Keep calm and Fig on
We are all currently very upset by the news of Figma being acquired by Adobe. But at the end of the day, our work will remain the same.
For years I have been a proud user of Figma. Proud because it made me a better designer. Proud because I helped others become a better designer with Figma. But also proud because Figma made me independent.
If you have been in design for a while, you might remember the days when we used to design for web in Adobe Photoshop. Or Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Indesign, if you thought that worked better. You might also remember how hard it really was to use those tools for UI design, and how hard it was to get rid of them.
For a while, most of us adopted Sketch: A bold newcomer that broke the market for UI design tools wide open. And its plugin system opened up the space even further. But Sketch also had its limitations: mainly being a mac-only single-player tool.
The dawn of Figma meant that we could work across platforms with multiple users at the same time. It was scary at first, but Figma proved that it was both possible and reliable to work on the web in multiplayer mode.
Fast forward to 2022, and that very liberating tool is now being bought by the company that limited us as designers for so many years. It’s only logical that we are all upset, and maybe even a little bit scared for what is to come.
But there is reason to have faith in a positive future, and I will explain why.
Adobe has promised to keep Figma autonomously
We all know what happened to Flash after it was acquired by Adobe. The tool, once loved by users, designers and developers became a monstrosity that was eventually killed off.
However, I would like to remind everyone that ultimately it was Apple that killed Flash, for security reasons that existed long before Adobe acquired Flash. It was doomed to be killed off from the very beginning, and if you knew anything about the web you could see that coming.
Figma is not like Flash. It doesn’t have security flaws like flash, or the need for manual updates like Flash.
You might say that Adobe already has a UI design tool, directly competing with Figma. Would it be logical for Adobe to keep both tools separately? At this moment, we just don’t know. Adobe might as well give Adobe XD a different purpose, making it complementary to what we have in Figma now.
Moreover, Adobe has voiced its intention to keep Figma. Quoting Dylan Field, founder of Figma: “Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO.”
Figma will keep working on great new features
An organization like Figma is always working on new features to keep cutting the edges of innovation. That means that we will probably be seeing great new features in the near future, maybe even before this acquisition is completed.
If you follow some of Figma’s Figmates on Twitter, like disco_lu or miggi, you know this firsthand. These amazing people are always on the lookout for customer feedback, trying to find ways to improve Figma with new updates and features.
We also know that Adobe has a lot of capabilities that Figma currently does not have. Like rich photo-editing capabilities, advanced illustration features or intelligent image prediction. Some of these capabilities are already possible through plugins. But with Adobe in the mix, we might see these capabilities getting integrated in a better way.
Figma might not be acquired by Adobe after all
The merger acquisition that has been announced today is definite, but it is definitely not a done deal.
In the past, we have seen many of these mergers that were not followed through for various reasons. The most (in)famous being Twitter not acquired by Elon Musk, because of doubts about the number of real Twitter accounts.
But there was also Facebook forced to un-acquire Giphy because of possible harms in the market, and Zendesk terminating its SurveyMonkey acquisition after its own investors rejected the deal.
There could be various reasons for Adobe to not see through with their acquisition of Figma. They may find that the community backlash will be harmful to both Figma and Adobe.
Adobe shares have already plunged after the news that Adobe will acquire Figma. Adobe's remaining shareholders may try to stop this deal just as well.
And finally there is a possibility that government watchdogs will stop this deal. The market for UI design tools is not awfully big. With Figma being market leader, and Adobe already owning not one but three major tools in the market, Adobe might become too big of a player in this market.
Conclusions
To summarize, there are a lot of possibilities for the future at this exact moment in time. Figma might stay separate from other Adobe tools, or it might become Adobe Figma CC. There might be a lot of great new features, or a lack of new development. And to top it off, Figma might not even be acquired at all.
But tomorrow, you will probably still be drawing rectangles in Figma. It’s what you have been doing earlier this week, and you need to get that project finished before next week. So you’re definitely not going to switch back to Sketch halfway.
And 10 years from now, you will probably be working in entirely different tools. AI is already reshaping design tools as we know them, and it’s very much possible that it will also reshape our jobs in the coming future.
So let’s not worry too much about today, wait a bit and see where this is going. Then we can all decide for ourselves, and keep making amazing designs.
Do you have some thoughts about this acquisition as well? Leave a comment here and let’s discuss.
