Awesome Sketch plugins for designers
Intro
We all know that Sketch is an amazing tool for designers, what makes it more fun is that we can integrate third-party plugins to it.
Now the question is, there are more than 100+ plugins available by third-party developers: how do you know which plugin is the right one for your style of designing?
Before jumping into the best of Sketch plugins lets talk about what are plugins and there attributes.
What are plugins?
Plugins are software components that add a specific feature to an existing computer program. When a program supports plug-ins, it enables customisation.
Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_(computing)
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/plugin.htm
Plugins Attributes
- Quality: Good quality plugins can decrease the pain of designers, by adding basic features like shortcut keys and less consumption of ram (some plugins use lot of ram and reduce the performance of the work system which gives a very bad experience).
- Consistency: It is very much important for designer to have consistency in designs. Some plugins make it easier to maintain proper consistency to designs.
- Time: Plugins helps the designer in saving time by helping to focus more on the thought process for the ideation of existing design layout rather than worrying about the deadlines.
- Productivity: Good plugins brings very high productivity through design. Every designer needs to increase the output of their design by breaking the design into different components. Examples- button, cards, labels, textfields, spacing, alignment, etc.,of continuous usage of repeated components ultimately increase productivity.
- Control: Plugins helps control by adding shortcut keys and calling functions which helps the designer to handle the layout easily.
Top plugins for Designers
I have divided the plugins into 3 categories:
1. Plugins for all designers (Golden plugins):
If you have come to search for some useful plugins or if your not keen on going through the rest of the list, I completely understand that. But, the ‘Golden Plugin’ section is something I strongly recommend to all the designers. This is a life saver and will help you with tackling unreasonable project timelines and avoiding the graveyard shifts!
Runner
This plugin is master plugin to control the workflow and to search anything across the sketch platform.
Runner helps designers to get around Sketch quickly by providing an intuitive interface to control daily workflow. Stop searching through your menu and start running commands directly from your keyboard.
Commands to start runner
Run: This command enables a quick search through all available plugins and Sketch menu commands.
Goto: Will jump to any page, art-board, group or layer in workspace.
Insert: You can insert any symbol without going to symbols workspace, just insert anywhere in any workspace.
Create: Lets you quickly define symbols and shared styles from your current selection.
Apply: It recognises which layer is currently selected to list all shared styles. You just have to choose which one to apply.
Install: You can browse, install, update and uninstall plugins. Just search for a plugin name or GitHub username.
Download Link: https://sketchrunner.com/
Reference to get started:
Symbol Organizer
This plugin will organise the entire symbols library, to control the workflow and to search anything across the sketch platform.
The best use of this is to not get frustrated in arranging all small symbol, icons or any text, you just need to set the parameters in ‘Symbol Organizer’ and it will arrange all the symbols. Also, if you are adding any new symbol it will arrange in same structure.
Download Link: https://github.com/sonburn/symbol-organizer
Reference to get started:
Content Generator
‘Content Generator’ allows you quickly create dummy data such as avatars, names, geo location data etc.
Download Link: https://github.com/timuric/Content-generator-sketch-plugin
Reference to get started:
2. Plugins for UX/Interaction designers:
Anima
This plugin is good for designers and developer handoffs.
- Creates responsive layouts.
- It generates HTML and CSS code for your layout.
- Timeline enables designers to add micro-interaction to their design
- You can also check all these before launching it in browser by Launchpad.
Download Link: https://www.animaapp.com/
Reference to get started:
Craft
This is a suite of plugins to let you design with real data in mind. Manage them via the new Craft Manager and update with incredible ease.
Search and Apply stock or normal images easily. Add dummy content, prototype as well as add JSON file to quickly call the required data. All this with a lot more features.
Download Link: https://www.invisionapp.com/craft
Reference to get started:
Marketch
Marketch is a Sketch 3 plug-in for automatically generating html page that can measure and get CSS styles on it.
This plugin can export design from sketch into a zipfile, once you extract it you will have the HTML & CSS of your design, now you can open it and inspect each element.
Download Link: https://github.com/tudou527/marketch
Reference to get started:
3. Plugins for UI/Graphic/Visual designers:
Paddy
Automated padding, spacing and alignment for your Sketch layers.
This plugin is superb to create buttons, cards, text fields, e.t.c. You can setup your padding parameters and once you’re done, you can control the spacing in each component and enjoy the responsive control.
Download Link: https://github.com/DWilliames/paddy-sketch-plugin
Reference to get started:
Magic mirror
Image perspective transformation plugin, easy and quick.
Adds Perspective Transformation to Sketch, so users can create perspective mockups and other distorted effect to their UI design. Before Magic Mirror, Sketch users had to use other graphics design tools like Adobe Photoshop and make use of it’s ‘Smart Object’ feature.
Download Link: https://magicsketch.io/mirror/
Reference to get started:
Distrubutor
Sketch plugin that distributes selected objects vertically or horizontally with a given spacing.
Download Link: https://github.com/PEZ/SketchDistributor
Golden Line Height
Optimise your typography using the power of math.
Download Link: https://github.com/lorenzwoehr/Golden-Ratio-Line-Height-Sketch-Plugin
Conclusion
These are my plugin recommendations, they cover almost all the needs of any designer. There are many more plugins which will definitely cater to your specific needs but ones mentioned above are your best companions for your creative journey on Sketch.
