Adobe’s Comet will collide with Earth some time in 2016
Designers, Competitors and Adobe have Time to Prepare
Adobe announced Project Comet, among with a lot of other interesting stuff, at their 2015 MAX conference on October 5. Depending on the types of tools you’ve been using recently, this news may mean different things for your workflow. For those who primarily use Adobe tools, Comet may look new to you. If you have been experimenting with the surprising number or new design, prototyping and interaction/animation tools that have risen in popularity over the past few years, you may see Comet as reactionary (but, perhaps compelling nonetheless).
Image Credit: Adobe.com (Note: image resized using Affinity Photo – to emphasize competitive pressure)
When Adobe announced artboards for Photoshop, there was a lot of talk about Adobe copying Sketch. This seems fair to say, however it also seems a little bombastic when you consider that Adobe Illustrator has had artboards for years. However, it’s clear that Sketch has become known for developing designs on artboards and easily exporting final artwork assets at various pixel densities. It’s success has also been buoyed by a growing ecosystem of independent plugins, UI Kits and other resources.
With the announcement and demo video for Comet, similar cries of ‘copying’ will continue as we notice familiar aspects of various prototyping and design tools in Comet. However, there were also some pretty cool things shown in the Comet demo that seemed ahead of the competition. For example the ease of mocking up repetitive data like lists and grids via Comet’s “Repeat Grid” tool. (more…)
