Adobe XD for InDesign Users

This article appeared in Issue 142 of InDesign Magazine.

Get to know the app that embodies Adobe’s vision for the future of design and layout.

Unless you’ve missed all of Adobe’s marketing campaigns in the last four years, chances are you have at least heard of Adobe XD, Adobe’s latest flagship application for UX design and prototyping. Despite all Adobe evangelist efforts and presentations, however, most InDesign users probably categorize XD under “not uninteresting, but fairly irrelevant to my day-to-day job.” After all, you live and breathe layout, typography, and CMYK colors.

But, what if I told you that XD could open the doors to new money-making opportunities for your business or help you upskill for future design opportunities? Interested now? Let me explain.

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Patrick Murdock says:

February 3, 2021 at 10:42 am

Thanks for this very informative and helpful article, which gave me a much better understanding of how and why to use Adobe XD. However, I’m still holding back using it due to lack of dark mode/theme as it’s simply too hard on my eyes to work with a light theme all the time. I did add my voice in favor of a dark mode/theme to the Adobe XD Feature Requests forum, “Dark Interface (overall UI including side panels)”, which has close to seven hundred comments and goes back to March 2016! Hopefully, Adobe will add it sooner rather than later.

Ken Jones says:

February 8, 2021 at 5:19 am

Thanks for the great article. I’m loving the feel of XD.
Where the article mentions “There are some third-party plug-ins that do allow for HTML export.” Do you have any more info or recommendations?

Bart Van de Wiele says:

February 8, 2021 at 7:17 am

Hi Ken! Yes there are a few. I’ve tested Anima and believe Hero looks very promising as well. Of course it’ll depend on the complexity of your design. And most of these plug-ins aren’t free (we all have kids to feed!) When you access the plug-in screen in Adobe XD you can scroll all the way down and then choose the appropriate plug-in category to have an overview of all the export plug-ins.