Guest Post: The Tools We Use

I hadn’t given Apple's newest creation a lot of thought. I already had decided (my bank balance aided in this decision-making) that I will not be an early adopter like I was with the iPhone in 2007 -- this just didn't initially seem "need-to-have". Then I read a quote from developer Joe Hewitt, who commented “ if you're a developer and you're not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you deserve to get left behind.”  Something clicked for me. Graphic designers have depended on one software developer for the majority of the tools of our trade. A developer that is, in my opinion, extremely lazy and complacent.  

I read something a while back on this very blog that sticks with me. David said, "the tools that designers used 20 years ago are not the tools we use now. Right now the Macintosh with Adobe Creative Suite is the standard of the industry, but it won't always be." For younger designers (I had just graduated college when I read this) this was a revelation. It’s just hard to think of something being "beyond" InDesign. It just seems like no one’s going to be able to top Adobe at their own game. When will someone get the chance to beat the huge, established expertise and recognition that Adobe has?

As it happens, maybe no one has to beat Adobe at their own game, the game just has to change. The iPhone was a "must have" device for me based on for what features it came with, but I imagine the iPad will gain earn that distinction through the advances made by developers who will dream up something I can't live without. And I don't think that developer will be Adobe. Ever since I first played with the iPhone, I knew that some day we would design things using some sort of tactile technology or something that resembled the interfaces in Minority Report; I just didn’t know when. It still seemed to distant — there has to be something in between, to get us from here to there. Maybe the iPad is it. The race to develop the next generation tools for graphic design is wide open.

Comments

[Loïc]

Damn right.