Sketch Tutorials

The Sketch Update We’ve All Been Waiting For, plus a BRAND NEW UX Power Tools!

When nested symbols came out for the first time way back in Sketch version-whatever-it-was, it was kind of a big deal. At least I thought so:

This is, without a doubt, the coolest Sketch technique you’ll see all day.

At the time, a couple designers were figuring out ways to really stretch Sketch to its absolute limits. We wanted it to work for us, not against us.

So with nested symbols in our toolboxes, we set out creating hundreds of symbols out of things like colors, border, and text styles, and masking just about everything so we could quickly toggle between various styles in things like our fancy new button symbols.

Clever? Sure.

Suuuuper hacky? Well…I mean yeah…

WOO-WEE, DO I HAVE SOME GREAT NEWS FOR YOU!

Style Overrides

Sketch is changing the way overrides work. Well, not changing…but adding a new way to apply overrides to symbols.

Instead of just overriding nested symbols (like an icon inside of a button), now you’ll be able to override the TEXT STYLE and COLOR. There is a god.

Me.

There’s a catch.

You must use text styles and layer styles when you build your symbols.

Let me say that bigger.

You MUST use text styles and layer styles.

That’s the only way Sketch allows you to override the text and color attributes within a symbol.

This may still seem really inconvenient:

“Great, now I have to make a whole bunch of styles. Why can’t I just update the font/color attributes on the fly, however I want?”