Boost your UI workflow with these Sketch plugins
Plugins have made Sketch greater than the sum of its parts. But it is difficult to find a plugin that fulfils your exact needs at the right time. If you look hard enough, the plugin community does spring up some great surprises every now and then. I’d like to share my favourites that are indispensable to our team’s UI workflow. Watch your productivity and design skills skyrocket with these set of awesome plugins.
Craft by Invision
It’s safe to say that Craft tops every plugin listicle out there. And for quite a few reasons. It started out with bringing real data to designs and cloud syncing assets with the team. Over time they’ve added the ability to prototype right inside sketch (YAY!) and sync with Invision and Freehand.
Sketchpacks
Sketch is incomplete without its huge plugin community. Managing and updating all these plugins was a pain. Sketch 45 addressed this to an extent with native automatic plugin updates. But managing plugins amongst our team was still an issue. Enter Sketchpacks. Whenever we discover an awesome new plugin, we add it to Skechpacks and it syncs with the entire team over Dropbox. No hassling over finding and installing the next best thing. Joining a new team or onboarding a new member? Simply import or export your Sketchpack. Voila! Everyone’s on the same plugin…err page.
Content Generator
This plugin by Timur Carpeev makes data population ridiculously easy. My personal favourite ahead of Craft. Names, avatars, places, numbers, lorem ipsum — you name it. The content generator will blow you away with its simplicity. I just wish their profile photos had a high-res version.
Lists
There’s a reason why there’s another plugin that deals with content generation. Content is still king. Real data helps users make informed decisions. It also highlights any edge cases in the design that we may not have accounted for. Lists is a gallery of data types across 16 different categories to populate your designs. This will be available as a plugin soon. Bookmark it.
Relabel Button
Variable width buttons have troubled many a designer. Things get even worse with buttons having text and images. The relabel button plugin has cracked it. Select the button group and press Cmd+J to alter the text. Hit enter and there you have it. Your new button with the exact same padding in a jiffy.
Map Generator
The Map Generator plugin populates your designs with maps from Google Maps and Mapbox. Customization preferences include area/address, zoom level and type of map (satellite, roadmap, hybrid or terrain). If you’re picky about how your maps appear, grab a custom style from Snazzy Maps and paste it in the plugin dialogue. Say goodbye to bland maps.
7 Column Calendar Generator
I can’t think of a more boring and tedious task than calendar creation. Almost every interface needs it. This plugin by Istore Graphics makes
Sketch Pies
Do you have fingers in more than one pie? Well, this plugin should help. Create a circle, specify the different slice colours along with their percentage values and smile away.
A big cheers to the folks behind these awesome tools which have significantly improved our Sketch workflow.
If you find this list helpful, spread the love and do share your favourite Sketch plugins in the comments.
