Is Gravit Designer Really a Design Tool for the 21st Century?

In the field of design, the name “Gravit Designer” might still less known compared to popular tools like Illustrator or even Inkscape. But, the tool is reliable enough to work on illustrations and other types of vectors. The tool was built with a flexibility in mind. The tool is available for desktop and web so you can use it from anywhere (as long as you an internet connection).

The sync feature allows you to automatically upload your designs to the cloud and access them anytime without having to stick with a single device. Due to this flexibility, the developer of Gravit Designer is confident enough to introduce its product as a design tool for the 21st century. How good is this tool?

Gravit Design is a versatile tool. Not only you can use it to create illustrations, but also printable designs like posters and business cards. Some designers even also rely on this tool to create UI designs.

Features and capabilities

Gravit Design is a versatile design tool which you can use it to create vectors as well as printable designs like posters and business cards. In addition, you can also use Gravit Design to create visual contents for social media and blogs. When creating a new design with this tool, you will first be asked to select what kind of design you want to create. There are tens of predefined canvas sizes you can choose from based on the kind of design you want to create. You can specify the canvas size yourself or you can also use the infinite canvas by leaving the fields empty.

If you want to create new a vector, you will obviously want to work with a blank canvas. Different case applies if you want to create something like poster. You sometimes want to use templates instead of blank canvas. For such case, Gravit Design provides several templates you can choose from. However, you need to create an account first before being able to use the offered templates.

Gravit Design is great enough to create printable designs as well as contents for the web needs. It comes with a library feature which you can use to add elements like icons, shapes, illustrations, stickers and so on. The feature appears as a panel on the left side, complete with a handy search box. You can also disable the feature via the View menu if you want.

At this point, I can say that Gravit Design is great enough. Especially if you are looking for a free tool to replace Adobe InDesign. However, there is a question probably floating in your mind. What about Gravit Design capability of creating vector?

As I said earlier, Gravit Design is a versatile design tool. In addition to creating printable designs, you can also use the tool to create vectors. Some designers even also use it to create UI designs. To enable you creating stunning vectors, Gravit Design offers a lot of tools you can use. Following are some of the key vector tools offered by Gravit Design.

Pen tool,
Bezigon tool,
Text tool,
Line tool,
Auto shapes: rectangle, ellipse, triangle, polygon and star.

You can find those tools on the toolbar that lies right above the canvas, just like other similar tools.

At a glance, the vector tools offered by Gravit Design are look complete enough, but you need to make some test first before praising Gravit Design. As a designer, you know better what features supposed to there.

Interface

Gravit Design has a great interface that looks modern. It offers three different themes with dark as the default. The interface of Gravit Design is divided into three main parts. A panel on the left and right side, respectively, as well a canvas on the center area. This interface concept is basically not good enough for those who have to work with a smaller screen since this means that they would have to work with a smaller canvas. Each panel can actually be deactivated, but unfortunately, it won’t give extra space for the canvas. Gravit Design itself supports multiple tabs to allow you to open multiple designs at once on a single window.

Compatibility with other apps

Gravit Design allows you to directly export the finished design into either JPG or PNG format. In addition, you can also save the unfinished design in an editable format. Gravit Design has its own file format with the extension of .gvdesign. However, Gravit Design is also capable of handling design files in other formats. There are two formats that are currently supported by Gravit Design: .svg and .eps.

This means, Gravit Design has a compatibility with other design tools that use those file formats. Inkscape is the example of a design tool that use .svgas the default file format, while Illustrator is a design tool that use .epsalthough it uses .aias the default file format. I have tried opening an .eps file with Gravit Design and everything went well. All layers were well transferred. Download the example here to test it yourself.

Conclusion

As a free design tool, Gravit Design is great enough. It’s flexible to use since it is available for desktop and web. If you are lazy enough to install it on your computer, you can run the tool via web using your browser. The desktop version of Gravit Design itself is available for major desktop platforms: Linux, Windows and macOS. It’s especially a great tool if you often work with different devices thanks to the sync feature.

Originally posted on Bettertechtips.com