Best practices of artboard naming in Sketch
Hi Design Community! I think everybody faced the problem of the right artboard naming in Sketch. At my work, I have been testing different techniques and tried to find the best way. I’d like to share my findings with you. If you enjoyed this post, please leave some claps 👏
Pre Story
As for me, I like when everything is organized and structured in the right way. A couple of years ago, I was adding numbers at the beginning of artboards. Within a few weeks, my artboards had structures like “2.8.12.1 Adding story from admin side”. Renaming and keeping the numbers in actual format was taking so much time.
So why you need to add these numbers? And my answer is — the right order and filtering. When you name your artboards randomly, it’s very hard to sort your screens between the sections inside InVision or find a specific one in Abstract. If there are 50+ screens it could be quite overwhelming 🤯
Solution
Try using abbreviations — it makes it working with artboards a whole lot easier!
As demonstrated on the preview above, use the first letters from the “Section Title” within the “Subsection Title”. And for the artboard, add first letters from the section and subsection with the artboard name at the end. Personally, I like to use Behaviour Driven Development(BDD) specifications. Let’s have section title as “Create Email” and subsection as “Wireframes”. As a result, your artboard name will be:
CE: W: When user clicks on “Create Email” button, then show “Create Email Modal Window”
Let’s quickly discuss everything below. In the end, you can find a link where you can download the Sketch library that I’m using for free with all the symbols for headings and Jira previews 🥳
Page Title
The name of the project or “Initiative” that you are working on. Main things to remember:
- It represents a project or initiative that you are working on
- Must be only one on the page
Subsection Title
Used for different activities like sitemaps, user flows, styles used or wireframes. Main things to remember:
- Subsections are used for different activities. If you have more than one screen, you can show it on the right side
- First letters are taken as abbreviature from the “Section Title”
Artboard Naming
Hooray, here is the finish line! As you can see all the artboards are named by the sections and subsections they are placed in. If you will name and organize things properly, just by looking into the artboard name will give you an idea where it placed in a two-level hierarchy. You can use our own techniques, but I’m using that for Epic → Activity. Main things to remember:
- First letters are taken from “Section” and “Subsection” as abbreviations
- You can name them in the Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) format for wireframes
Why it’s better?
Invision
You can easily sort your screens in InVision based on the first letters and move them into sections. You can also add Jira ticket code into section name in InVision. So others can open the Jira epic issue and read all the updates
Abstract
You can easily find screens in Abstract by searching by the first letters. Also, you can see that we are adding Jira issue code to the name. It will help us to understand which project (Initiative in Jira) is working on this file
Download the library
Inside the library, you can find a lot of extra things that will help you to organize your work. Check out notes and artboard states! Download here 👇
If you would like to contribute or just say “Hi 👋”, please do it in Spectrum. And big thanks to EPAM.com and DesignSpot for all the support ❤️
You can write to me directly via mssg.me/farid or find me on Instagram or Dribbble as @faridsabitov
