At Lightflows, we're passionate about creating stunning digital experiences that exceed our clients' expectations. To achieve this, we leverage the power of Sketch to bring our design visions to life and craft exceptional software applications.
What is Sketch?
Sketch is a cutting-edge vector graphics application used for designing user interfaces (UI) and user experiences (UX) of software and applications. This powerful tool allows designers and developers to collaborate seamlessly, ensuring that designs are converted into final products with ease. With its mobile app, you can even preview how your design will appear on smaller devices.
Benefits of Using Sketch
Over the years, Sketch has built a thriving community dedicated to creating beautiful digital designs. Its interactive components, extensive plugin library, and developer handoff tools make it an invaluable tool for speeding up delivering top-notch software solutions.
We caught up with our Lead Designer, Nik, who's a huge fan of Sketch, to learn more about its benefits in swift app development.
Component-Based Structure
"One of the things I love most about Sketch is the power of reusable components," Nik explains. "Components are groups of objects that you can reuse across all artboards. When you update something within a component, such as fonts or image positions, all reused components in every artboard will update to reflect those style changes." This approach allows us to deliver flexible and scalable design systems, making it easy to make changes quickly.
Sketch Design Prototype to Developer Handoff
"Sketch has added numerous handoff tools that we use to our full advantage," Nik notes. "For example, you can link designs together into complex interactive prototypes, giving stakeholders a feel for the final product before signing off for development." Additionally, you can assign values to colours, fonts, and styles to create a complete design system that developers can easily reference and inspect.
Community and Plugins
"Sketch has an incredible community that creates plugins and other design resources," Nik says. "I've always managed to find useful tools from our community to enhance my workflow."
Text Styles, Color Variables, and Theme Properties
"Sketch lets you work your own way," Nik notes. "You can jump in and create a quick rough layout or start a full design system." This flexibility makes it easy to make larger changes quickly, such as updating brand colours halfway through a project.
Responsive Design
"You can create designs for various devices and screen sizes, such as mobile, tablet, and even print," Nik explains. "Artboards are especially useful for responsive design because you can put all your designs in one document separated by pages, allowing you to easily switch between designs for every device."
Sketch vs Figma
Figma is another powerful digital design tool we've used on several projects. Nik highlights some differences between Sketch and Figma, which help us decide which one to use for specific projects.
Native macOS App
"Sketch shares its look and feel with the macOS system," Nik notes. "Everything feels like it belongs and runs at full speed." This native app experience helps us focus on design without distractions.
Auto-Layout in Figma
"A very powerful feature of Figma is auto-layout, which is slowly making its way into Sketch," Nik explains. "While both Sketch and Figma offer reusable components that you can change in size or shape, auto-layout flexes the components to present how they would look on different devices." This feature saves time on every project.
Components within Components
"In Sketch, you can build out fully nested, complex components that closely mirror the structure we use to build the final apps," Nik says. Figma has some limitations regarding how far you can take this approach.
Smart Animate in Figma
"Both design tools let you create prototypes, but Figma has a very powerful addition called Smart Animate," Nik notes. "Smart Animate lets you create states and animate shapes and components between them to create a UI that's much closer to the final product."
Sketch Design Company
Have a software, app, or digital idea in mind but aren't sure where to begin? With our approach to digital design and range of software development services, we can help you bring your vision to life. Contact us today to learn more!