3 ms·

I wish Adobe InDesign had more competition for desktop/print publishing as well. Affinity Designer/Publisher seems a popular alternative for Windows and Mac for

I wish Adobe InDesign had more competition for desktop/print publishing as well. Affinity Designer/Publisher seems a popular alternative for Windows and Mac for a one-off cost. Scribus is open source and runs on Linux but I found it hard to use and slow on a modest document. Does anyone know of other good options on Linux? I've seen some posts about Affinity running unofficially in Wine but it seems a risky choice. There's LaTeX but that's not for everyone. Figma isn't open source but at least you can use the web client on Linux. I'm curious if Figma will even get into print design also, as it doesn't seem like they'd need to add that much to support the basics (like CMYK color model and exports for different printer color profiles). Unfortunately, Figma, Adobe and everyone else have the broken incentives to make money by locking teams into expensive subscriptions via closed file formats and a family of products that don't play nice with products from other companies. I recall that Sketch had a documented file format, which Figma used so you could import your Sketch files into Figma to escape Sketch but you can't go the other way. I'm not going be surprised when Figma gets less generous with their free plan in the future now that they have such a strong network effect.

omnimus 3y ago
The problem with InDesign is that publishing industry is too small. Most people don't know InDesign but its used to produce practically every single print, book, label, poster ever. Yet it is too small for any company to care about to create competition (except Affinity). Funny thing is InDesign by itself already had most of what you need for digital design tool like Figma (and more). At some point (when InDesign still used to get some new features) responsive ebooks/pdfs were all the rage and InDesign even has "responsive" modes (something Figma doesnt). They wouldn't be able to make it multiplayer but with quite minor tweaks and better positioning InDesign could have been the tool for UI design. Who knows maybe it means Affinity is well positioned to make UI design tool. I know that many designers are starting too see local only software as advantage because their work can't be stolen by upcoming Figma AI designer.
- seanwilson 3y ago
  > Yet it is too small for any company to care about to create competition (except Affinity). I'm curious about their business model for this. When the Affinity suite is ~$170 one-off cost, I wonder how many they have to sell each year to keep going and how big the market is. If someone is using this software every day as their main way to make money, that's incredibly cheap as well but could they charge more? People hate subscriptions, but paying $100s upfront when it's actually worth it given how much it earns you is unpalatable as well. I'm curious if there's any other approaching to charging. Not suggesting this would work here but for example game engines take a % of the sales generated so you only get charged when you start making money, which avoids upfront costs and subscriptions while you're getting started.
  - omnimus 3y ago
    The way to do this is clear? If you release new version for 170usd every 18 months it's about 10usd/m subscription - so you are 6times cheaper?. The funny thing is that i think the pro market doesn't trust them because of the low price. It's possible Affinity found so much friction with pro market which doesn't want to change their processes that they figured out they have to go after the prosumer/hobby market. But as tools Affinity is not some kind of budget tool. The software is in many ways a lot better and doesn't have baggage ancient Adobe stuff has. The only thing they are missing for pro market is scripting/plugins. I think if they did that this would allow third parties to fill in lots of the functionality they don't have (same what InDesign and After Effects does). That could really really start to bite. The way i see it Affinity is one major update away from starting to eat away masses of Adobe customers. Everybody has been pissed at Adobe for years and once few bigger names start to do it because of costs it will fuel the confidence of everyone.
    - seanwilson 3y ago
      > If you release new version for 170usd every 18 months it's about 10usd/m subscription - so you are 6times cheaper?. This would put them under immense pressure to come up with new features (useful or not) to get people to upgrade. At some point for certain users, the current version is going to cover 90% of what they need and they won't see the point in upgrading. I didn't look into it much, but Sketch moved from a one-off payment for the current version plus 1 year of updates, to subscription-based charging. I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason was most didn't need the latest features. Aside from this, has any software ever done something like "$170 upfront, or $20/month for 12 months only, then you own this major version"? I'm aware of Adobe's approach where if you cancel the monthly plan they'll surprisingly charge you the rest of the payments to make up 12 months, but you don't own anything after.

omnimus 3y ago

The problem with InDesign is that publishing industry is too small. Most people don't know InDesign but its used to produce practically every single print, book, label, poster ever. Yet it is too small for any company to care about to create competition (except Affinity). Funny thing is InDesign by itself already had most of what you need for digital design tool like Figma (and more). At some point (when InDesign still used to get some new features) responsive ebooks/pdfs were all the rage and InDesign even has "responsive" modes (something Figma doesnt). They wouldn't be able to make it multiplayer but with quite minor tweaks and better positioning InDesign could have been the tool for UI design. Who knows maybe it means Affinity is well positioned to make UI design tool. I know that many designers are starting too see local only software as advantage because their work can't be stolen by upcoming Figma AI designer.

seanwilson 3y ago
> Yet it is too small for any company to care about to create competition (except Affinity). I'm curious about their business model for this. When the Affinity suite is ~$170 one-off cost, I wonder how many they have to sell each year to keep going and how big the market is. If someone is using this software every day as their main way to make money, that's incredibly cheap as well but could they charge more? People hate subscriptions, but paying $100s upfront when it's actually worth it given how much it earns you is unpalatable as well. I'm curious if there's any other approaching to charging. Not suggesting this would work here but for example game engines take a % of the sales generated so you only get charged when you start making money, which avoids upfront costs and subscriptions while you're getting started.
- omnimus 3y ago
  The way to do this is clear? If you release new version for 170usd every 18 months it's about 10usd/m subscription - so you are 6times cheaper?. The funny thing is that i think the pro market doesn't trust them because of the low price. It's possible Affinity found so much friction with pro market which doesn't want to change their processes that they figured out they have to go after the prosumer/hobby market. But as tools Affinity is not some kind of budget tool. The software is in many ways a lot better and doesn't have baggage ancient Adobe stuff has. The only thing they are missing for pro market is scripting/plugins. I think if they did that this would allow third parties to fill in lots of the functionality they don't have (same what InDesign and After Effects does). That could really really start to bite. The way i see it Affinity is one major update away from starting to eat away masses of Adobe customers. Everybody has been pissed at Adobe for years and once few bigger names start to do it because of costs it will fuel the confidence of everyone.
  - seanwilson 3y ago
    > If you release new version for 170usd every 18 months it's about 10usd/m subscription - so you are 6times cheaper?. This would put them under immense pressure to come up with new features (useful or not) to get people to upgrade. At some point for certain users, the current version is going to cover 90% of what they need and they won't see the point in upgrading. I didn't look into it much, but Sketch moved from a one-off payment for the current version plus 1 year of updates, to subscription-based charging. I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason was most didn't need the latest features. Aside from this, has any software ever done something like "$170 upfront, or $20/month for 12 months only, then you own this major version"? I'm aware of Adobe's approach where if you cancel the monthly plan they'll surprisingly charge you the rest of the payments to make up 12 months, but you don't own anything after.