Motiff: Practical Tool for Visual Designers

Dedicated users of Adobe

Since college, I have used a variety of design tools.

Some have become outdated, and others infrequent use. Only Adobe tools have consistently remained in my toolkit. Over the years, I have become a dedicated user, primarily because of their powerful features, such as vector editing in Illustrator and image editing in Photoshop, which make my work in visual design much easier.

Additionally, the large user base makes collaboration between me an my colleagues smoother. Although there are some minor drawbacks, the benefits far outweigh them. For visual designers, Adobe tools are the top choice and are difficult to replace.

Switch from Adobe to Motiff

When I joined Motiff, I found out that most of my colleagues’ work was done using this self-developed design tool.As a visual designer, I couldn’t help but feel a bit skeptical. After all, I was pretty comfortable with Adobe tools. And since Motiff is mainly used by product designers for interface design, I wondered if it could meet all the needs of a visual designer. How does it compare to Adobe in terms of functionality? Would it limit my creativity and lower my efficiency at work?

With these doubts in mind, I began experimenting with small projects and gradually made the switch. After using it for almost a year and completing over 95% of my work in Motiff, all my worries disappeared. I discovered some unique advantages and gained practical insights into this tool. If you have similar concerns, why not take a look at what I found?

Cloud Storage and Collaboration

No more sending files back and forth

I often encountered the following situations in my work:

1. 1.Work from home but have the necessary files on my office computer.
2. 2.Unable to open design files due to different software versions, which require a software upgrade.
3. 3.Need to export files and share them via IM software.
4. 4.Spend a lot of time searching within disorganized personal files and hard-to-find team files

These seemingly small yet very common problems are actually part of a designer’s daily routine. In the past, we used to upload these files to our team’s resource library or cloud storage and search for them when needed.

But now, these issues have disappeared after I started using Motiff, and I feel genuinely relieved. Since Motiff is a browser-based application that operates seamlessly across platforms without the need for installation or downloads, I can open the browser and start designing anytime and anywhere.

The workspace is organized and the design team can create multiple folders as needed. When a specific design file is needed, a quick search allows us to locate it instantly. For example, our team has a project called ‘Guidelines and Assets’ where we put in design guidelines, resources, templates, and other assets, which are regularly updated and maintained to ensure everyone is using the latest versions. This has proven to be extremely effective and incredibly convenient for managing both individual and team files.

Multi-page & Multi-canvas

The multi-page directory is vertically arranged on the left panel. Over time, I've gotten into the habit of organizing my work by separating design research, drafts, validation plans, and final design deliverables into their own pages. This approach helps keep the design process easy to follow and review.

Plus, if a project has multiple versions, each one can include different schemes, all grouped under a single page. This layout makes it easier to compare and manage different versions, providing a more intuitive experience.

Project Collaboration

Furthermore, within our team, many projects require collaboration with cross-functional roles like product managers, product operations specialists, and product designers. For example, when I worked on the product feature illustrations for the Motiff website design, the proposal needed to be reviewed by multiple parties and had to align with the page framework set by the product designer.

By using Motiff, my coworkers in the product team and operations team can edit and review through a single file link. The built-in commenting feature allowed team members to post and reply to comments, shifting the review process from offline to online, thereby enhancing review efficiency.

Under Dev Mode, developers could quickly access information like dimensions, spacing, and styles via the file link, identify icon elements, and export them in batches. This simplified the traditional design process by eliminating the need for annotations and slicing, thus boosting workflow efficiency and addressing key pain points for designers. The enhanced collaboration experience was a key advantage of switching to Motiff, far surpassing what Adobe tools offered.

Going back to the tool itself, the features that I was initially skeptical about turned out to be a surprise for me.

Unexpected Smooth Editor

Performance is probably the most important aspect for visual designers. Adobe software that was developed based on native operating systems often has lagging issues, while local software should theoretically make better use of hardware resources and deliver a better experience.

However, these software apps consume a lot of memory, which will also cause lagging issues. I’m sure everyone has experienced waiting for loading bars. Therefore, I have always been skeptical of browser-based design tools, which was my major concern at the beginning, but Motiff completely changed my opinion.

Let me show you an example from my work. The image below is a product demo document designed during the Motiff global launch event, with nearly a hundred pages of content arranged on a single page. Editing such a large file would usually be very slow in Adobe, but it runs very smoothly in Motiff. I was impressed by the tool’s smooth performance. It can handle nearly a hundred canvases without causing any lag. Actions like dragging, zooming, and copying were seamless. Previously, it was hard to imagine a browser-based design tool being so smooth. I didn’t even feel like this was done in a browser.

Later, I learned from the engineers that we had put a lot of effort into this online editor to guarantee its performance. If you are interested, you can check out my colleague's article ‘Performance magic behind Motiff’.

More Flexibility in Vector Drawing

I use Motiff as an online vector design tool that allows for free drawing on its infinite canvas. Compared to traditional software, Motiff offers greater freedom in vector network drawing. With the pen tool, you can quickly draw a shape, close it without reconnecting to the starting point, and edit anchor points as well. There is no difficulty in applying even the most detailed effects.

For cases like the one below, with such delicate gradients and background blur effects, it is impressive that Motiff can achieve this. It offers an extensive range of layer blend modes, allowing operations such as union, intersection, and subtraction using Boolean operations to retain the original shape for further adjustment. By applying color gradients, shadows, blurs, and masks, you can create intricate designs. Moreover, Motiff supports the direct pasting of Illustrator materials, entirely replacing Adobe tools in terms of vector drawing.

Components, Styles, and Auto Layouts are not Exclusive to UI Designers

Components:

When I first came across these terms, I wasn’t clear on what these terms meant, but the new features introduced by Motiff helped me experience the joy of being a product designer. For example, a brand logo is a highly reusable asset for a visual designer, and logos often exist in different versions: Chinese, English, horizontal, vertical, and with or without a slogan. By turning each logo version into a component, I can use them easily while working on design projects. When a component gets updated, my referenced files will also be notified, which ensures consistency. I’ve created components from commonly used assets within our team and published them in the team’s library. By making components easily accessible to other team members, brand accuracy and design consistency are significantly improved.

Instances:

Take the AI feature icon I designed as an example. If I want to create a new icon with the same colors and effects as the previous ones, I need to sample the colors, check the effect parameters, and make copies in Adobe tools to ensure consistency between the two icons. However, with Motiff, I can simply apply the style properties to the new icon, which saves many steps and prevents potential mistakes. The same method can be applied to a card or even a complete user interface, ensuring visual consistency.

Auto Layout:

Auto layout is a feature that sounds really cool when you hear about it. When working with Adobe files, if the business team suddenly wants to add a label to a finished poster I designed, I have to break apart the entire file, insert the new element, and then readjust the layout. This process is tedious and inefficient for a visual designer. Even a small change can take a long time to fix, which is extremely frustrating. I first learned about auto layout from product designers. I was impressed when I saw them changing the text on a button, and the button would automatically adjust its size to fit the new text. I decided to try using auto layout for posters that I frequently update. Now, when adding labels or changing text, the entire layout adjusts automatically, saving a lot of time and effort in the design process.

Use Motiff with Adobe

While Motiff excels in many areas, it only has the basic functions of Adobe tools. Although it can handle most tasks, as a product interface design tool, it inherently falls short in graphic and image processing, especially when working with bitmaps.

While using Motiff, I came across two major limitations:

1. 1.When creating complex visual effects, I still rely on Adobe’s advanced filters, such as stylize, 3D, distort, and blur.
2. 2.When designing materials like brochures, tote bags, and stickers for design conferences, I found that Motiff doesn’t support the CMYK color mode typically used in offline printing, nor can it export files at print-ready sizes and 300 DPI resolution.

To address the two drawbacks mentioned above, I adopted a scenario-based approach that leverages the strengths of both tools.

For most design scenarios, I still work within Motiff, especially since it offers advantages in file management, multi-party collaboration, and project reviews. However, when designing complex visual effects, I use Motiff with Adobe tools and other 3D and AI tools to enhance the designs. For projects that require offline printing, I ultimately rely on Adobe tools to finalize the deliverables.

These are just a few examples from my own hands-on experience with Motiff. In terms of the learning curve, I believe that most design tools are relatively intuitive, with basic features that are fairly standard and similar across the board. Watching tutorial videos and reading articles in Help Center will help you learn quickly, and the same applies to Motiff. If you usually have similar working scenarios, why not give it a try? We’d love to hear from more designers and learn from their practical experiences with design tools.