Sketch 54–How 3 new features will improve your design workflow
Practical tips to the Dark Mode, Snapping and Smart Guides improvements.
This will be the short one, but I think that improvements made in 54 version of Sketch are worth mentioning in terms of how they may improve the way we create designs.
TL;DR
Sketch 54 includes the following features and improvements:
- Dark Mode Toggle (independent from macOS)
- Lots of snapping improvements
- Smart Guides update
- over 60 other enhancements and bug fixes
OK, launch the newest version of Sketch, grab the mug of your favorite coffee and let’s see how the update makes you work easier!
🌗 Dark Mode — True independence.
When Mojave introduced Dark Mode as a system option, many users warmly welcomed the feature. Sketch Team also implement it to the tool. The theme in Sketch was dependent on System Preferences. Fortunately, now it has changed, and it may have a significant impact on the way you work.
More and more sites and apps have got dark & light apps. When you design one of them, you have to remember about maintaining good contrast. It is good to preview dark mode in dark environment and light one with bright light to check if the contrast is good.
Dark Mode Toggle enables you to switch Sketch theme without changing it in macOS. Thanks to this your workflow should be more efficient, and you will be less distracted because the mode changes only in the tool you wanted to change.
🎯 Snapping Improvements — Better precision for everyone
Without any doubt, this will make every Sketch user work faster. After using the updated version of Sketch, I noticed that almost every layer or group I wanted to place in my 8 point grid mobile app design was aligned perfectly to other elements.
What is more, now when you try to insert a new Symbol instance, Smart Guides will now appear to help you.
Sketch Team has also improved many things related to Text Layer resizing and snapping. Now when you resize Text Layer, it snaps to fit the content.
📐 Measure and Smart Guides — now even smarter!
Do you remember that moment when you designed red UI, and you tried to align shapes precisely? The default color of guides made that hard to read.
Now measuring guides have got an entirely new look. The number is not displayed directly above the layer, but it is placed in rounded rectangle — thanks to this they are readable even if you set the same color of guides like the one used in your design!
There is more, if you have troubles to see the guides in your perfectly blue mockup, you can customize the color of the Smart Guides in Sketch Preferences.
To conclude
This update may not seems to be as revolutionary as the one when Sketch introduced Symbol overrides, but it also has a significant impact on design workflow optimization.
Personally, I love the new Smart Guides (I often worked with red UI) and Dark Mode Toggle that will help me work better with dark and light themes for sites I design. What are your impressions?
More Sketch tutorials and tips:
By the way…
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Thanks for reading!
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