01DesignCraft

07DesignCraft

Page layout and publishing, rebuilt in pure Rust.

Spreads and parent pages, threaded stories, styles, swatches and text wrap in a native layout app with a professional paragraph composer. No subscription, no licence server, no telemetry.

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macOS · Windows · Linux · Web · Free and open source

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Threaded columns and text wrap — Quarterly

Screenshot

DesignCraft showing a magazine spread: a threaded three-column story with its thread line, a wrapped pull quote, and the Properties panel's text frame options

02Highlights

What's inside.

  1. 01

    The layout tools you know

    Spreads and parent pages, frames and threaded stories, paragraph and character styles, swatches and text wrap, laid out the way you expect.

  2. 02

    Beautiful type

    A Knuth–Plass paragraph composer, dictionary hyphenation, optical margin alignment and baseline grids. Line breaks match on screen and in PDF.

  3. 03

    Print-ready PDF

    Real selectable text with embedded fonts, CMYK and spot colors, bleed, crop marks and archival PDF/A output.

  4. 04

    Fast

    Multithreaded SIMD rendering, copy-on-write documents with instant undo, and cached composition.

  5. 05

    Open formats

    A documented native format, PNG export, and layout interchange import and export for moving work between tools.

  6. 06

    Agent-native

    Every menu item, tool, panel and dialog can be driven over a JSON control channel and an MCP server.

03Screenshots

Magazine cover for The Spring Issue: a dusk landscape of layered purple hills under a pale sun, with the serif headline The Quiet Art of LayoutFull size
Cover02
Feature opener titled Notes on the Grid with a kicker rule, italic deck, landscape picture, caption and two columns of justified body textFull size
Styles03
Three columns of justified, hyphenated body text wrapping around a shaded pull quoteFull size
Threading and wrap04
Coming Next page titled Color, Ink and Paper on a plum background with four labeled color swatchesFull size
Swatches05

04Get DesignCraft

Installers

Installers are on the way.

Native installers for macOS, Windows, and Linux are coming. Join the ArtCraft Discord to get them first, try early builds and talk with the team building DesignCraft.

Get notified on Discord
macOS
Windows
Linux
Web

Build from source

Run it today.

Needs Rust 1.90 or newer. New to Rust? Install it with rustup, then run:

Terminal
git clone https://github.com/storytold/designcraft.git
cd designcraft
cargo run --release -p designcraft
View source on GitHub

05The family

More from the family.

All Crafting Apps
01

Image editor

PhotoCraft editing The Great Wave off Kanagawa with a Curves adjustment and type layers in the Layers panel

PhotoCraft

The open-source image editor you already know how to use.

Explore PhotoCraft
02

Vector illustration

VectorCraft editing a synthwave poster titled Neon Drive with an outer glow in the Appearance panel

VectorCraft

Fast, open-source vector illustration, reimagined in pure Rust.

Explore VectorCraft
03

Video editor

FilmCraft with video scopes, the program monitor showing Charade (1963), and a multi-track timeline

FilmCraft

Professional, open-source video editing, rebuilt from scratch in Rust.

Explore FilmCraft
04

Photo library & raw developer

LightCraft developing Ansel Adams' The Tetons and the Snake River with light and effects sliders

LightCraft

An open-source photo library and raw developer that runs on your machine.

Explore LightCraft
05

PDF workbench

PrintCraft showing a showcase PDF cover with the tools sidebar and threaded comments

PrintCraft

The open-source PDF workbench: read, organize, combine, split and secure.

Explore PrintCraft
06

Motion graphics & VFX

EffectCraft's composition panel showing an animated EFFECTCRAFT title, with the project panel, a timeline of text, shape and solid layers, and the properties panel

EffectCraft

Open-source motion graphics and visual effects, built in pure Rust.

Explore EffectCraft

Open source · Free

Help shape DesignCraft.

Report bugs, request features and get early builds of DesignCraft in the ArtCraft Discord.

Join the Discord