Sketch vs. Sketch
A trip down memory lane comparing Sketch v.2.4.4 to v50
The other day, I was enjoying a nice cappuccino on my balcony while I was cleaning my Macbook’s hard disk. That’s when I noticed the purchase history of apps I had once downloaded from the Mac App Store. Somewhere at the end of the list, amongst the first few purchases I made in the App Store was a beautiful icon that looked like it had never changed. Apparently, back in early 2013 I purchased one of the earliest public version of the tool I currently use on a daily basis: Sketch.
I did some browsing and found out Sketch only allows you to time travel as far back as Sketch version 3.0 via their website. Whether it’s due to the Bohemian Coding team not being able to retrieve all change logs in hindsight, or something else, it’s actually a shame that no-one gets to experience the older versions of this brilliant (pun intended) app and its history. Lucky for me the Appstore allowed me to re-download it and to travel back to the year 2013 when I first downloaded Sketch v2.4.4 Allow me to take you with me on this nostalgic journey. Nothing scientific, just a fun trip down memory lane with the Sketch version we currently know in mind.
The iconic icon
The first thing I thought be funny to compare is the app icon. Personally I’ve always been a big fan of this diamond shaped fella. Over the years subtle changes have been made to the icon. The v2.4.4 contained a lot of depth and has a major bling-factor resulting in a realistically looking diamond. This skeuomorphic icon style was pretty on point back in 2013 and the diamond fitted the OS X Mountain Lion perfectly. It actually held up quite nicely throughout the OS versions that followed throughout the years.
Once OS X Yosemite was released the Sketch team went back to the drawing board and came up with an icon that was a better match for the more toned down gradients and shadows on todays’ Mac OS. Looking back at the old diamond I still like it a lot, although I do have a slight preference for the silver/kashmir blue version. Which one is your favorite?
You might notice the stranger in our midst: The raindrop. Fun made up fact; this icon goes back to the year 1597. Real fact: The icon belongs to “DrawIt”, a powerful image editing and drawing application from 2011, also made by Bohemian Coding (the creators of Sketch). If you compare the UI of DrawIt to the Sketch UI you’ll notice this DrawIt app is a clear predecessor of the now famous Sketch.
The User Interface
Speaking of UI; you know I just had to include a screenshot of the interface for you to compare with the current Sketch interface.
The icons
To get a better look at the design differences I lined up a few of the Toolbar icons from Sketch v2.4.4 next to the now most recent version 50.2. Personally, I like both, but definitely prefer the icons from 50.2.
When comparing both icons, I not only noticed the style different, but also the difference in quality. Where the Sketch 50.2 are close to perfection, the v2.4.4 icons does show some inconsistency in shadows.
UX improvements
Besides features there have been tons of little changes that have been the use of Sketch so much more enjoyable. Because there are so many to go over in detail, here are a bunch of interactions of v2.2.4.
Choose a typeface
There is a pretty big difference between the two typeface selectors. The typeface selector used to be part of a separate pane that animated in from the right. In both version you can edit the typeface once selected, but in the v2.4.4. you have even a extra sidebar which allows you even tweak more detail. Nice that they already have the possibility to save text-styles in 2.4.4
The Colorpicker
Just like the typeface selector, the color picker took over the entire inspector and reserved it for a “color inspector”. Nowadays there’s the trusty popover/tooltip that allows you to still edit other things like size, opacity, and border-radius. Looking at v2.2.4. I *do* kind of like the focus it brings to picking a color. Today I’m still waiting for an improved color palette, including custom color naming, metadata etc…
Features
Let’s talk features! Over the years Sketch has introduced pushed many new features. Way too many to recall, which is why I put together a list of those that seem like the most important ones. Becoming aware of the fact they all have been added along the way might make you appreciate the current feature set even more, in retrospect.
Symbols
Imagine Sketch without the Symbols feature🤯! This was the actually the case in Sketch v2.4.4 as Symbols weren’t introduced up to version 3. And later on a ‘all new version’ of Symbols came with v3.7. If someone would have told me about the upcoming addition of Symbols back then I wouldn’t have believed them.
Sketch Libraries
Being a part of a design team I was personally super excited when Sketch Libraries were introduced with Sketch v47 in the fall of 2017. It’s one of those features you can’t imagine living without especially when working on a project that exists of multiple Sketch files.
Shared styles
Although a predecessor between Shared Text Styles existed in v2.4.4, there wasn’t any way to link styles between vector shapes. And even though I have a love hate relationship with Shared Styles and it’s not perfect yet I wouldn’t want to live my designer life without it.
Presentation mode
Can you believer there was actually a time when there was no way to show your designs without Sketch’ interface distracting the viewer from your designs. Introduced in 3.0, Presentation Mode became the ultimate way to display you work to clients and/or teammates.
Sketch Cloud
This is a big one. Personally I don’t use Sketch Cloud too often. However, I can imagine how useful this could be for, say, remote designers. For example as a remote version of Presentation Mode.
Layer Search/Filter
Being able to quickly filter certain Layers based on their name wasn’t possible in v2.4.4. Such a small thing I couldn’t go without today.
Feeling a little nostalgic after reading this? I know I am *wipes away tear*. All emotions aside, I think this gives a great insight into the Sketch team’s drive to keep improving and adding value. Perhaps not at *the* fastest pace but definitely with a lot of thought and heart put into it.
Eg. this is the next thing I know I’m extremely excited about👇🏻
