I Want To Own My Design Software. I'm Falling Out Of Love With Tech

First of all, I want to clarify that I don’t think that design software should be free. I’m more than happy to pay for it (within reason). My beef is with the subscription model that creates an illusion of ownership and infinitely bleeds creative professionals dry. Especially in a reality where many designers face layoffs in favor of AI tools.

In my picture of the world, this is not within reason.

My issue is also with Adobe as a monopoly that spends a lot of money on preserving its market dominance and eliminating competitors. Adobe as a company that claims to serve creatives but also bullies us into supporting its lifeline.

As someone who’s been using their products since 2003, I’m not so sure that in 2026 Adobe deserves to exist if they can’t handle competition or offer one-time purchase like Procreate or Affinity (pre Canva acquisition).

Meanwhile, Creative Cloud is imposed on us as the industry standard along with a few more dozen tools. When applying for jobs, sadly, getting away with Affinity Designer and Procreate alone is not an option. Even if in reality those two together are more than enough to get the job done (at least, my job).

I guess I could get away with it if we lived in the world where the nature of design jobs was not performative as it often is these days. Like using AI for the sake of using AI which adds another $100 in monthly subscriptions. Because tech bros need to justify those billion dollar investments. Because in 2026, designers’ best bet is to brand themselves as AI enthusiasts to stand a chance of getting hired.

It’s not just AI though. Many job postings for designers often identically list Adobe, Figma, Canva, Framer, Webflow, Zeplin, Spline, LottieFiles, Cinema4D, and others. Regardless if they’re looking for a product designer, game designer, animator, or an illustrator. If I were to entertain an idea of being proficient in all those tools, I’d be paying over $250/month for these subscriptions alone.

(Sometimes I wonder if designers these days can even afford pursuing a full-time corporate job. If companies deserve our time and talent).

Anyway, back to Adobe. I think that if the apps were really that good and a buyout was still an option, people would buy. I would buy.

However, I don’t think they are that good anymore. Current versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and After Effects are overcomplicated, unintuitive, and bloated. The only reason I still know my way around them is because I’ve been a user for two decades, and the key shortcuts are deeply engraved in my brain.

The subscription model is supposed to be justified by regular updates and newly developed AI features. Maybe for some creatives they do make sense, but in my process I can get the job done using tools that existed within the software back in 2012. Unfortunately, at that time I was getting my bachelor’s degree and didn’t yet have $2600 to buy that Master Collection.

What I had though was a student license paired with a pirated version.

In 2000s and early 2010s Adobe very one-sidedly imposed the US and EU pricing on the rest of the world. When I got my design degree, my junior salary was barely enough to cover my rent. Definitely not enough to cover Adobe by existing pricing standards. Thankfully, companies I worked for at that time either had their own license either embraced the pirating world (Ahoy!).

When I moved to the US a few years later, I didn’t immediately switch to Adobe’s subscription model from the goodness of my heart (I had to wait several months to get my work authorization to afford it). I started using my savings to pay for it because my MacBook rat me out. Because it wouldn’t let me bypass the subscription.

Now, this topic of how we don’t truly own our devices deserves its own essay, and I’m not going to dive deep into it right this second. But I will say that I find it disturbingly invasive how tech companies collaborate with each other on user surveillance, and control the way we use our expensive and fully paid off laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

At the same time, when I moved to the US I didn’t have any issues with Affinity Designer and Procreate. Why? Because I bought them a year before and could afford it on my non-US salary. To be specific, in 2018 it was $9.99 for Procreate and $19.99 for Affinity Designer for iPad. The best one-time purchases I made. Still use them to this day.

If Adobe was more like Procreate (transparent, community focused, unmotivated by infinite scale and bloat), I would actually respect them.

However, Adobe today is the opposite. Greedy, manipulative, unimaginative. The speed at which they released Firefly in 2023 when a lot of creatives were soul crushed by MidJourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion, is astonishing to me to this day. A year later, they also updated terms of service allowing them to access user projects for so called “data review”.

Given my experience with Silicon Valley companies, I won’t be surprised If in a few years new information surfaces about how they train AI with work created within Adobe apps. After all, transparency is not within their company values. I hope it doesn’t happen, but the fact that my thoughts take me there is not a great sign.

Despite everything that I’ve written about Adobe and companies that adopted similar subscription approach, I can’t completely opt out. I continue paying for Adobe, Figma, and Framer, because my clients and companies that hire me on a contract basis need me to use them. I don’t pay anything for AI tools because I don’t use AI in my work.

What I want, though, is to stop paying for subscriptions altogether. Just stop. Because in realities of our day to day lives, it’s not only the design software subscriptions we’re paying for. It’s streaming services, online magazines and newspapers, internet providers, cloud services, dating apps, fitness apps, video games, food delivery, and many others.

If we’re not paying, we are the product that’s being harvested for data. Stripped off privacy. Manipulated into self-destructive behaviors that drive us to spend even more money. Continuously pay. Take loans.

We’re drowning. We’re being exploited. We’re constantly exhausted.

Nothing about it is ok.

I personally don’t believe that I should be paying rent for anything other than my apartment. In the past couple of years, along with leaving social media I also opted out of many services I used to pay subscriptions for. Netflix, HBO Max, Spotify, Canva, Linktree, MyMind, LinkedIn, Dribbble, Atlantic, Audible, and others.

I don’t care anymore if I’m not in the loop of the latest tv show and movie releases. I support musicians by directly purchasing their CDs. I am capable of waiting for audiobooks to appear on Libby. I spend more time without devices.

I’m falling out of love with tech.