I’ve been playing with a ten-day trial of what for me is going to be the Adobe Illustrator killer. It’s called Affinity Designer.
Vector art programs have never really been fun. A lot of the graphic designers I know look at programs such as Illustrator as necessary evils — maybe tweak a logo, but not as anything to have fun with.
Gorilla clip-art in Bézier curves in Adobe Illustrator
I started out with vector programs such as CorelDraw with my first computer which was a ponderously heavy Hewlett-Packard PC. I didn’t really learn to create in Adobe Illustrator which was always recognized as the serious professionals’ vector design tool until I forced myself to recreate clipart with the Bézier curve tool. It is an arduous process, and my thought was that if I became good enough at it, I could turn classic clipart images into resolution independent vector art that I could size to whatever my craven little heart desired.
It was still a drag, and as Adobe added “improvements” to Illustrator, the slower and more bloated it became. It got so it became impossible to find tools that I was familiar with in the supposedly latest and greatest version of the program. No thanks.
Along comes Affinity Designer.
Originally I was looking at a Photoshop alternative called Pixelmator when I saw mention of Affinity Designer in the reviews of that program. I took a look. 10-day free trial. Worth a look, I guess.
Long story short, it’s wonderful! It has many of the same features as Illustrator, but these guys have really figured out how to make a vector art program fun! It’s also leaner, meaner and a lot faster! The tools and adjustments are all easily accessible, and I almost wish I knew nothing about vector art programs to see how intuitive this program is. I’ve been doodling around in it and getting a big kick out of it. Needless to say, I will be buying it. Yes, they let you buy it rather than subscribe, and it’s only $50!
