Why Adobe Illustrator doesn't get simpler, cleaner and with less complicated options/features?

[cosminb74457059]

I'm not such an experienced designer and I found it very complicated. It has a lot of options but in 2017 I saw that the graphic designs trends show us that simplicity is much better appreciated and actually less is more.

For a less experienced designer it is very difficult to habituate to work in such a complicated interface, there are too many options/features and too many buttons. Why it doesn't get any simpler, or at least why Adobe isn't building a new/additional vector design software with a simpler interface / less options?

[sishamIAGD]

Illustrator is a tool to be able to make the end product and if you start taking things away then you wont have all the functionality that you need to be able to create the designs. Illustrator is a professional application and requires a lot of skill and time to be able to use it to its full potential.

Yes design is going in the direction of less is more but if you take away the complexity in the background of anything then you don't get the desired result in the final outcome. To make something simple it takes a lot of design and planning to make it work and work well.

Maybe Adobe could come up with a light version for the novice but that would have to be a request to them..? Perhaps put in a request? Illustrator Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[cosminb74457059]

What you said is 100% true but keeping in mind that now Adobe Illustrator is part of Adobe Creative Cloud, and for using it you need to pay monthly for it like a service (as Software as a Service - SaaS), it looks like a very complicated software at a first sight, so one could not be attracted to it because of it's complexity.

I think a much simpler / more intuitive interface could attract more users to create with Adobe. For example, the 2017 web/print designs are more inclined to look two-dimensional with some highlights / color changes on hover, and I recently saw that Adobe came up with a response to this creating Adobe Experience Design CC, which is a software for UI design but has the capabilities to create vector art works too, which is great. If you could see how much simple is to create in Adobe Xd, with a lightweight interface and that is very intuitive, you would be surprised.

I personally hope that Adobe will develop more features and functionalities for the Windows version of Adobe Xd, as in my opinion the software is on the right way of development.

[Ray Yorkshire]

Everyone finds it hard to learn at first as it is not intuitive at all, but at least when you have, you'll have a jump on lazier designers.

Best try learn it  first and  separately from any project you are doing, as running into roadblocks as you work is very frustrating.

To be honest illustrator is often a little too basic already and needs add-ons to make it clear industry leader.

Now if it only came preloaded with all these  fancy paid for plug-ins...

That would be some interface !

Astute Graphic elite bundle

Hot Door CADtools

LazyNezumi

CValley - FILTERiT  and Xtream Path

MAPublisher

[Cactus Cowboy]

Whaaat, and put these specialty companies out of business. If Adobe packed all the features of these plugins into Illustrator they'd have to charge a bundle more for an already hefty priced software. Then there would really be an uproar; more so than is tolerable to them now I'm sure. They have been including new features or haven't you noticed. Take 4 instance the scatter brush which does a lot of what FilterIT does and fisheye effect is in the pucker and bloat feature. The Hotdoor's plugin features are mainly for them that do architectural and technical specification drawings which I think users don't find use for everyday and besides, the ruler and a little mathematical conversion should cover that. That Hotdoor's plugin alone will set a buyer back a few hundred bucks so it wouldn't be an impulse buy for anyone unless you just had to have it and got deep pockets. The same goes for the rest of the plugins on your list, Illustrator can accomplish most all of it. Might take a few more steps in keystrokes or maybe some creative thinking but Illustrator in it own right is pretty powerful & deserves it status as an industry leading software it's legacy alone demands that recognition.Those companies you mentioned are filling a niche market and doing just fine.

For them that want to dabble in vector let them play in the sandbox and use something like Inkscape the price is free and when they're ready to step up then they can join the adults.

[femkeblanco]

Fred Brooks, in The Mythical Man-Month (The Bible of Software Engineering), states:

"I will contend that Conceptual Integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas."

This is (not wholly) because if a system is too complicated to use, many features will go unused because no one has time to learn them. 

[Monika Gause]

"This is (not wholly) because if a system is too complicated to use, many features will go unused because no one has time to learn them.  "

I think you just have not stayed in this forum long enough 😉 Trust me, there are people for every feature this software has.

[jbacelar26]

Adobe illustrator is complicated compared with other softwares from Adobe. In past 20 years Adobe been adding functions to it, for example they killed Adobe Dimensions and placed the extrude function in it, as many other things. What I don't understand is why after all these years we don't have a decent intuitive "past into" or "past inside". Instead 20 years of a "clipping mask" method that is complicated becoming better with newer versions but still not so easy as a past inside ( and you have it in photoshop or indesign). And they could have done it years ago when they bought aldus / Macromedia Freehand.