In 2024, when I’m writing this, there is one industry standard and a couple good alternatives when it comes to design tools. The standard is Figma, as you already know from Adobe’s failed purchase and axing of XD. The two main alternatives are Sketch and Affinity.
Figma is entirely subscription based. Sketch can be purchased as a subscription or as a yearly license. Affinity is a one-time purchase; the license covering the entire update life of that point version.
Figma is aimed at interface and digital product design. Sketch does that, as well. Affinity is more of an Adobe-killer, focused on replacing the bloated and crash-prone CC versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign... however they are capable of doing digital / product design as well if you’re okay pairing it with a service like Zeplin or prototyping app like Principle for Mac.
Code-leaning tools
If you’re one of the designers that upskilled to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript like the world told us we should in the mid 2010s, then there are also some great tools for you!
CodePen is a full IDE right in your browser. Great for seeing what you make as you’re doing it and handing off working examples to your team-mates without them needing to install anything to see everything you did with a quick toggle of the interface.
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) has some amazing plugins I’ll add to the
page and it’s been my go-to app since the sad sunsetting of Atom. However I’m also still fond of Sublime Text if you’re on macOS or Notepad++ if you’re on Windows.
Want to print your doc? This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
Design Tooling
