Jason M. Lemkin and a co-speaker explain why Figma fails for print graphics. When three SaaStr sponsors handed off Figma files for event booth designs, layers disappeared and proofs came back broken. Adobe Illustrator remains the gold standard for print because it's purpose-built for production workflows.
built that AEO thing that's better than HubSpot in a single crappy prompt yesterday in Replit. A single, build me a better AEO product, attach 3 screenshots, and boom, in 5 minutes. It was pretty good, man. How, how's Make gonna compete?
Yeah, my, my frustration with Figma is a little different. It's, it's classic Figma, right? Here's the thing about classic Figma that's always bothered me at this point in time, where we, we hit these production deadlines for SaaStr. And so many folks want to build their booth graphics for print in Figma.
Yep.
Every year it breaks.
And so it's the standard, right? It is the standard. It has been until recently. It has been the standard.
Well, Illustrator, Adobe Illustrator is still the gold standard. That's still what we use. That's what we use for, for things going to print in actual production. Illustrator is, you know, as oldie as it is, Illustrator is still the thing we all consolidate on between, you know, me, Frame, and our production vendors. We all use Illustrator as That's the gold truth.
Yeah.
So it's interesting that every year we've had people use classic Figma to try and build out their booths and every year it breaks and different things break. And this year I had 3 sponsors where they said, hey, we're gonna use Figma, is that okay? And I said to all of them, please don't use that. Like it's gonna break. We always run into issues. They used it anyway. And guess what? We just got all their. Proofs back and they're all broken. They're all— files are missing. Like all the layers are not there. It's just when you do something on a tool that's made for online, you know, it's made for UX design.
It's made for on—
it's made for the online world. I don't get why people try and use classic Figma for production. Now they may say, I'm sure they'll say otherwise, that you can use it for things like print graphics in the real world, but just every year for me it breaks.
