Stock Illustrator Infographic templates are Useless / Pointless

[charlesb4548883]

The way Illustrator templates for infographics are offered on Adobe Stock is an absolute waste of money and time. Because...

1. All text will be converted to a path. So you will have to add your own font and replace all of the text (and placement) on the art board.

2. The Layers will almost certainly be unorganized. So you will have to spend time figuring out how things were grouped together.

3. Adding to the template, like an additional topic, will be very time consuming. So you will have to dig through the laters to find what you need to copy.

4. Any person capable of quickly modifying the template, would never buy the template in the first place. An experienced Illustrator user would simply create their own from scratch after looking at something they like.

Selling Illustrator templates for infographics is very misleading here. Because you don't really know what you are getting until you license it. At best I will copy elements out of the tempate for use in other products. Very frustrating.

[WendellaBee]

Hi @charlesb4548883,

If there are specific assets with these issues please provide the IDs and I can forward them to the content review team.

[charlesb4548883]

Please review the following:
AdobeStock_367780296.ai

[WendellaBee]

What is your concern about this Illustrator file?

[charlesb4548883]

All of the text in the template is converted to shapes. Including the lorem ipsum placeholder text. That means it has to be deleted and the user has to redesign that part of the "template". The large number also is a shape, so the sequence is not easily editable to extend the sequence.

How does Adobe Stock define a 'template'? What does that mean? Should a user expect to be able to edit the text that is in the template?

I have purchased a few Illustrator templates and they all require at least half of the template to be removed and re-created to make it editable. And if I have to remove elements in the template and re-create them from scratch, I could just look at the preview and create it from scratch myself.

Relatedly, the designers create Illustrator stock templates have terrible organization of layers. So when you do have to recreate elements, you have to first figure out what they've done in a long list of nameless layers. It's just a miserable experience barely worth using it.

[WendellaBee]

If you want a true template then you should be searching from Adobe Stock Templates: https://stock.adobe.com/templates. There you will find templates that will work as you expect them to and are created for Creative Cloud products. Unfortunately contributors may include "template" in the title of an asset when it is not a true .ait template. I will send this file ID to our content team for review. Thank you for the feedback.

[charlesb4548883]

The 'template' I'm referring to, and others, are found in the Templates category of Adobe Stock. The exact link you provided.

[charlesb4548883]

As is, the preview provides no value. It's not possible to review the template to understand how it was designed.

If Adobe Stock could provide a means to rate a designers template(s), then designers would be incentivized over time to create higher quality assets. And not a quickly thrown together graphic that is unusable as a template.

[WendellaBee]

That file is not an .ait file so it should not appear in a search from https://stock.adobe.com/templates, however if you search for just the asset ID number you will see the file no matter what page you start your search from.

[WendellaBee]

That was unexpected. Let me look into that further. Thanks!

[charlesb4548883]

I see your point about search and templates. However, I don't see what difference it makes if it is a .ait file. That does not change the contents of the project file. I was able to take the asset file mentioned above (AdobeStock_367780296.ai) and save it as a template.
So I can't tell if other Illustrator .ait assets in Adobe Stock have the same quality issue.

[Test Screen Name]

A key difference is that AIT files can only be submitted by a select few designers with special contracts - who were presumably hand picked as experts (you'd hope!). While an AI file can be submitted by anyone. Clearly many designers without the skill to make usable templates are submitting their designs, which look ok as designs, but are not usable templates.  I often see this sort of complaint in the forum. The people who want a quick predesigned templates are not highly skilled and experienced Illustrator users - who can pick apart complex layers, match fonts, and retypeset - of course not, or they would have designed it themselves. But they are one of the millions of people who have designs to make and no time to make them, and I think they deserve better asset checking. 

[charlesb4548883]

I did not know the 'Templates' category is curated. Which is very good to know and changes things. Until a couple days ago, I did not know there was a template-specific search to get to those. Had never seen an AIT file on Adobe Stock until yesterday.

I think many people are simply clicking on 'Illustrations' at the top, and then searching on 'infographic'. Which will not return templates (.ait files).

[Abambo]

I did not know the 'Templates' category is curated.

By @charlesb4548883

All assets are curated (moderated), but template providers are accepted on invitation only, which should guarantee a higher quality at the beginning.

If you make a specific selection, you expect to get certain assets. If you select templates you get a proposed a selection of templates that include Illustrations (AIT), Photoshop (PST), Premiere Pro (MOGRT), InDesign (INDT), …

Unfortunately, contributors are free to enter all kinds of text as a title, and occasionally those titles may be misleading. With Illustrator assets, you have additionally the problem that the buyer sees the quality of the asset only if they download the asset. The JPEG preview does not indicate the internals… I wouldn't know, how to solve this, without giving the potential buyer the complete full quality asset. That's why these types of assets should also be vetted for layers organization and naming. Some users do organize their assets, however, not always in English. That's an additional hurdle for moderators.

But I agree that for some assets, to make them usable for your use, you are better off redesigning from scratch.