Expression Studio Discontinued

The Expression Studio graphic design suite was discontinued in Dec. 2012. Expression Studio helped digital artists, Web designers, photographers, and other graphics professionals build digital content for print, Web, and Windows application user interfaces. Microsoft’s exit from graphic design could ultimately lead to better integration with competing design tools, although Microsoft will retain some Expression technology to support its developer platform.

Support Through 2020, Unsupported Free Versions

The Expression Studio suite and most of its components will no longer be sold or updated. The current versions of the suite and components will remain eligible for Microsoft product support through 2020.

Expression Studio’s components will go forward as follows:

Expression Blend is a tool for designing application interfaces and content. Blend’s most recent version ships with Visual Studio (VS) 2012 and is restricted to building Windows Store and Windows Phone applications; it cannot build Windows Presentation Foundation or Silverlight applications, in contrast to the Blend edition sold in Expression Studio. VS 2012 Update 2 will add Blend support for Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight applications and for SketchFlow (a feature associated with Blend that helps quickly mock up software interfaces). The Blend functionality coming in VS Update 2 is now available as a preview, and when VS Update 2 is released VS customers should have all the functionality of the separately available Blend 4.