My parents’ house is next to a language center. My apartment is in the same building complex as a bank. Those anchor places are where I book my Grab trips now instead of the actual addresses, after failed navigations from both ends. It’s a tiny solution that solves a tiny problem I have.

Someone is someone’s child. Someone is someone’s partner. Someone is someone’s friend. I grew up thinking so strongly about how you should be your own person, but recently it also seems nice to have adjacent meanings.

Time is either too fast or too slow, and either way I spend most of it killing.

Life during the last quarter of 27 hadn’t been exactly functional, let alone hopeful.

As I lay in bed one day, I kind of got how that club is a thing. I think, by 27, you would have done a fair bit of messing around, and might have just found out. It’s a monumental milestone if you get out of it alive.

My dad started working (at his more serious job, for lack of better expressions) at 27. His life started at 27. I was 27, and I thought my life was ending.

I’m about a few fountain pens and a few friends wiser now. This is to me—18, 27, in-between numbers, since the beginning of time, until the end of time, etc.:

Watch unimportant films, play uncanny games, read unserious books. Or important and serious ones, whatever sticks. Look at too much design, and you might only design for designers, or design about design. Do it anyway if you must, but remember that there’s design about life.

Adobe Illustrator looks, feels, and functions like a piece of software that is stuck in the past—and the whole Adobe Creative Suite, for that matter. Every few clicks takes me back to secondary school when I was tinkering with K-pop posters in Photoshop CS2. Brand identity can entail more than just vector graphics, like generative coding and sound branding, but most of the day-to-day tasks when I was working at a design studio still relied on Illustrator. Alternatives do exist, from ones that replace the entire app to ones that evolve to serve specific use cases. Still, this bloated app remains the industry standard despite everything.

I’m waiting for the day we’re free from Adobe Illustrator. For the time being, designers will continue to make do, juggling between Illustrator and other software for basic tasks.

Shaping the tool

Sure enough, you can’t wrap the whole branding process into just one software. Having dedicated apps for dedicated tasks is almost always efficient. Things that are designed for a single purpose have a charm of their own:

[…] the pattern is clear: an intentional commitment to a single purpose—either as a life philosophy, by using specific materials, or a deliberate design.

But beyond all else, I love the openness of creative tooling, where between you and your tool, the way you use it defies and expands its predetermined purpose.

Glyphs, as a font design app, excels at vector management. As expected, designers use it for logotypes, logomarks, symbols, and the like. Figma is another case of design mutation. Originally tackling websites and products, it has somehow become a one-stop shop for visual design. My friends and collaborators adapt the auto layout and component features for social posts, brand guidelines, design delivery, etc. And this was about the stock Figma Design, before the announcement of Figma Draw and Figma Buzz. Using Pitch and Google Slides for brand guidelines isn’t too far from the usual practice, but still requires a more elaborate setup.

There’s a beauty in molding the tool to fit our usage. My partner, a designer and developer, often talked about “hacky” ways to code certain kinds of design, going on creative routes to reach the desired destination. Before Figma Slides, my colleagues and I “hacked” Figma Design for collaborative presentations¹. About 4–5 years ago, in a long-gone attempt to run a multimedia project, I “hacked” the Samsung Notes app to design Instagram posts and stories², as a way to pass the time in long hospital visits. After all, anything with the functionality to control images and text has its chance to bear witness to good layout. Besides, I find creative constraints stimulating.

In holistic and practical ways, our craft shapes the tool we use.

In The Lofi Art and Human Tools Era, when discussing the constant pressure to get perfect results from AI-generated templates, Pirijan—Kinopio creator—said:

At whatever age it grips you though, the urge to create pulls you into a world of frustration, where your skills don’t yet match your taste and everything you try feels not good enough.

And then at times when what’s available in terms of resources and technicalities doesn’t align with your vision, our craft is defined by what the tool offers us.

Shaping the craft

When I was in university, I tended to be a little extreme about creativity and design theory being more important than knowing your tool. I remember my disdain for design centers focusing on teaching the apps rather than having a substantial design syllabus. A designer and educator, whose workshops I attended, once briefly mentioned something along the lines of mastering your design software of choice is essential. I wasn’t fully convinced then—and my disdain for those design centers is still alive now—but I appreciate the beauty of tooling much more as I grow.

Changing your tool is changing your workspace, changing your flow, and inevitably changing your outcome. When I was designing this website, my workspace changed from Figma to VS Code midway out of necessity and convenience. I put things together faster, and more aligned with technical reality. The way I think is also different. If most of the design had been done in a separate app, the overall construction would be the same, but details and micro-interactions would have diverged. Being closely interlinked with the potential and limitations of your medium streamlines the process and eliminates the impractical.

One of my first web projects was done in InVision, a memory that resurfaces only when I try to think of something less than decent about the path I’ve chosen. I’ve now forgotten the details, but the process was not pleasant. Designing with it aged me by a few years. This came from both the lack of experience at the time and the clunkiness of the tool. The design ended up being straightforward; but if my digital working environment had been more inviting and intuitive, the outcome might have been a tad bit cooler.

Then again, there are times when knowing the tricks of your tool does more harm than good, at least when you’ve advanced in your career. Back in 2020-ish, it felt like I couldn’t escape the four-pointed star motif and its variations in acid graphic design. I suspect it’s because it was two clicks away in Illustrator, and it signals the movement well, so it was grossly overused. Illustrator’s envelope distort design is another TikTok/Instagram trope that I used to come across quite often.

The only thing that keeps me coming back to Illustrator is muscle memory. A fair chunk of keyboard shortcuts is familiar to my fingertips. It’s an accumulation of your experience in the field. It deeply connects you to where you started. When you are in a work session, your body responds to the craft, sculpting it with your muscle memory.

For a few weeks, I struggled to find the point of this post. It’s half anecdotal, half train of thought going into ambitious territory I wasn’t fully prepared for. This is not to pit Illustrator against everything else in the design tool war. I wasn’t trying to endorse any tools mentioned above either.

Toward the end of his essay, Pirijan talked about “a market for understandable, engaging, and fun-to-use tools,” and I think it’s part of what I’m trying to say. I want to be equipped with good, open tools to be able to create well. Thoughtful tools, thoughtful craft. And good tools should be your reliable companions all the way.