Intro
Welcome back! This is a fun little blog I’ve been meaning to write about for a little while. When I find a program that works well, and makes me want to use it, I like spending a little time talking about why that is. This is not sponsored (at this point in time I write for fun), I just like talking about this kind of stuff, especially when I think it’s deserved. Let’s get into it.
Adobe, Adobe Wherefore Art Thou?
I’ve had a very love/hate relationship with Adobe products in the past. I’ve felt for a long time that while they were the king of the hill for creative software for some time, they certainly squandered their potential (which I’ll talk about in a bit); however, their products do fill an important niche. There are very few alternatives to programs like After Effects, and while there are more options for photoshop and illustrator competitors, the quality of these programs are really only now just starting to get to the level of polish necessary to put adobe on their toes. This leads me to my previous point of squandered potential. What did they squander? I believe their apps are not as stable as they needed to be, and come with a ton of bloat. They’re not as interested in making sure the programs run well because that’s harder to justify a cost for than pushing new features out. There are other issues, like their desire to turn every little thing into it’s own app, the lack of a universal or seamlessly integrated toolset, or plenty of others, but for me, stability and reliability are key.
This is the kind of issue that starts off small, but over time becomes troublesome. Programs begin to inherit issues that should have been fixed many years ago, and the workflow becomes more frustrating as the programs will begin to crash more and more frequently (while it’s gotten better, adobe animate-formerly flash was the king of crashing). These problems are unacceptable at the price you’re paying for these programs to work, and I have lost A LOT of work over the years because of these reliability issues. So imagine my surprise when I found a tiny little adobe app that works seamlessly, reliably and is fun to use.
The Spark
Adobe Spark is a very simple idea for a program. It’s just about making templates. Any kind of template at any size. That’s it. That’s all it does, but it does it really really well. I’ve been looking for a good templating program for a while and I merely stumbled on spark by accident when I was looking for mobile apps so I could start transitioning my workflow from desktop to mobile. When I started using it, I thought “This is neat, it’s all the relevant parts of photoshop I need, but done in a way where I can build off my history and previous work very easily”. Overtime, I have turned to Spark so frequently, that it’s a mainstay in my workflow now, and with how much I use it now, it has never once crashed on me.
Finding such a powerful, flexible and well-functioning tool is difficult, but I am very glad it works as it does. Because of this app, a lot of the new content I plan on making in 2020 is possible, and creating it on the app is so much easier on me. I can put together a small project anytime and anywhere: on my phone, tablet, or desktop. This amount of freedom is liberating, and I’m sure it’s what adobe wants to chase now with their mobile apps.
If you know me, you know I have a lot of opinions about Adobe, but it’s not above me to say that Spark is a great program. I see it as the creative potential Adobe products promise but realized. It gives me tremendous power to make content at a fraction of the time I used to make, anytime I feel inspired to, and it’s incredible for that.
Outro
It’s nice to come across something that actively tries to make your life easier, especially as so many programs contain bloat and bugs that make it difficult to work in (or try to swindle you), so I’m thankful that Spark is something Adobe is actively investing in, and getting it to a state where it works exactly as it should. This app gets a strong recommendation for me to check out, especially if you need to make and push out templates for a project.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading!
