Adobe InDesign supports creating digital and print documents such as flyers, stationary, posters, and other types of media, with rich graphics, images, and more. Adobe InDesign is available standalone or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite collection of media management and creation products.
$31.49
per month
Figma
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Figma, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their collaborative design and prototyping application to support digital product and UI development.
Adobe InDesign is very well suited to image-heavy publications, such as children's books, cookbooks and coffee table books. It gives you almost complete control how to arrange these elements, and to be able to tweak them with precision. The software is an absolute necessity if one is developing interactive eBooks, especially for the Apple iTunes store. Unless coded by hand, I am not aware of any other tools to handle this. It is a powerful toolset, and can take on most anything publishing related that you throw at it. I personally have found that it doesn't do too well with reflowable eBooks (like for Kindle Amazon), but it retains that capability.
Figma is a solid design tool to craft the UX design concepts/solutions for digital products. For printed marketing materials such as brochures, marketing flyers, press releases, etc, other design tools such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign might make more sense to use for those use case scenarios.
Customization - With Adobe InDesign, as well as many other applications in the Adobe Creative Suite, I can fully customize my workspaces and save different workspaces. This makes it easy to navigate through my project and have the panels and tools I need easily accessible and configured based on my project needs.
Styles - Adobe InDesign has character styles, object styles, and tables styles. This speeds up my workflows and allows me to easily apply the same format across multiple elements. This is super helpful, especially when working with length documents.
File compatibility - I can easily export my files into so many different file types.
The Book feature - This feature is really helpful when creating books or very long documents with multiple sections.
It would be wonderful if InDesign would do automatic spell- and grammar-checking like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. While it is possible to spell-check your documents, the technology could be improved by being automatic and grammar-checking.
It can be really frustrating that keyboard shortcuts are different for the same tool between different Adobe products. I wish they would make shared tools the same shortcut. For someone who uses multiple Adobe products, usually in conjunction, it can be hard to remember which program is which keyboard shortcut and not accidentally select the wrong tool.
While I listed the linked images as being a pro, it can be a con if users don't package their files (especially when working with others on the same file). It would be really helpful if Adobe automatically populated a package file with images assets and typefaces. I can't tell you how many times I have been unable to locate a linked file or had to request them from a colleague.
Tappable overlaid layers - bugs on fixed components, such as an app navigation footer in a prototype
Swapping a component but retaining inputted copy or imagery.
Performance on prototypes to work better in UserZoom - having to delete hidden layers manually, optimize images, and streamline the file, in general, is time-consuming
Folder structures - larger teams need multiple layers of folder structure to help find things.
Branch performance - we need better, more user-friendly solutions to get designs to merge better.
Branch performance - branching with the option to choose which pages you want in the branch without deleting each page you don't need.
Default sharing options need improvement.
Responsive ratios' in prototyping without having to recreate pages.
Better collaboration with Jira to bring in links in the design mode not just dev mode.
I've had great experiences with the product and plan to continue to use it. It has been my go-to product for designing and creating materials. I have had great luck with it and have been able to create all of the needed marketing materials that have been requested for our company.
Figma is a pretty cool tool in many areas. My team almost uses it on daily basis, such as, brainstorming on product/design topics, discussing prototypes created by designers. We even use it for retrospectives, which is super convenient and naturally keeps records of what the team discusses every month. Furthermore, I do see the potential of the product - currently we mainly use it for design topics, but it seems it is also a good fit for tech diagrams, which we probably will explore further in the future.
If you know what you are doing it is an amazingly granular and powerful application. You can control pretty much any aspect of the design and layout of your documents and make changes globally and rapidly. But, if you don't know what you are doing...you will be staring at your screen in bewilderment for a long time. You can learn it, but be ready for a hefty time investment.
It's easy to use for designers who are familiar with design terms and functions from Photoshop and Illustrator. However, non-tech and non-designer collaborators have a hard time figuring out how to leave comments and apply changes, compared to other online design tools like Canva and Squarespace. Even simple drag-and-drops and rearrangement of certain blocks become too complicated due to uncommon functions like Hug and Lock.
Adobe support is ok but not great. Chat support often doesn't initially understand the question at-hand and it takes awhile to get to the right agent. Phone support has long wait times, and though I've had more luck there, it does take quite a time investment if you are looking for help. However, Adobe does have some online learning solutions available as well as a knowledgebase for frequently asked questions. If you're looking to learn how to use the platform, there are lots of resources which can typically be found in a few Google searches. If you have a technical issue with the system, that's going to be a bit more of a time investment as far as getting a tech's assistance to resolve the problem.
I haven't used their support lately but in the past, they had a chat that I used often. They often responded in a few hours and were able to give a satisfactory solution. I would imagine it's less personal now but the community has expanded drastically so there are more resources out there to self serve with a bit of Google magic.
In-person training has its own benefits - 1. It helps in resolving queries then and there during the training. 2. I find classroom or in-person training more interactive. 3. Classroom or in-person training could be more practical in nature where participants can have an hands on experience with tools and clarify their doubts with the trainer.
Online training has its own merits and demerits - 1. Sometimes we may face issues with connectivity or the training content 2. The way training is being delivered becomes very important because not everyone is comfortable taking online training and learning by themselves. 3. With the advancement of technology online training has become popular but there is a segment of people who still prefer class-room training over online one.
Canva is a valuable design tool for simple applications, such as creating a social media banner, flyer, or leaflet, particularly for those with no prior design experience. Its use of templates and straightforward tools to add pictures and text makes it a good choice for straightforward tasks. However, if you want to create a publication or designs that are more intricate, then InDesign is the tool for you.
I learned UX Design using Sketch and my team was using Sketch when I joined. We no longer use Sketch, and therefore I cannot compare its current functionality to Figma, but at the time of our switch, Figma just had more advanced capabilities- better collaboration, auto-layout tools, prototyping, etc. From what I can tell, it remains best in class for UX Design tools.
A great ROI for time in my small architectural practice, [especially] when a design has been updated and a report needs to be submitted. We can be submitting many reports that all look similar, clean and beautiful. We just save as the file and replace the images with more updated images. This way the client finds it easy to navigate updated reports, as many as they can be.
