If you are a Mac user who wants to design mobile apps or websites, Sketch is a great tool. Created for the Mac, it is easy to use and lets you craft great designs for multiple platforms. Sketch is powerful and also convenient. It offers many plugins and shortcuts and allows you to collaborate with a team and easily share your designs. There is no need to learn to code, although the final format of your design will be very close to HTML/CSS.
What Can Sketch Do For You?
Sketch can help you create beautiful apps and websites on a Mac. It can help with planning, testing, through wireframes and prototypes, and sharing your designs. Sketch makes it easy to work with others in real-time and share designs back and forth. It also has many presets and libraries to speed up work and keep it consistent. Sketch is made to run on Macs, but if you are using a PC, there are some workarounds that let you preview your design through a browser.
The UX/UI Design Process
While UX Designers work with people quite a bit, UI Designers are more on their own. UI Designers focus on the visual aspect, or how the website or app looks and if it does what it is supposed to. The UX Designer hands off the blueprint for the product to the UI Designer who is responsible for the final look of the product. They use software programs like Sketch to create websites and applications that are easy and enjoyable to use. The software also helps UI Designers build different levels of prototypes and test them to see how successful they are and how well they work. The UI Designer is ultimately responsible for upholding the company brand in the design and keeping style consistent. Finally, Sketch makes it easy for the design to be passed on to Web Developers and other members of the design team.
What is Sketch?
Sketch is a design application created exclusively for Macs. You can use vector editing tools or design at the pixel level. It allows you to scale to any screen size and speed up your workflow with mathematical shortcuts. Repeatable components allow you to organize your design so everything is easy to find. Sketch has real-time collaboration tools, so it is easy for a team to work together, and you can also create shareable libraries of the elements the team is using. There are also many plugins available to customize your workspace.
Essential Features of Sketch
Because Sketch is vector-based, elements can be easily resized without sacrificing clarity, but you can also edit at the pixel level, too. Choose the size of the artboard you need and design in predefined sizes. Organize artboards with customizable grids that resize automatically. Features like math operators, shorthand, and variable font control let you speed up your workflow. Because of reusable smart components and smart layout, changes carry across the pages of the design and resize automatically when you change them. Styles let you maintain the color variable, test, and style across different designs in order to maintain the design language.
Test your design with interactive prototypes that you can share with a browser link or tested on mobile devices and multiple platforms in all sizes and formats. You can collaborate in real-time with team members, create libraries of components to maintain design consistency, and hand it off to developers when the design is finished. More than 700 extensions and plugins let you choose what you need to do from colorwork to animation, adding images, creating charts, and much more.
Sketch is native to the Mac which means it operates like other Mac apps and works well on the Mac. You can personalize your workspace, easily store files, or choose light or dark mode. The user interface feels familiar if you are used to using Macs.
History of Sketch
Sketch was created by a Dutch company called Bohemian Coding. It was released in 2010 and was chosen for an Apple Design Award in 2012. Bohemian Coding is now called Sketch B.V.
How to Purchase Sketch
When you decide to purchase Sketch, you first get a 30-day free trial. A yearly license is $99 or $89 per device for a volume license. It costs $69 to renew the license or $64 per device. You do not have to renew the license; you can continue to use Sketch but you won’t get updates and new features without it.
How to Learn Sketch
If you would like to learn how to use software like Sketch in order to switch to a career in UX/UI design, one of the best ways to do that is to sign up for classes. You can choose classes that meet in-person or online to learn Sketch and other applications. Some people prefer to attend brick-and-mortar sessions when learning new information, but that isn’t always available. Live online classes have a similar set-up with a real-time, remote instructor who can answer questions and take control of your monitor—with permission—to show you how to do things. Training is part or full-time and available weekdays, weeknights, or weekends.
The best way to prepare for a career shift to a field like UX design is to enroll in a bootcamp or certificate program. These are intensive training courses that run from a few weeks to a few months and will cover motion graphics and animation in much more depth than tutorials can. Another plus of training is that you will leave class with a professional-quality sample portfolio that you can show to prospective employers.
Conclusion
It’s easy to learn Sketch and start a new career in UX/UI design. Check out Noble Desktop’s Sketch classes, including the comprehensive Sketch Bootcamp. Choose between in-person sessions in NYC at Noble’s location or learn live online and attend from anywhere. The Remote UX & UI Design Certificate allows you to learn Sketch along with other important UX tools like Adobe XD and Figma. You can also use Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me to find other courses in UX design in your area.