Hey, what’s up?
Today, I wanted to compare Kittl with Illustrator.
In these last weeks, I’ve been trying new programs and softwares in order to find the best design tool for me and my print-on-demand business.
If you’re trying to figure out the tool to use for you, then this video might be for you.
Let’s go right in!
1- WHERE I’M COMING FROM
Let’s first of start where I’m coming from. I’m not really a professional designer. I currently have my print-on-demand and Amazon Merch business and so far, I created most of my designs using either Canva or AI tool like DALL-E 3.
One of my current goal is to improve my designing skills so naturally, in the last weeks, I tried to learn new tools like Adobe Illustrator and Kittl.
2- WHAT IS ILLUSTRATOR?
Illustrator is a vector graphic and design program made by Adobe. As of right now, it is the industry standard program for everything related to designing. They also created Photoshop. Adobe is a pretty huge company. They’ve been the for many years now, and we’ll see about the future.
3- WHAT IS KITTL?
Kittl is an online designing platform that you use with your browser. It is quite similar to Canva, but they specialize in print-on-demand, where Canva basically end up doing everything.
4- PRICING
Let’s start with the pricing because it’s always about the price, right?
Illustrator is quite expensive depending on the plan that you choose. You can choose the individual software plan. Or the Adobe Creative Cloud plan, which is more expensive.
Kittl has many plans. Is has a FREE plan, but it’s quite annoying.
It also has a PRO plan and an expert plan.
The main differences between these 2 plans are basically the amount of AI credits that you have each month and the number of space and projects that you have.
5- FEATURES & AI TOOLS
Illustrator has an insane amount of features and tools. Of course, it’s been in the game from I don’t know how longs. To be honest, as a beginner in the software, I feel completely overwhelmed and I kinda expected it. In truth, I only a few select features and tools.
And Kittl, they know this. They give you the actual most important tools that you need to run your print-on-demand business. Now, I tested them and I don’t think that these AI tools are the best, but they will get the job.
Now, about AI, depending on the plan that you choose, you most likely have Firefly included in the plan. Firefly is the AI tool that Adobe uses for all its software. I tested it and I think okay.
But ultimately, if you’re looking for the best AI tools, I would definitely check ChatGPT and DALL-E 3. As of right now, I think they have the best AI.
6- TEMPLATES / ELEMENTS
One of the bad thing that I don’t like about Illustrator is that there aren’t any templates nor elements that you can use.
The idea of Illustrator is that you build everything from scratch. And so if you want to import illustrator or elements to the design, you have to import them from external sources. I think this is quite annoying because you have to deal and manipulate files that you often have to purchase.
Another bad thing is that if you find yourself without any idea, you’re kinda stuck with the white page.
Kittl has an element library that you can use for your designs and a bunch of templates that are provided by the community. If you decide to share your templates, you can get passive income from them each time that someone use it.
7- EDITING (INCLUDING VECTORS)
This is where Kittl kinda miss out a bit. Yes, you can import some vector files into the design, you can change the colors and other cool options. But ultimately, you can’t really edit anything.
This is where Illustrator shines, you have full control. With Illustrator, you can basically do anything that you really want.
I think it’s important to be able to edit vector images because usually, I get vectors that I transform from AI images generators. As of right now, AI image generators aren’t exactly perfect. They do a lot of mistakes, especially with text. And so being able to edit errors manually can be a great asset.
But as technology and AI evolves, we might not even need to edit images at some point. I’m assuming that at some point, AI is going to be so great that we won’t have to edit anything because the image is going to be exactly what we want it to be.
8- PEN / SHAPE TOOL
Like I said, I started learning about Illustrator and the first that they you in Illustrator are the pen tool and the shapes tools.
For example, if I want to create a house, I might use 2 rectangles and put them in a way that creates a house.
Today, we don’t have to do that.
Firstly, we can use already existing illustrations using the element libraries.
Second, we have the new technologies, we can use AI to create exactly the illustrations that we want.
I think that the pen and shape tools are outdated tools that might be useful in the same cases. But I think they are doomed to disappear. They are being replaced by elements libraries and ultimately AI.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Illustrator gives you full control over your design by literally creating from scratch. But ultimately, it is completely unnecessary. You might hear from designer that “REAL DESIGN” create from scratch, everything else is an insult.
Well they’re right! I’m going to insult them because their job is getting outdated, and you need to wake the hell up.
I think that Kittl is the better option if your goal is to create print-on-demand designs easily and efficiently without headaches. Because yes, you’ll be able to create designs with Illustrator, but the process is going to be slow and painful because you have to do everything manually from scratch.
As a business owner, I also have other things to think about than designing. Yes, I want to improve my designing skills. But I also have to learn and take care of other things like niche research, social media, these YouTube, Amazon Merch and all the other POD platforms.
And as of right now, as someone coming from Canva, Kittl makes much more sense to me than Illustrator. But I also understand the power of illustrator.
I think Illustrator is for people that ONLY DO designing. That are actually professional designer. That being said, they might not have a business to take care of.
And if in some case I do need full control over my designs, that I can use a cheaper or free alternative like Inkscape and Affinity Designer.
So what would you guys want from this channel? Would like to have actual Illustrator guides and tutorials?
So ultimately, yes I purchased the Adobe Creative Cloud, but I think I’m going to cancel it to use easier tools that get the job done. I might come back to it when I reach that level, or I simply want to perfect my designing kills.
So that’s pretty much it, I hope this was helpful to you. If this blog was valuable to you, you could consider following me on social media and if you have any thoughts or comments, you can leave them below.
I hope this helps, peace!
Leave a Reply