Gravit Designer

I don't like to be pushed to connect to the cloud using this app and to work under supervision of Gravit.

(0_o) I hate it when developers do this: The installed version of Gravit Designer uses an entirely different numbering system. Today's update is v3.5.16.

Works like a charm :-)

Downloaded this to create graphics for my wedding invite. Love it.

The app has potential. And once you get used to the interface and where everything is (sorry guys, it is not quite as familiar as with Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer -- the latter is probably the closest thing to looking a bit like Gravit Designer's UI), this app can do some amazing things. Some great illustrations can be had from this app at a cost that makes Adobe Illustrator look expensive and Affinity Designer look like it is asking a little too much money from users.

However, there is scope for improvement. Once you have used the other well-known apps, you would sometimes wish there was a little more refinement. For example, Gravit Designer would be a much more useful app if it could do the following:

1. The dark theme should be default (looks professional).

2. The buttons across the top arranged in groups of four should have a general category mentioned to describe each group of four buttons primary purpose as in Affinity Designer (in fact, I think this is a direct take from Affinity -- nothing wrong with this personally). Otherwise you have to know where the buttons are by spending time leaning this app.

3. The biggest gripe with Gravit Designer is the lack of progress bars with a message explaining why there are delays in performing certain common operations. For example, in any other app, you can export to PDF, EPS, SVG, JPG etc fairly quickly, and should there be a delay, a progress bar pops up telling you where an operation is at, and preferably with a little extra information about what exactly is it trying to do when a user has to wait. In Gravit Designer, should an operation be performed that is likely to take a long time (and it will take a long time even for a document with a few slaps of text on the page and nothing else), you won't know what it is doing. The window of the app will look like it is frozen because you can't do anything. If you use this app for the first time, you might easily be forgiven into thinking the app has crashed given how long it takes to perform certain operations without any indication of what it is doing. If you have spent any time with the more refined apps such as Affinity Designer, you will know what I mean.

4. It would be so nice if Gravit Designer could just simply show a blank canvas on opening the app rather than a startup window where you must decide the size of the canvas, or whether you just want an unlimited blank canvas size (should be default), or to Open a File (we already have it in the File menu and through Command O). But no settings option is available to hide this as well as select the default canvas size or whether to automatically show the Open dialog box.

5. When you have selected a canvas size, nothing in the canvas means pressing Command W does not close the window or document containing the canvas size and show the startup window again. So you either quit and relaunch the app to start again, or choose New Design under the File menu. And if you do that and select a different canvas size, what you think should be two windows is in fact only one window. This is the new window for the new canvas size. Huh? Well, what happens if we decide to design on multiple canvas sizes representing different mobile devices and just want to copy and paste designs quickly across different canvas sizes already opened up? Unfortunately you can't. You must save the current canvas, start again with a new window and remember to have copied the designs from the previous window so you can paste them in. If you need to grab anything else from the original window and canvas design, you are going to have to close the new window and open the other file. Not efficient.

6. Can we make adjustable button sizes? I like my buttons to be a little larger than they are for ease of finding the right button.

While I understand some of these improvements are my personal tastes, others are based on common sense given how users tend to work. It will probably require someone to work with the developer who is a professional graphic designer, or for the developer to actually do a graphic design for another company under time constraints to realize how this app can be refined and made so much easier to use, and be more intuitive.

Beyond that, I still do like what this app offers for the incredible price. Thanks.