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Gravit Designer released today

over 3 years ago from , Gravit GmbH

Hello Folks,

We are proud to have Gravit Designer, a free design tool for screen design, illustrations and much more released today:

https://designer.io

This release includes a lot of interesting stuff like anchoring for responsive layouts, shared styles like in Sketch and others and much much more check it out.

It is available on every platform including Mac, Chrome OS, Windows and the web as well as it is coming soon to Tablets. It was also accepted by Apple and is now available on the Mac AppStore :)

We're eager to hear what you think about it. For further reading we've also published an article about the closer future of Gravit Designer including Symbols, Animation, Prototyping and much much more:

https://medium.com/gravitdesigner/a-new-step-for-gravit-designer-d987e9900de0

63 comments

  • Daniel FoscoDaniel Fosco, over 3 years ago

    Congrats on the release! But please, for the love of god, remove the scroll-jacking from the landing page... I could barely read it all >.<

    I read (fast) during work hours, don't limit my scroll speed because you want me to view full-height sections on your landing page to “improve the experience”. You're standing in the way.

    28 points
    • Marvin Hagemeister, over 3 years ago

      It's surprising that we still have to deal with that in 2017 :( The landing page itself is amazing, the scroll-jacking only distracts from an otherwise excellent experience.

      11 points
    • T. F., over 3 years ago

      Sorry guys, but I don't have any issues with this implementation of a full page scroll jacking, as it's implementation is well done, quick, smooth and really underscores an excellent full screen experience. Well done !

      1 point
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      I understand your concerns and it took us some time to decide whether to do regular scrolling but it wouldn't allow the same experience so we added it this way. Is it really that bad? ;(

      0 points
      • Gabriel Sturk, 3 years ago

        It's the same problem as for every site with this kind of scroll jacking. It's to sensitive and jumps one block up or down even though I didn't mean to.

        0 points
      • Daniel FoscoDaniel Fosco, 3 years ago

        I mean, why not let me view the content in my own pace? I see you wanted elements to fade into the screen as I scroll through, but you could do that on the first scroll and just leave them there for the rest of the session.

        It really does stand in the way of a otherwise well-designed landing page :/

        0 points
  • R. KamushkenR. Kamushken, over 3 years ago

    Add export to HTML/CSS with semantic valid code - and you'll rock the market off !!!

    5 points
  • Masood Mohammad, over 3 years ago

    Oh! Installed and the first thing I wanted to do is to change the interface color to dark gray! But unfortunately .... :(

    I find the current color is really tough to the eye!! You should give the option to change color!

    2 points
  • Nick CiliakNick Ciliak, over 3 years ago

    Looks awesome. After playing with it for a few minutes, the pen/vector tool seems much nicer than Sketch's.

    2 points
    • Patrick NeufmillePatrick Neufmille, over 3 years ago

      Vector resizing in sketch = nightmare.

      5 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      Thanks :) Actually it has quite some nifty nice little tricks to use it even more efficiently as its a mixture of Freehand, Fireworks and Affinity but only taking the good parts haha ;) Maybe we should write an article on it. Also make sure to check the bezigon tool to make quick curves like shown in the medium article.

      3 points
  • Jonathan SimcoeJonathan Simcoe, over 3 years ago

    Just played around with Gravit. In some ways this is incredibly impressive. In other ways I don't think it will ever touch Figma.

    Nice to see some other folks playing in the space though.

    2 points
  • Zip ZapZip Zap, over 3 years ago

    I'm waiting for this but open source (like atom for coders)

    1 point
  • Jason Kanzler, over 3 years ago

    really cool of you guys to do this. love the familiar feel of the interface. i want to recommend it to friends and family who need a design program but aren't ready to pay for one. i downloaded the mac app and it is having big problems with fonts, namely i can't even choose one. it only uses Open Sans. also if i create a text box and copy it and change the font of the new text box, it renders that box unclickable and all sorts of weird things start happening. just thought id let you know! thanks!

    1 point
  • Matt WilliamsMatt Williams, over 3 years ago

    The app looks really nice. Love the interface design. One small recommendation: When scrolling through sidebars and the mouse lands within a number input, the scrolling stops and instead the input starts incrementing. This makes for some annoying undoing. Maybe only allow scrolling to increment when the input is focused.

    1 point
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      That's a good idea. Actually initially we thought it'd be innovative to not need to focus the input fields but just move the mouse over them to use the scroll wheel. We're having a hard time giving a lot of thoughts into the UI to make it perfect :)

      2 points
  • Ivan FrantarIvan Frantar, over 3 years ago

    Looks quite interesting but I don't see how much more substantially interesting is than Sketch, Figma or Affinity Designer. At least I don't seem to see why should I start using your product. Would you be able to perhaps list a few things that your product does than the others don't or does better? Or what problems you solved with Designer that exist on the others?

    1 point
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      Hi!

      Sure :) First there's the zero pricing which makes it especially good for education and countries where people might be good designers but not being able to afford any cash easily.

      Furthermore compared to SketchApp it is available on every operating system including the web rendering your files exactly the same on every system. Soon it'll be also on the iPad and Android Tablets. Furthermore it has the anchors and layouting stuff as well as Path Graphes Figma has but Sketch not.

      Compared to Figma it works really offline. It has no SaaS and loads and saves as you're used to from offline apps. It'll also feature a native rendering engine giving the same performance as Affinity Designer (coming soon). Furthermore it has quite a lot more features than Figma.

      Compared to Affinity it has more platforms it is available on and many things especially for screen design are easier to access. It also has multiple fills/borders and stackable effects affinity doesn't do.

      Last but not least it has many features others don't have coming from the roots of Fireworks and Freehand, like for example master pages and real layers. As you can see from the medium blog, it'll also soon feature prototyping features similiar to Adobe XD as well as native builtin animation capabilities.

      Lastly, the exports are much much better than in any being it Sketch, Figma or Affinity Designer especially on SVGs for Icons and pixel perfection (Sketch can't do) and high quality vector PDFs (Affinity rasterizes most).

      Oh and lastly as Gravit has been here 1,5 years before Figma and nowadays over half a million active users I guess your questions should've been better asked why Figma when there's already Sketch, Gravit and Affinity haha :p

      Hope that helps!

      7 points
      • Ivan FrantarIvan Frantar, over 3 years ago

        Oh and lastly as Gravit has been here 1,5 years before Figma and nowadays over half a million active users I guess your questions should've been better asked why Figma when there's already Sketch, Gravit and Affinity haha :p

        Haha! Point taken ;) I didn't know this.

        • But regarding operating systems, I guess that will be welcome for that Windows and Linux audiences. Doesn't make much difference for a Mac user, though.

        • Pricing now is free but I'm sure you guys will be charging soon enough(?). Or how are you planning to sustain yourselves?

        • Figma doesn't work offline but AD and Sketch does. Figma though has the collaborative aspect of it, which is it's main selling point and differentiator from the others.

        • Prototyping is an interesting feature. I would like to see how you guys make that work.

        • Regarding exports I don't see anything particularly lacking in Sketch—which is the app I use.

        Just as a corollary and considering the amounts of tools that are out there that do great job, it would be cool on your end if you demonstrate some of this benefits with facts. Perhaps some posts comparing with actual data, for instance, why Gravite exports better than Sketch or AD? Will these SVG exports help me load my website faster? Would it make it easier to animate them?. Show me your pixel precision vs Sketch pixel precision. Will your 'better' export is a reason enough for me to stop using Sketch? The fact that you have better and more features than Figma is a good enough reason to stop using it to collaborate with other designers on a project and find collaboration in another way? These are just some thoughts I have.

        Don't get me wrong, it looks like a great and powerful tool but right now I'm seeing it as another tool in the pool of tools and it's hard for me to justify a switch. Having said that it's brilliant that you are reaching Linux — which sucks on tools like this — and Windows.

        0 points
        • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

          But regarding operating systems, I guess that will be welcome for that Windows >and Linux audiences. Doesn't make much difference for a Mac user, though.

          Probably but for hand off and considering it'll also be on tablets as well as have for example native GDrive integration I think that's a big plus.

          Pricing now is free but I'm sure you guys will be charging soon enough(?). Or how >are you planning to sustain yourselves?

          No definitely not. We're making money by licensing our powerful framework to other companies and thus can keep the tool always free exactly like we intended it to be.

          Figma doesn't work offline but AD and Sketch does. Figma though has the >collaborative aspect of it, which is it's main selling point and differentiator from the >others.

          Yes but what to do if you don't have internet and need your stuff? Or what if you decide to stop paying for subscriptions, you can not access all your designs ever again ;(

          Prototyping is an interesting feature. I would like to see how you guys make that >work.

          Yeah we have some good plans for that. Thanks for being web based we have huge opportunities on this side :)

          Regarding exports I don't see anything particularly lacking in Sketch—which is the >app I use.

          We have many customers that had redone for example their icons in Gravit because they never exported pixel perfect for fonts in svg. Also the pdf export from Sketch often rasterizes too much whereas Gravit tries to use native PDF Features (masking, blending, effects etc.) wherever possible (though I admit that point might be more important for people using Gravit for print).

          I understand your points for sure and yes just having pixel perfection and maybe anchors / layouting is not enough to switch from Sketch. But the thing is that Gravit evolves really fast and considering the great base we have we can no quickly add the cool stuff like transistions, animations and prototyping and then you might think again about to switch haha :p

          3 points
          • Ivan FrantarIvan Frantar, over 3 years ago

            Fair enough and thanks for taking the time to explain. I'll keep an eye though and keep up the cool features coming! ;)

            0 points
      • Parvez SParvez S, over 3 years ago

        Thank you for taking your time and listing all these features. That's pretty cool of you :) going to try it now.

        0 points
  • Marcel M., over 3 years ago

    Been using Gravit Designer (Offline Win) for less than 5 minutes and I ran into an annoying bug (“Create New Page” is clickable but nothing happens at all).

    I know it’s free and I should be thankful and keep my mouth shut. But if you want to compete with other tools in the B2B field of UI design (the tools you mentioned in your comments in here) this is a no-go :(

    UI Bugs incoming in 3...2..1...

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      Sorry about that, pages actually worked so far for everyone not sure whats causing this. Note also this is the first official release and even though we tested extensively in beta we rely on our users to figure the last bugs. I admit though this one is evil. Did you create an infinite canvas? And are you on Version 3.0.4? Maybe you could help us figuring the issue would be great.

      Oh and of course you should NOT keep your mouth shut, we want to create a really free and powerful alternative to other apps and as such as you say, we rely on exactly this feedback to figure issues and fix them ASAP :)

      0 points
  • Mario S, over 3 years ago

    three things:

    first, great job, been following the first version of gravit since the beginning and it has come a long way!

    second, what happens to the cloud (gravit.io) solution? I read somewhere in the comments that you'll be migrating it over to this version, does it mean that cloud storage will still be supported?

    third, do you support "copy css styles"? Will you? This is the main reason I use figma.

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      thanks, yes we had a long hard way to go but we're just at the beginning :)

      yes we'll support cloud storage when we'll migrate as well as synch on and offline working full offline.

      copy css styles is high on our list yes :)

      0 points
  • Stefano Vitagliano, over 3 years ago

    It'd be nice to see the actual % of the JPG quality and the related final file size in the export window. As photoshop does in Save for web.

    It looks really interesting as a replacement of the adobe tools for the social media activities: resize/crop, add text, export.

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      That's a good idea, we'll add it to the todo list. Note that it does a little bit more than that ;-) Like it has shared styles, advanced layouting, pixel perfection and multiple artboards for screen designs and much much more :)

      0 points
      • Stefano Vitagliano, over 3 years ago

        I know. It's impressive how many feature it has. You guys have done a really good job.

        But I don't feel comfortable to use it in my web design workflow. Replacing Adobe + Sketch is not that easy. I don't see all these advantages compared to them and it's not widely used. My teammates should change as well. And all the people I work with.

        Yes it's free but I'm a bit suspicious about this point. For how long is it going to be free? It doesn't look solid.

        0 points
        • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

          Thanks :) What's stopping you from seeing it as a possible alternative you think? Is there anything we could do better?

          Yes its free and will stay free as we make money licensing our engine to others that was always our goal :)

          0 points
  • Kemie GuaidaKemie Guaida, over 3 years ago

    It looks awesome! I thoight it was a new version of the "old" gravit, but I see it's still there at gravit.io. I'm confused, is this a completely different product? can projects/files be migrated?

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      Its actually the successor of gravit.io. However we want to get it super stable first then we'll let you automatically migrate everything from gravit.io :)

      1 point
  • Hanu ManHanu Man, over 3 years ago

    Love Gravity but ... Will be available from the Windows Store?

    0 points
  • David SvezhintsevDavid Svezhintsev, over 3 years ago

    Any plans to add Brushes? Right now drawing with a pen is a nightmare because you have to change the width of a border each time you want it different. Support for a drawing tablet would be badass.

    That Magic Hand is probably the best feature in terms of vector drawing.

    0 points
  • Gabriel AnghelGabriel Anghel, over 3 years ago

    Interesting app, will sure give this a try on a project soon.

    Till then i saw some bugs with the fonts, when switching font style some time the font changes some times not, also some fonts don't seem to be supported.

    Windows 10 Version.

    Also any chance for a different skin, I would like something on dark grey or soft grey, I think using color in interface will make designs look a little bit weird.

    Cheers.

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      Yes new Skins will come soon.

      Mind writing a bug report on our forum discuss.designer.io so we can replicate the text font issue and fix it asap?

      0 points
  • joe andersonjoe anderson, over 3 years ago

    How do you make money for this tool to be sustainable (future updates, improvements, etc)?

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      We're also selling other product based on our graphic engine as well as we license the engine to other vendors thus can guarantee to keep this product free :)

      1 point
  • T. F., over 3 years ago

    I haven't tried out the App yet, but I really really like the dark theme and the seemingly rich, adaptive interface. (vs sketch always to bright default interface)

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      Thanks :) Two new Skins (Dark Gray and Light White) will come as well soon. Try it out and let us know what you think :)

      0 points
  • Freckley FrecklesonFreckley Freckleson, over 3 years ago

    Awesome, super keen to try. I love sketch but they've really slowed down with the feature releases, or at least with the features that I want. Just a not on the website, the bouncing button drives me bonkers!

    0 points
  • Thomas Michael SemmlerThomas Michael Semmler, over 3 years ago

    consider fixing your landingpage's FOUC (flash of unstyled content).

    0 points
  • Paul @StammyPaul @Stammy, over 3 years ago

    I couldn't load the homepage - It told me to rotate my device.. I'm on a 5K iMac in native (non-retina) mode where I have my browser window very tall.

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      Actually we use media queries to check screen width as sadly enough there's no real widely supported standard for display orientation yet ;(

      0 points
  • Brandon CrooksBrandon Crooks, over 3 years ago

    Congrats on the release! Digging it so far. Has tons of potential.

    Comments / Suggestions:

    1) When duplicating objects, why are the new objects offset (down and to the left)? 2) I would love to have the ability to measure the distance between objects. 3) Is there a particular reason pages don't contain art boards? I've gotten accustomed to working on with multiple artboards on the same page as opposed to one 'artboard' per page.

    P.S. Looking forward to prototyping and animation :)

    0 points
    • Dapo OlaopaDapo Olaopa, over 3 years ago

      There's a toggle on the Pages list that lets you see them all at once as Artboards. Although it stacks them 2 in a row, and I don't think one can move them around.

      0 points
      • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

        You can move them around as well as resize them, just click on the label of the page to select them :)

        0 points
        • Dapo OlaopaDapo Olaopa, 3 years ago

          I was able to move them around after zooming in, but it's very jerky and when I try to use the directional keys it just goes back

          0 points
          • Alexander Adam, 3 years ago

            Not exactly sure what you mean. Could you give a more concrete sample so we could check what's happening? Thanks :)

            0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      1) Actually the "Clone" command does what you mean :) 2) As mentioned in a comment, on the pages panel switch the toggle to show all pages to have them act like artboards

      0 points
  • Mariusz OstrowskiMariusz Ostrowski, over 3 years ago

    Congrats! Looks very powerful as a web app!

    0 points
    • Alexander Adam, over 3 years ago

      thanks :) and with the new rendering engine we're currently working on we'll have the same native performance as Affinity Designer in a couple of months :-)

      1 point