The news hit this morning like a punch to the chest, Adobe is acquiring Figma. Design communities everywhere are filled with “NOOOOO” gifs, confusion, and hot takes galore.

As a Figma fan for years, it’s a sad day for me, but not an unexpected one.

Figma has been a design community darling for the last three to four years, rocketing up to (an estimated) ~77% market penetration for Product Design tools. They’ve developed an amazing dialog with their community, through free conferences, and a team of design advocates who do incredible work training people and keeping their hand on the pulse of what customers care about. But they suffer from what many successful startups suffer from, which is having a product larger and more complex than a small, lean team can actively iterate on quickly.

I wrote about five areas I thought were important for them to focus on recently. This acquisition presents a huge acceleration opportunity for them (and a huge payday for the founders, no doubt).

Adobe has invested a huge amount into Adobe XD, to relatively modest success. They’re frequently in the top 3 tools, but decisively behind Sketch and Figma. They are an absolute titan of the design industry, and have been for decades. They acquire promising tools left and right, and will seemingly do whatever it takes to stay relevant (other than listen to their users about pricing, or removing deceptive patterns from their practices).

There are amazing people at Adobe doing incredible work. They’ve never really succeeded in enabling real-time collaboration in their core products in the way Figma has though.

What happens now?

Stages of grief

Designers will go through the five stages of grief over the coming weeks or months. And then, very little will change for the next 2–3 years. This is a pattern we see pretty consistently in acquisitions, especially Adobe ones such as Macromedia (showing my age there) or more recently, Substance Designer & Painter.

New products and features

In a year or so, we’ll probably start to see the fruits of the investment and resources Adobe will have given them. In two years, we may see new products launch, and FigJam overtake Miro with continued investment to win that market.

Opportunities for much better experiences with 3D, photos and bitmap editing, and print design are all on the table for potential huge improvements and increased compatibility.

Consolidation

Their pricing model will be changed to be a proper part of the Creative Suite, which I think could actually be a very good thing for businesses, as Figma’s pricing leaves a lot to be desired, but is potentially disastrous for access and inclusion in the industry at large. Adobe is not known for products with free tiers or for implementing pricing structures that enable people in poorer countries to get involved easily. Figma had levelled the playing field with free access to learn the tools and lower the barrier to entry for the craft of design. I hope the Adobe leadership understand this.

Exodus

Dylan and other core team members will likely continue in their roles until their retention bonuses pay out, at which point frustrations with operating inside of a large corporation, combined with the entrepreneurial urge to build exciting things will slowly erode that original team.

Competing products

The biggest question mark for me by far is what happens to Adobe XD. My money would be on it not being a supported product within five years, and the team being redeployed as additional resource within Figma. Who knows, but my thoughts are with that team, who have worked hard and built a good product in a very competitive environment.

Some market share may switch back to Sketch, but I don’t imagine this being significant. The playing field opens up for new, exciting competitors that perhaps look past collaboration to the next phase of design tools, which to me feels like the inevitable integration of AI.

A bright side

Figma is still a really cool product, occupying a problem space that designers (obviously) care about a lot. Having Adobe resources means a higher chance of a more global team, and more opportunities for passionate designers around the world to join the team and contribute meaningfully to the tool.

We also don’t have to worry about Microsoft or Apple buying them and making Figma platform-exclusive (Not that there was ever really a threat of that, but I’m grasping at straws here).

My advice to the community

Have patience. Let’s wait and see. Be kind to the Figma team, who are going to be dealing with a lot of change, and be vocal about what Figma means to you, and what you value in it.

It’s the end of a chapter, but the rest of the story has yet to be written.

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If these articles are relevant to your job, you might even be able to justify it as a learning & development expense! Food for thought.