Sketch's company blog covers its native Mac design tool, product updates, pricing, company growth, and the case for native apps.
HN commenters recommend Sketch as a design tool, and one says they still use it daily nearly 15 years on, despite Figma's rise.
I appreciate your feedback! Thank you for sharing moqups. I haven't seen this tool before.
There are a lot of tools that do similar things. I think of the categories as:
*Design creation*
• Figma https://www.figma.com/
• Sketch https://www.sketch.com/
• uizard https://uizard.io/
• Penpot https://penpot.app/
• UXPin https://www.uxpin.com/
*Asset creation*
• Canva https://www.canva.com/
• Crello https://crello.com/
• Creatopy https://www.creatopy.com/
• Spark https://spark.adobe.com/
*Presentation creation*
• Pitch https://pitch.com/
• Ludus https://ludus.one/
*Digital Whiteboard*
• Miro https://miro.com/
• Whimsical https://whimsical.com/
• Mural https://www.mural.co/
*Prototyping*
• Invision https://www.invisionapp.com/
• Marvel https://marvelapp.com/
*Feedback*
• Markup https://www.markup.io/
• Pastel https://usepastel.com/
• Contrast https://www.contrast.app/
*Animation*
• Jitter https://jitter.video/
And that just scratches the surface.
I've noticed that the apps listed above are often too prescriptive or too complicated. My goal is to create a simple tool that lets you quickly provide feedback and iterations on websites and web apps. I think of NextUX as similar to Loom but for design mockups.
In my workflow, I typically include a NextUX link along with an exported image in my product management software (Trello). I describe the changes I made contextually with comments in the design. Often, the design looks hacked together and incomplete but it's just enough…
Good lord I could've really used this a few months ago when I was butting heads with product management insisting on building things first rather than prototyping. This might have helped communicate the complexities that I feel were being glossed over, in a way that was approachable to non-programmers and non-designers.
Definitely giving this a go, thanks for sharing!
One thing that tripped me up was the name. I use Sketch[1] quite a lot and the reason I clicked the headline was I immediately though maybe this was something new around implementing design systems using Sketch. This tool is much more interesting to me, but still, thought I should mention it.
Loving the simplicity of the design in this little tool. It'll be interesting to see whether it works beyond simple experiences. The syntax makes me think it ought to be composable, like having larger state charts composed of smaller components, pluggable via open ended transitions either by omitting the target state or having some special syntax saying "plug in your state here".
Anyway, definitely going to give this a go, looks great!
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[1]: https://www.sketch.com/
Yeah trying to switch from VSCode to Nova was the opposite experience for me.
For a while, I had that same nostalgia... everything looked great... but then, nothing really worked, the plugins were all kind of bad (half of my work is Golang, which Nova does not support), and VSCode allows you to have the same stuff on all three major platforms.
I realized the Mac software from your studios looked great, and yeah had unified Mac feel unlike the messiness of Windows world, but usually had worse functionality. (And they were all always paid.)
There was recently an article from Sketch, that says, how proud they are to have a native app in 2020.
https://www.sketch.com/blog/2020/10/26/part-of-your-world-why-we-re-proud-to-build-a-truly-native-mac-app/
Yeah, nice, but... Figma is not native, it has a "worse" looking/feeling app, but... allows you to collaborate instantly - it's "collaboration first", not a feature side-bolted to existing app. And it can be run anywhere.
Chromium is horrible in abstract (why do I need to take whole Chrome with every app?). But they win where matters I guess.
Just realized that my first answer might not be the most helpful :-P. If you're still interested in becoming better at design, it's all about learning-by-doing. Much like development.
I spend a lot of time on https://dribbble.com/ when I initially started designing and that's often where I go to find inspiration these days as well.
Besides that, I'd suggest to doing as many design-related projects as possible. They don't have to be big. They just need to force you to go through the process of going from thought to an actual design. A lot of people practice design by re-designing already existing apps.
The tool of the trade nowadays, when it comes to websites and apps at least, is https://www.sketch.com/, which I can highly recommend.
Hope that helped a bit more.
Lots of excellent insights. Sketch has move powerful vector drawing tools than Figma - but it hardly matters. [1]
As you say, Sketch and Adobe XD are desktop apps for the sole designer. In Figma, no designer presence needed for a myriad of use cases and user types.
I can only assume in the future soon Adobe will change Figma sign-ups into Adobe ID accounts (like Adobe have done with Behance).
[1] The Sketch team wrote a blog post extolling the virtues of native apps - no doubt with a nod to their Figma cloud rival.
Why we’re proud to build a truly native Mac app (Oct 2020):
https://www.sketch.com/blog/2020/10/26/part-of-your-world-why-we-re-proud-to-build-a-truly-native-mac-app/
Ah, thank you! It looks like Agenda[0] does use that model. Here's a blog post with details[1] in which they mention that Sketch[2] also uses the same business model (with some minor variations).
tl;dr: you buy the app and 1 year of updates. You keep what you pay for.
I wonder if it would be viable for an app like photoshop to have a feature marketplace. You start with a very basic version of the app and you buy the features you want piecemeal. You then have a separate service contract for ongoing support (ie: bug fixes).
[0]: https://agenda.com/
[1]: https://medium.com/@drewmccormack/a-cash-cow-is-on-the-agenda-138a11995595
[2]: https://www.sketch.com/