The Weird and the Free

Sometimes creativity shows

up in unexpected ways.

When I was a kid, I'd draw with just about any art supply available to me. If it made a mark on paper, it was good enough. Crayons, markers, pencils from the junk drawer, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t concerned with quality or permanence. I just wanted to make something. But somewhere along the way, that carefree experimentation gave way to the expectations of professional practice. Now, as a design professor, I'm seeing my students find their supplies in unexpected ways: through the weird and free design apps they download onto their tablets.

There’s a balance to strike between holding onto that playful, experimental spirit and embracing the standards of being a professional designer. As artists, we’re supposed to keep a bit of that inner child alive while also learning to navigate the structured, demanding world of design.

For this generation of students, that balance is shaped by their constant connection to technology. They’ve grown up with touchscreens and apps, where creativity is often spontaneous and fluid. They aren't tied to desktop setups or software suites that have been industry standards for decades.

One of those students is Alaiza, a talented young designer who prefers using her tablet over a laptop. Alaiza Elsi, from CUNY City Tech's Communications Design Department. Alaiza swipes through her tablet, showing me brightly rendered illustrations of a recent project from this past Spring semester. 'I just like how fast it is,' she says, zooming in on the intricate work. 'Plus, I don’t need a laptop to do this.' She’s one of many students blending professional-level thinking with unconventional tools.

While Alaiza values the mobility and ease of tablet apps, seasoned designers like Nikita Prokhorov, who’s been in branding for over a decade, see it differently. 'It’s great for concepting,' he admits, 'but the minute you need to export for print or collaboration, you hit a wall.'

Students are using Adobe Creative Cloud, but they’re using it on their tablets. This means they’re working with limited versions of the software, stripped of some of the more robust features that desktop users have access to. Instead, they’re creating entire projects in apps like Ibis Paint and Capcut. These apps are designed for a different kind of designer, one who values immediacy and mobility over compatibility and integration. They’re great for creating on the go, sketching ideas, or making quick content. But for students aiming to learn industry standards and best practices, these tools can fall short. They don’t offer the compatibility needed in professional design workflows.

As a professor, I get it. These apps are lightweight and easy to pick up. They offer a freedom that’s hard to resist, a kind of DIY design ethos. However, the downside is clear: the final files are incompatible with industry workflows. The result?

Files that can’t be opened on other devices.

Fonts that don’t render correctly.

Raster graphics, where vectors are needed.

Layouts that go haywire.

Layers that merge into an irreversible soup.

I see it in critiques: a beautifully rendered illustration, exported as a PNG. Or a motion graphics project that can't be opened in After Effects. When I ask why they chose these tools, they often answer with: 'It was free and it works on my pad.'

Students are creating new design processes in a place where they don't quite fit. The tools are there, they work, but they are out of context, disconnected from the flow of industry expectations.

This is the tension. On one side, the professional world with its steep learning curves, subscriptions, and specialized tools. On the other, a new generation of designers who are, in their own way, redefining what it means to create.

In the halls and over coffee, professors ask one another what will happen when these particular students graduate. Are they prepared for a world that still expects them to navigate Adobe's labyrinth? Or will the industry bend a little to accommodate these new tools?

Maybe the goal isn’t to resolve this tension but to find a way forward. One that respects both the need for professional standards and the evolving ways young designers want to work. It’s not about choosing one over the other. It’s about making space for both, allowing for experimentation while guiding students toward industry practices.

Every semester, I tell my students that instead of complaining, they should try to change something they want to experience differently. At TANKindustries, I realized it was time to put that philosophy into practice.

We’re starting to embrace this evolution in our design practices. One app we’ve wholeheartedly integrated into our workflow is ProCreate. During a project with one of our agency collaborators, Orangefiery, our illustrator Nick used ProCreate to sketch initial vignettes and iterate ideas directly on his iPad. The speed and fluidity of the process closed the gap between treatments and creative exploration.

However, we quickly encountered challenges importing these ProCreate sketches into Adobe Illustrator. The biggest issue was maintaining vector quality. ProCreate exports as raster images, meaning the sketches often lose clarity or become pixelated when scaled. Additionally, layer management between the apps proved tricky; what started as a clean, layered sketch in ProCreate usually turned into a mess in Adobe Illustrator.

To work around this, we changed our workflow to using ProCreate only for early-stage concepting. Then, we recreated the final lines in Adobe Illustrator. This hybrid approach, leveraging mobile creativity while maintaining professional standards for production, has proven to be both efficient and creatively liberating. It’s a practical way to balance the spontaneous nature of tablet apps with the rigor of professional workflows.

ProCreate, however, is carving out a space as an industry standard within the illustration world. It’s a tool that quickly bridges creativity and professional quality. In contrast, the weird and free apps that students gravitate towards, like Ibis, Capcut, and Painter Studio, don’t yet carry the same professional weight. They remain tools of exploration rather than reliable parts of a professional workflow.

As educators and professionals, we must recognize that design processes and workflows are evolving with a generation of new designers. It’s not about rejecting these new tools outright but about finding ways to integrate creativity with the practical realities of professional practice. We must make room for both, even if the results, for now, feel a little unconventional.

WORDS: JASON FALK

     Q&A: ALAIZA ELFI, JOHN LAMACHIA

PHOTO: JASON FALK