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Boston, Massachusetts USA
Máirín is a senior principal interaction designer at Red Hat. She is passionate about software freedom and free & open source tools, particularly in the creative domain: her favorite application is Inkscape (http://inkscape.org).
Authored Comments
Hi Mike! I think I met you recently in the Red Hat Boston office. I'm a UX designer who has used a Linux desktop exclusively for a pretty long time now. When I have UX or visual design interns, for college interns a requirement is using Fedora; some HS interns I've allowed to use other OSes but they must use Inkscape, Gimp, Scribus, etc. to be able to collaborate with the team and our workflows. The OS/software has never been an issue, they pick it up quickly. It's simply not a problem. I had a HS intern this past summer and he braved Fedora. Not an issue in the least. He had never used Linux before! Seems to corraborate your point #1 above.
I urge any designer who believes a Linux desktop is unsuitable for professional design work to visit the annual Libre Graphics meeting conference. It will open your eyes, and you will learn a *ton.* There is some very exciting creative innovation happening in this community.
I have heard more people than I care to count tell me Gimp, Inkscape, and friends are incapable of X or Y when they in fact are capable. (Here's an example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb-TK1sYSuk - the wallpaper there was created in Gimp by a HS intern :-) ) I used to get quite upset by these unfair dismissals, but now I think some of it come from folks having tried these tools many years ago and having a very dated and poor first impression, either first hand or from a colleague. I dont know how to combat it other than continually demonstrating the software.
Anyway thanks for the article; it's a core issue that somehow doesn't seem to get discussed a whole lot.
I would beg to differ on the Illustrator v. Inkscape point, as a professional designer. Yes, the CMYK/Pantone workflow is wacky, but the basics of node editing in Inkscape v. Illustrator are *so* much more intuitive. Another common deficiency I've been pointed to is gradient mesh - while Inkscape has had in experimental mode foe some years it's now stable and no longer experimental. Illustrator involves holding down a ctrl key and iterating through what I call mystery meat node tool selection. Inkscape's node controls are explicit and laid out on the toolbar and easier to learn. This is rather fundamental.
Inkscape has innovations like Spiro (https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1018958), an intuitive and in some contexts superior vector drawing method to Bezier, innovated in open source FontForge and adopted by Inkscape. Another cool one - power stroke - at least the last I used it, Illustrator didnt have the feature.
I wont talk about creative cloud. :-)