As lightweight, simple, and design-friendly as an actual sketch
June 21, 2019
As lightweight, simple, and design-friendly as an actual sketch
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Sketch
Our product, design, and development teams use Sketch to host our design style guide and symbol library. The product and design teams use Sketch to create mockups, wireframes, etc., and then use Sketch's Marvel integration to hand designs off to the devs. The product content strategy team also uses Sketch to create internal images and visuals (e.g., annotated product screenshots, tone maps, infographics, diagrams).
- It's extremely easy to create symbols in Sketch. This makes it very, very fast to re-use components across designs. Not only does this save time, but it keeps our work consistent across users and designs.
- Sketch always loads incredibly quickly, no matter how large the file size or how many images/artboards the file contains. It's like magic, especially compared to some of the clunkier software I've used.
- Sketch offers a fantastic spread of third-party plugins. The Marvel plugin makes it incredibly easy to upload/sync designs before dev handoffs.
- As with similar software, Sketch does have a learning curve. Sketch is incredibly easy to use once you're comfortable with the navigation, know the keyboard shortcuts, etc. Before you're at that point, however, it can be difficult. I already had experience with programs like Illustrator, Photoshop, and InVision, and took to Sketch very quickly. But one of my colleagues who has less experience with these types of tools is unable to use Sketch efficiently, even after several months.
- Sketch is only available for OS. This wasn't a huge problem for our company, where the design and product teams all use MacBooks, but it means it's harder to share with other teams (like the devs, who use PCs).
- The basic image editing Sketch offers is pretty limited. Although that's not the main reason anyone at our company uses Sketch, it would be nice to be able to erase parts of an image or do some basic masking.
- The ability to make shared libraries truly saves time and ensures both accuracy and consistency across designs. Sketch makes design system creation and organization very easy, and this streamlines every part of the product design process.
- Sketch saves our company money. Beyond saving time (which saves money), Sketch is more affordable than other software and fits our needs just as well.
- Because Sketch offers so many plugins, usage is VERY flexible. This allows us to change the other tools we're using while still being able to integrate Sketch and use our design system and symbol libraries. This makes platform switches much less of a hassle.
Although there's a lot of overlap, we use these different platforms for different purposes. InVision allows us to create more robust prototypes, Zeplin is a better tool for design/dev handoffs, and Marvel is great for basic wireframes. None of these tools beat Sketch when it comes to our design system and shared symbol libraries, however, which is why Sketch continues to have a place here. Additionally, Sketch is so lightweight and easy to use, it's my go-to for creating simple visuals for the UX team's internal use.