud" or Figma. As a novice, I'm currently studying the desig
by areoform 7y ago
Perhaps I am old fashioned, but I am very vary about moving from Sketch to Adobe's new "Creative Cloud" or Figma.
As a novice, I'm currently studying the designs and work of Dieter Rams and lesser known contemporary studios such as, http://pharusdesign.com/en/case/rio-cello/ http://pharusdesign.com/en/case/rio-cello/ , watching them wield their craft has taught me more than any college course ever could. We are very lucky that such work has been preserved for the benefit of future generations.
Design is a deeply collaborative process, with each designer standing on the shoulder of giants. Great design needs to be studied and preserved so that it is accessible in the long-run. So far that has been easy to do. The designs have been on paper, and can be viewed in physical products. But now, with the advent of design tools made entirely for the web, I am worried that many great works will slip through the cracks of history.
In the future, we'll no longer be able to benefit from hindsight. The groundbreaking designs whose impact doesn't become obvious or important until decades into the future might evaporate with time, with little to show for it. After all, will Figma keep all designs, permanently in their archives, even when companies go bust and stop paying their bills? No matter how influential or interesting their design was? Will we be able to do autopsies of work from this era when Figma's servers are down?
Data ownership doesn't seem to be an option in Figma's paradigm. You do not have a copy of the tool, you only execute a part of it. You do not possess the data, they store it for you. Should there be an event where Figma is acquired or goes out of business, then (in all likelihood) every user of this platform will lack the ability and the choice to preserve their work for future generations (and for their business).
What are the odds of Figma staying as it is, in the control of founders, chugging along as a profitable business a year from now? 5 year from now? A decade? Two decades?
This timeline may seem to be long, but the average startup takes 7 years to IPO. Consequently, if you choose Figma as your tool of choice now, then it will be a marriage that lasts a decade or more.
I prefer Sketch and other tools because they store files natively. I know who is in control of my data. And, if need be, I can archive these files and the latest version of the program so that they can be spun up in the future, decades from now, for future generations to view.
Or, in the business context, there is data portability and ownership, when you control your data, you can control how it is inherited by future iterations of your product teams.
- anaisbetts 7y agoIt seems Odd that you state how important collaboration is, then your conclusion is that you should use a tool that is extremely Bad at collaboration! It seems like the value of collaborating with each other in the moment is much much much more valuable than whether I can review my 10-year old designs. Also, you're using macOS which is extremely callous as to keeping old versions of programs running - do you really think that a 10-year old version of Sketch or any other macOS program will run on any modern OS? macOS fully deprecates and breaks programs aggressively every release.
- HugoDaniel 7y ago"Design is a deeply collaborative process, with each designer standing on the shoulder of giants." I believe that what was meant was collaboration between generations, collaboration of ideas through time. And not so much collaboration of managers keeping tabs on the amount of minutes freelance designers work. In that regard Sketch file format is open and specced (https://github.com/sketch-hq/sketch-file-format https://github.com/sketch-hq/sketch-file-format). It should allow for future generations of OSes and tools to work on top of their files. This is in direct opposition to figma approach, which clearly state: "We store Files in Figma, in our own File Format: .fig This File format is specific to Figma and cannot be opened by any other tool." https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038006274-Files-in-Figma https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038006274-Files-... Once you go Figma there is no coming back.
- draw_down 7y agoThe first time I saw Sketch was not too long ago, I don't think it's really old enough to warrant the term "old-fashioned". Old fashioned would be working in Photoshop or Illustrator.
- uxcolumbo 7y agoI dislike cloud-only or subscription based design tools as well - you have less control. When Adobe moved to a subscription model I didn't upgrade. I used Sketch and other tools, but unfortunately they are not cross platform, so I switched to Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo. I'm hoping native tools can survive.