I learned design on Adobe. Everything I know how to do, I first figured out inside Photoshop and Illustrator. For years those apps basically were design to me. So paying over 1000 SEK a month for the full package never really felt like a decision. It was just what you did. The cost of being a designer.
Then one day I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d opened most of it.
It crept up on me. I started taking on more UI and web work, and I kept reaching for Figma to do it. Then I started doing everything else there too, the social posts, the posters, the decks. At some point I opened Illustrator for something simple, sat there waiting for it to load, and just closed it and did the whole thing in Figma in half the time. That was the moment it clicked. I was paying over 1000 SEK a month, out of pure habit, for apps I was actively avoiding.
To be fair, I did look around. Affinity was the one everyone pointed to. One-time payment, no subscription, does most of what Adobe does. I gave it a real shot. And it’s fine, it genuinely is. It just never felt right to me. Felt like a cheaper version of the thing I was already leaving, not the thing I was moving toward.
Figma was the thing I was moving toward. I know everyone won’t shut up about it, so I’m not trying to add to the noise, but it earned it. I run it on both the desktop app and the browser and half the time I forget which one I’m in, because my work is just there either way.
Here’s what actually changed how I work. You build something once and it lives everywhere. Fix it in one place and it fixes itself across every file. When you’re shipping posts and decks all week, that’s not a small thing. That’s hours back.
And I’ll die on this hill: Auto Layout is incredible. Most of my team hates it, lol, but the day it clicked for me I stopped shoving boxes around by hand like it’s 2010, and I’m never going back.
Even sharing is better. I send a link, someone jumps into the actual file and comments right on the thing they mean. No exports, no “which version is this,” no files flying around over email.
Somewhere in all this I realized something kind of obvious. I never needed Adobe to be a designer. I needed to make good work, and whatever let me do that faster was always going to win. Adobe just stopped being that thing.
So I cancelled. Sat through the “are you sure, here’s a discount” routine, closed the tab, didn’t look back.
If you’re still paying for Adobe out of habit like I was, here’s my honest take: stop. Move everything into Figma today, and actually learn it properly. Not just enough to get by. Really learn it. Mastering Figma right now is one of the smartest moves you can make as a designer. It’s where the work is going and it fits almost any workflow. The tool was never the point anyway. Making good things, faster, is. And right now that’s Figma.