Do You Need an Adobe Membership to be a WordPress Web Designer | EP 700

Do You Need an Adobe Membership to be a WordPress Web Designer

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 David Blackmon: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of wp the podcast i’m David Blackmon

00:35 Tim Strifler: And I’m Tim Stifler.

01:37  David Blackmon: Today we’re going to discuss an episode 700. Hold on, that’s a lot of episodes! Then uh 700 episodes deep, and we’re going to talk about do you need an Adobe membership to be a WordPress web designer? If you’re not familiar with Adobe what rock have you been living under in the last 25 years? Because i was using it back in the day where my friends would get the pirated copies of Adobe. Adobe please don’t listen to this, please don’t listen to this.. But back in the day when it was so expensive it was insanely expensive to have Photoshop and a lot of these things products that adobe has and they’ve come a long way, and today they have what’s you know probably most web designers have which is a Creative Cloud membership which is a lot more palatable as opposed to six hundred dollars for one piece of software. Um you know it’s a low monthly fee and it’s you know you get access to all of their stuff so Tim the question is, do i need an Adobe membership to be a WordPress web designer?

01:54 Tim Strifler: Yeah i’m gonna say: no you do not need an Adobe membership to be a WordPress web designer. Uh it’s as David mentioned, the pricing has come a long way it’s now a more of a software as a surface it’s not fully sas because it’s not hosted, you still download it it’s on your compute,r but you pay a fixed rate um i’m paying 50 bucks a month. I don’t know if they’ve increased it or not and i get access to everything it is nice to have but i don’t use it that much anymore. Uh it’s like when i do use it i’m using it to like resize photos or something that is like overkill for for Photoshop. Um it’s you know there’s cheaper or even free tools to do those little simple things like Canva or something like that, um rather than using the professional grade Photoshop. So if you are a WordPress web designer chances are you’re designing in a page builder that’s the most popular way today and if you’re designing directly on the site whether it’s a page builder or another theme or whatever and you’re not designing in Photoshop, then i say, no you don’t need it, wait until you find something that you do need it for, then purchase it. Because um even though it’s a lot more affordable than it used to be you know that’s still 50 bucks a month coming out of your account every month and you know they’ll probably be you know months where i i haven’t opened up a single Adobe app. There was a time where i was using it a lot more frequently, it was like more daily or weekly. But these days i don’t really use it anymore, and the page builders have become so powerful with all the design tools built in um that you can design everything you need right on the the the page with the page builder. So that that’s my my opinion i don’t think you need you could and it is nice to have but definitely not a need.

03:52 David Blackmon: Yeah i agree with Tim. It’s not a need but it is something that will make your life a whole lot easier, and the reason is because let’s let’s face it let’s let’s just tell it like it is in order to succeed online today it is a ton of work. I mean a ton of work there’s social media there are your website there’s video platforms youtube’s the number one search engine in the world you know, all of these platforms have different you know things that ways of posting some are images some are videos some are written words some are content. The beautiful thing about the Adobe suite is it does cover all of those platforms and it gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility. If you’re not familiar with Adobe Express used to be called Adobe Spark it’s Canvas competition and if you checked it out check it out Adobe Express is a very powerful tool in the Adobe arsenal. That um is just really cool it has templates and pre-made and it’s just like Canvas so if you’re familiar with Canva it’s just Canva on steroids. Because it’s Adobe. Um Yeah so i agree with you it’s not necessary but if you’re gonna be in the web design world you’re probably gonna need it at some point and stuff so, yeah i’m gonna go, i almost talked myself into cancelling my membership, but now i’m gonna have to go check out Adobe Express. Adobe Express is awesome because it allows you to create the projects and then you know Instagram, Tiktokm, Facebook, Youtube and it’s got all of the sizes it’s just like Canva. I mean it’s amazing it really is cool um and it’s got a lot of pre-designed stuff that you can use for free.

05:52 Tim Strifler:  Are you talking about XD?

05:57 David Blackmon: No, no, no, that’s for laying out websites that’s a very powerful tool it is um i think they call it used to be called um you know Spark, but it’s it’s Express. I want to say it’s at express.adobe.com uh and if you’re logged in and stuff you’ll you’ll see exactly you know kind of what i’m what i mean express.adobe.com sp is what i have but i’m logged in. So and it is just like Canva, i mean they have tons of libraries and text and shapes and fonts and everything you need right there in the in the platform and stuff.

06:35  Tim Strifler: Oh Creative Cloud Express yeah i see it now okay because i was looking at oh yeah because it’s not a desktop app that’s it’s a browser app..

06:43 David Blackmon: It is it’s just like Canva. So it’s it’s it’s pretty awesome um in this day and age so man we went off the rails there Tim, it was going to be a really short episode but you got to hear us talk for six minutes folks. Tomorrow we’ve got another great topic should you use youtube to promote your business? Tim until tomorrow we’ll see you then.

07:06  Tim Strifler: Take care bye-bye