Software for graphic designers in Morocco — what to buy, and what to skip

Graphic design software has to do four jobs, and only four. Draw vectors that scale — logos, icons, illustration. Edit pixels — photographs, textures, retouching. Lay out pages — brochures, menus, catalogues, anything going to a printer. And, increasingly in Morocco, design screens: an app, a landing page, a dashboard for a client who two years ago would have asked for a poster.

Everything else is negotiable. The parts nobody warns you about are the boring parts: fonts you are legally allowed to use commercially, colour that survives the trip from your screen to a press in Casablanca, and file formats a stranger can open. A print shop that hands a job back because the PDF is RGB with no bleed costs you a day and some of your reputation.

Your machine is part of the specification. A lot of design work here happens on a laptop with 8GB of RAM and integrated graphics. Software that assumes 32GB and a discrete GPU will install, run, and slowly make you hate the work. Judge tools by how they behave on the computer you own, not the one in the tutorial.

The direct answer first: on a small budget, buy nothing on day one. A beginner does not need the full Adobe suite, and buying it early mostly means paying for twenty applications you never open while you learn two.

The three real options are worth naming plainly. Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry default — Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and the rest — and its true advantage is not features but file formats. PSD, AI and INDD are the working currency of agencies and print shops. Affinity covers pixel, vector and layout work inside one application, runs well on modest hardware, and since its 2025 relaunch costs nothing recurring. Figma owns interface design, and it is where clients now expect screen work to arrive.

So the buying rule is simple. Buy Adobe the day a client, an agency or a print shop asks for a file only Adobe produces cleanly — not before. Until then, Affinity plus a free Figma account covers logos, social graphics, packaging, brochures and web mockups. No client has ever asked which application made the file; they ask whether it opens and whether it prints.

Most of what a new designer is told to buy can wait, and some of it never becomes necessary at all.

• Inkscape — vector drawing, free and open source. Genuinely good enough for logos and icons while you learn.
• Krita — free painting and illustration, with better brushes than Photoshop for pure drawing.
• GIMP or Photopea — free raster editing. Photopea runs in a browser and opens PSD files, which rescues you when a client sends one.
• Scribus — free page layout. Austere, but it exports print-ready PDF.
• Figma on a free account — the free plan limits how many files you keep, not what you can design.
• Blender — free 3D, used professionally for product visuals and packaging mockups.
• Google Fonts — thousands of families licensed for commercial use, including good Arabic ones. Font licensing is where freelancers get into real trouble; start here.

What to delay: stock image subscriptions, mockup bundles, a graphics tablet, and motion software you have no client for. Buy those against a paid job, never against an ambition.

Here is the real cost of a working setup, with nothing hidden.

A genuine Adobe Creative Cloud licence from ROSH™ Company Labs is 400 MAD for 4 months. Three of those blocks cover twelve months, so 1 200 MAD for a year — and because you buy in four-month blocks rather than on an annual contract, you can stop after one when the work is thin. Microsoft 365 is 100 MAD for 3 months; four blocks make 400 MAD a year, which matters more than designers expect, since quotes, invoices and client decks still travel as Word and PowerPoint files. Bitdefender Total Security is 399 MAD a year for 5 devices. For anything else, contact for pricing.

The free tools cost 0 MAD. So a beginner’s setup can be 0 MAD, and a professional one running Adobe, Microsoft 365 and antivirus comes to 1 200 + 400 + 399 = 1 999 MAD for the year.

Two things to know before paying. ROSH™ Company Labs is not a formally registered company and issues no tax invoice, so if your accountant needs a facture, buy from the vendor directly. And ROSH™ Company Labs is independent — not an authorised reseller, partner or agent of Adobe, Microsoft or anyone else. Purchases are at your own risk.

A concrete plan, in the order the money should actually be spent.

1. Month zero, 0 MAD. Install Affinity and Inkscape, open a free Figma account, take your fonts from Google Fonts. Learn one vector tool and one raster tool properly rather than six badly.
2. First paying clients. Add Microsoft 365 at 100 MAD for 3 months so quotes and decks arrive in the format the client already uses, then Bitdefender at 399 MAD a year once files start coming from strangers.
3. The Adobe trigger. Buy one four-month block at 400 MAD the first time a paid job requires a native PSD, AI or INDD handover, a print shop asks for an InDesign package, or an agency puts you inside their pipeline. Let the job pay for the licence.
4. Steady work. Renew block by block while the work is there, and let it lapse when it is not. Export flattened copies and PDFs before a block ends, not after.

The upgrade nobody sells you comes last, and it changes your output more than any application: more RAM, a colour-calibrated screen, and a printer you have already run a real proof with.