Returning to Sketch

Last updated on

There are tools that mark a milestone in your life.

To me, Sketch is one of them.

I remember the first website I ever designed by myself was my first portfolio, back in 2015.

My knowledge on design was scarce, but I had Travis Neilson’s YouTube tutorials, a pirated version of Sketch1, and my will to get my first web design job.

Sketch was so easy to learn, that I nailed it on the design, and got actually the job.

At the time, my job was mainly coding HTML and CSS, and the designers used the Adobe Suite, so I had to abandon Sketch then.

It was only years later (8 years, to be exact), in 2023, when I decided to give it another try. And, oh boy… How I missed it.

It’s just a well-designed tool all around. The care for detail that their team has is amazing.

Now, after using Figma for a long, long time, there are a few drawbacks, so I thought to document my recent experience with it in this post, and update it every once in a while.

The Good about Sketch

Let’s start with the good stuff, shall we?

  1. It’s a native MacOS app — fast, reliable, and the UI looks good. What else can I say?
  2. It’s offline-first — it means you can open the app while flying on a plane and actually do work2.
  3. Your files are yours. They stay in your computer, and there’s no fear that the company will train AI models with your designs3.
  4. It has a pay once option, where you actually buy the software and keep it forever (no subscriptions). I missed these…

The Bad about Sketch

Unfortunately, after many years of using Figma, you become spoiled by the amount of features that speed up the process.

Here are the things I miss the most when using Sketch:

  1. Auto Layout — I design mostly for the web, which makes dealing with paddings a pain in Sketch. I’m hoping they’ll improve their Smart Layout soon.
  2. OpenType Features — Yes, Sketch does have the option, BUT it’s buried inside many menus.
  3. In-app CSS Inspector — It seems to only be available with a subscription, and it’s not as easy to use as Figma’s.
  4. Symbols and Shortcuts — it’s not that it’s bad, I just need to re-map these things in my mind. Very different from what I’m used to with Figma.

The Conclusion

I’ll keep using Sketch for personal projects, and hopefully fully transition at some point?

A lot of the people who work/have worked at Sketch are people that I deeply admire, so I have a lot of hope for the future of this product.

Footnotes

  1. I had no money for a license back then, since it cost over 1/2 of my salary at the time. ↩

  2. Figma will not work, unless you keep your files open on your desktop app. Bummer. ↩

  3. Don’t be naive. What do you think Adobe has been doing with Figma? 🤫 ↩