Flatten and mirror layers without destructing and update them like a boss.
What is It for?
There are mainly two uses of this plugin:
- Mirroring artboards and layers without using symbols, and keeping them updated easily.
- Flattening layers without destructing to increase the performance of Sketch significantly.
Some other creative use cases: preview your design in different sizes or in zoomed-out version, create pixelated background effect. There is a section about these in the second half of the article.
How Does It Work?
Flatten plugin converts layers and artboards into images differently than the default flattening feature of Sketch. Instead of deleting the original layer, it keeps it hidden to make it possible to change it later and update the flattened image easily.
There is also an…
An exploration of how to make music discovery faster and easier.
I love listening music and I’m a big fan of Spotify since 2012. I enjoy discovering music and I’m constantly on the hunt for new songs.
Spotify has some really useful features for music discovery, like “user playlists” and “discover weekly”. But, I believe we can make it a lot better until artificial intelligence gets really smart and predict our next favorite tracks almost perfectly based on our listening history, behaviors and psychology.
On this topic, I have been thinking of some ideas for a while and decided to make a fully functional prototype to test them out.
Smart Play: Accelerated Music Discovery Mode
Smart play…
How did I automate a long task of foldering and renaming.
Sometimes we come across with simple tasks that consist of many similar small steps. After a point, doing it manually isn’t reasonable. This is where you need to start using automation tools.
In macOS there are two ways that you can do that without installing anything — or you can use third-party tools.
The easy way is using Automator app. It has a drag-and-drop interface that allows you to setup a workflow easily by combining predefined actions. The possibilities are almost limitless, but it’s not easy to setup really complex, multi-step, nonlinear workflows.
What is new in the group resizing feature.
With the latest version of Sketch (v.44), the group resizing feature has been updated. Even though there is no fundamental change, we have a little bit more control over the feature now.
I have written about this feature before in detail. In this article I will cover the updates and give some new tips. In the next part of this article, I will compare the group resizing feature with Anima’s Auto-layout plugin.
Shortly Group Resizing Feature
Before coming to changes, I want to explain the group resizing feature for the beginners quickly.
It’s a feature for making layers responsive to resizing of the parent…
My explorations into improving the code and layer list navigation experience in Framer.
Before we begin, I want to point out that this is more of an exploration rather than a finalized solution offer. On the way, I discovered a couple of flaws and side-effects. I offered some possible solutions at the end. But still, surely it needs more iteration and thinking. If you want to do the same on your own, download a free 2 week trial of Framer.
Test It Out
Here the link of the prototype. Note: Click left while holding the left arrow key to simulate the right click. …
The prototyping platform for IoT and Experience Design
Noodl is a prototyping app for application experience design with emphasis on connectivity, visualizing and interacting with data. It has been developed by Topp — a Swedish design & innovation studio. Although Noodl is more focused on IoT, it can be used to create every kind of prototype.
I discovered it when it was in beta process, and I have been using it from time to time along with my main prototyping tool Framer. I wanted to write about it because even though it’s really powerful and promising, it hasn’t been discovered enough by the community yet.
With Noodl you…
Creative and influential intros with great music and imagery.
Game of Thrones — HBO
Marco Polo — Netflix
The Expanse — Syfy
House of Cards — Netflix
Black Sails — Starz
The Night Manager — AMC
From basic to advanced techniques to design responsively.
Update: my new article about this topic:
I was preparing a concept design for Sketch app to demonstrate my feature ideas. I used the beta version of Sketch (3.9) for that to try the new features and also to test my plugins to see if they are working still.
After a while, I realized that the new feature called “group resizing” is really simple but yet powerful if you use it right.
Of course, this simplicity comes with limited functionality compared…
Save important stages of your artboards in the blink of an eye, and then, move fast and break things.
Here how to use in two steps:
1. Select One or More Artboards
To be more efficient and to learn some some of the deep mechanisms of the Sketch app.
Emin Inanc Unlu
Product designer and prototype developer. Likes traveling, nature, photography and sharing — www.emin.space
