DesignCraft

Product Overview

DesignCraft is a free, open source page layout and publishing tool from ArtCraft, 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. Beautiful type with a Knuth–Plass paragraph composer, dictionary hyphenation, optical margin alignment, and baseline grids — line breaks match on screen and in PDF. Print-ready PDF with real selectable text, embedded fonts, CMYK and spot colors, bleed, crop marks, and archival PDF/A output. Fast with multithreaded SIMD rendering, copy-on-write documents with instant undo, and cached composition. Open formats with a documented native format, PNG export, and layout interchange. Agent-native: every menu item, tool, panel, and dialog can be driven over a JSON control channel and an MCP server. Available on macOS, Windows, Linux, and Web.

Best For

Best for designers and publishers wanting a free, open source alternative to InDesign for page layout, typography, and print-ready PDF output

Key Features

• Spreads, parent pages, frames, and threaded stories
• Paragraph and character styles, swatches, text wrap
• Knuth–Plass paragraph composer with dictionary hyphenation
• Optical margin alignment and baseline grids
• Print-ready PDF: CMYK, spot colors, bleed, crop marks, PDF/A
• Multithreaded SIMD rendering with instant undo
• Open native format with PNG export
• Agent-native: JSON control channel and MCP server
• No subscription, no licence server, no telemetry
• Free and open source