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Penpot

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Rahul Belwal
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232 views4 pages

Penpot

Uploaded by

Rahul Belwal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Penpot

Penpot is an up and coming open source design tool that was released in 2021 and has
been slowly building up its features since then. Penpot was created by Kaleidos Open
Source whose mission for pen pot is to provide an open source and open standards
platform to bring collaboration between designers and developers to the next level.

Usability: Penpot lets you create application designs and saves the design files in the
SVG format. To create the designs you can create CSS is generated from the designs
directly. The code is open source so anyone can check for vulnerabilities. You can run
Penpot locally to make sure you don't give up any data. The UI to design is simple and
effective.

Features: Penpot has many features such as allowing you to group design files into a
project, like a file system, draft section allows you to find design files not in any project.,
and there is a shared libraries section to put design files that you want to be able to
share their assets. Other features to help workflow include history that keeps track of
changes you made so you can undo changes, presentation mode, and the ability to
store assets such as colors, graphics, typographies. For the design of the application
itself Penpot allows the creation of buttons, flexible objects, general designs, and much
more. Penpot also generates HTML and CSS for the design created if the user wants.

Zero Cost: The purpose of Penpot is to be completely free and open source. There is
no paid version of Penpot and according to Kaleidos there are no plans to implement a
paid version.

Collaboration efficiency: Penpot allows you to create teams with team members
having different permissions which can control which project or file you are allowed to
work on. With these teams projects and files are shared with their history between
members.

Platform compatibility: Penpot can be run on any operating system or web browser, it
is based on Open Web Standards and design files are SVG. The project is

Community and support: The community and Support for Penpot is not as large
compared to other more popular tools like figma. It still has a large community, since it is
open source looking at the github repo for Penpot, it has contributions within the last
day. Also for support they have an email you can write to and have things like a user
guide and FAQ on their website found here: https://help.penpot.app/.
Research Phase:

User Reviews:
Reviews from producthunt seem overwhelmingly positive. This gives insight to how the
tool is perceived by the general community. Here are some of the reviews:

“The project is full of promise and offers an outstanding alternative to Figma and other similar
tools. The close parallels/alignment between design and code are gratifying about the work and
the resulting designs. This project has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach UI
design.” - Anton P.

“I hope this is the best figma alternative after adobe buying Figma” - Subron Jamilan

“It's missing some key features but that is okay for me because it is still in it's first phase of
development.” - Hello Javascript

Learning Curve: appears to be a normal learning curve in relation to other design tools.
Reviews don’t say it is much more difficult or easier. Leans a little towards the easier
side but mostly neutral.

Expert reviews: We can gain more insight from professionals who use the tool itself and
have a greater understanding of the competition used by themselves or their company.
Here are some reviews from professionals:

“A good free alternative to Sketch or Figma


It has all the necessary features of creating designs and prototypes as in Sketch. But it is better
for collaboration and sharing. Plus it is completely browser-based. So it is super easy to work
on. Since its browser based, sometimes, the interface is a bit busy when compared to desktop
apps like sketch on the mac. But that is not a major problem. Penpoint heps me in creating
website designs and wireframes.” - Mitesh G.

“The evolution of product design


The best Figma alternative for product design and development with robust capabilities to help
developers. It's is not a play and plug solution, even with the easy approach of the interface,
there is a bit of a learning curve to use Penpot. I was able to test and publish our new website
redesign faster because I was able to show quality drafts to my managers.” - Ruben Aaron C.
Analysis Phase:

Qualitative analysis:

The strengths of Penpot appear to be in its open source and free design. This is what
truly sets itself apart from its competitors. In terms of features and the UI of the design
tool. It appears to be mostly on par with its competitors such as Adobe XD and Figma.
Where it seems to lack is there are features that are not completely polished, some of
the tool is buggy, and it does not have as much support. It seems to be in a great spot
for a tool early in its deployment, just not as polished as its competitors.

Quantitative analysis:
● Learning Curve: It appears to have a decently large learning curve. The basics of
getting up and running for a design project do not seem too difficult but the more
fine grain tools seem hard to grasp according to reviews
● There are a large number of features such as 5 collaboration features and 6
prototype features.
● The collaborative features are robust but not completely smoothed out yet. The
collaborative features include multiplayer, comments, export objects(PDF, SVG,
PNG, JPG) export files(binary and standard), and share presentation popularity
● The prototype features include interactions, transitions, flows, view/presentation
mode, fix elements at scroll.

Pros:

● Open Source and free


● large amount of features for design and collaboration
● Large contributing community to the open source project
● Has browser based support and compatibility with any OS
● Supports many file types for project

Cons:

● People complain it's not as good at bigger projects


● Starts to get a little slow and buggy
● No password protection or updating once prototypes are published. Once link is
out you cannot change design
References:

Penpot website:
https://help.penpot.app/user-guide/the-interface/
https://community.penpot.app/t/faq-what-are-the-plans-to-charge-for-penpot-at-some-po
int/2561
User reviews:
https://www.producthunt.com/products/penpot/reviews

Expert reviews:
https://www.g2.com/products/penpot/reviews#survey-response-8522386

https://medium.com/@mkvillalobos/penpot-is-a-great-product-for-design-and-personally
-i-really-like-it-as-an-alternative-to-figma-8a01bccfde6f

Articles:
https://www.decibel.vc/articles/penpot-a-new-era-of-design-freedom
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2023/02/meet-penpot-open-source-design-platfor
m-designers-developers/

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