Sketch from A to Z: Become an App Designer

Let's take a moment to get to know one another and talk about why we are here.

Where does Sketch fit into the world as a design application? Let's talk about what makes Sketch such a strong application for user interface design (UI design) and what makes it a better choice for this type of design work than Photoshop.

Let's discuss the difference between vector graphics in Sketch vs raster or pixel based graphics like images and photographs.

Time to get familiar with Sketch by learning where our tools are. Here we cover the toolbar, layers list, inspector, and touch on the canvas.

Every Sketch document is made up of simple parts. Pages, canvas, and artboards. Let's learn how the pieces come together.

Let's get into best practices for staying out of trouble with save, save as, and autosave. Autosave can be an extremely useful feature when it is properly understood and properly taken advantage of.

Let's make sure we are on the same page

Let's get familiar with the design elements which will combine to form anything and everything you build in Sketch.

Time to get hands on. Let's master making selections and positioning things on our canvas. We will be learning some shortcuts that make even simple navigation much faster and easier.

Sketch gives us a number of tool to stay pixel perfect. Eyeballing things works for most artwork, but in software design there is a lot to be said for visual organization and precision.

Sometimes the best way to align things is to design on a grid. Using grids and guides, spacing and aligning objects can be effortless.

As your design becomes more complex, layers will begin to get in the way of other layers. Let's look at how keep things from getting in our way.

Are you a pro at navigating around Sketch documents?

Its about time we begin adding content to our canvas. Let's take a close look at the different vector shapes we have to choose from.

Now that we know how to add shapes to our canvas, let's begin assembling the basic shapes that will form our music player app.

Basic shapes will only get you so far. Here we will learn how to edit basic shapes to turn them into something completely different.

Sketch wouldn't be a true vector drawing application without the ability to draw your own custom shapes.

Here we look at the two tools within Sketch to draw our own shapes from scratch.

Let's take a moment to practice drawing with the Vector Tool.

Boolean Operations are an incredible tool within Sketch which allow us to combine basic shapes to create more complex ones. You'll be impressed with how much you can accomplish with simple shapes and Boolean Operations.

Masking in Sketch 3 can be very, very easy and very, very useful. On the other hand, it can be a bit confusing to figure out on your own. In this lesson I show you how to keep making simple and get your masks under control.

In Sketch, it is easy and intuitive to grab the handles around an object and drag them to scale the object up or down. The problem with this becomes clear when borders or rounded corners are involved. Dragging the handles scales the path, but does not scale the effects in proportion. This lesson demonstrates how to scale an object or group of objects along with its effects.

It's not unusual to need things to be lined up with one another and spaced even from one another. While it might be less common, you may want things lined up and spaced both vertically, as well as horizontally. In this tutorial I show you how easy it is in Sketch 3 to organize and align objects on such a grid. Also how to duplicate an object into rows and columns.

While Adobe Illustrator and Sketch are both vector drawing applications, they aren't exactly joined in holy matrimony. If you're a designer using Illustrator, these tips will make your life a lot easier when bringing artwork over.

Make sure you are not geometrically challenged in Sketch

We are ready to beginning styling our app! Let's start with our different types of shape fills. Colors, gradients, and patterns; its all here.

Let's practice using fills and make some progress on getting our app put together.

Borders, known as strokes in many other design applications, are an integral part of modern design. Let's polish up a few of our objects by adding borders.

Blending Modes and opacity allow us to get one layer to have transparency or blending with layers below. Beautiful and complex effects can be created with little effort.

Shadows are a simple and elegant way to add depth and dimensionality to your design. Let's go over some tips for incorporating shadows.

We have some icons to add to our design to communicate functionality. Our icons will give users something to interact with in our app.

There are several different types of blur effects that can be applied in Sketch. Let's compare them and review one of the more misunderstood blur types: the Background Blur.

As we style more and more objects in our design, the more we may find ourselves doing the same tasks over and over again. One of the recurring themes throughout this course is how to avoid doing repetitive tasks. Let's learn how to avoid repetitive styling.

Now that we know how to copy and paste style from one object to another, let's look at an amazing feature in Sketch that allows us to share styles between similar objects so that they always remain in sync with one another.

Time to take what we've learned and apply it to some finishing touches to our design.

Style is subjective. Knowing your tools is not.

Time to add text to our design and get familiar with the text tools available to us.

Area text allows us to insert paragraphs of text that remain within a bounding box. Let's look at the ins and outs of text boxes and styling the text within those boxes.

Now that we know how to add text and shapes, let see how we can integrate the two and position text on a path.

Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.

While image editing is certainly better suited to raster image editing applications like Photoshop, there are still a few tools within Sketch for making simple adjustments.

A brief validation of the few image editing tools

Symbols are a feature that truly set Sketch apart from other design applications. Using symbols, we can reuse design elements rapidly and keep the content of these design elements completely synchronized throughout our document. Making global design changes could not be easier thanks to Symbols.

Make sure you understand one of Sketch's greatest tools

If you care how every individual pixel in your document looks then this mode is for you. What you see is the equivalent of exporting a PNG file.

When it's time to sit down with someone and show them your work, you may not need or even want them to see all the tools. This can be distracting. Using presentation mode, you can quickly display nothing but the content of your design while still being able to navigate around your document.

Designing an entire user interface or website requires us to put together a ton of objects and design elements. This makes for a crazy layers panel and a drop in productivity. This lecture shows my favorite shortcuts and tricks for selecting, managing, and organizing tons of layers in Sketch 3.

Are you working like a pro? Are you really?

When you click the Export button in the toolbar, Sketch will pop down a sheet listing all exportable layers in the canvas; artboards, slices and regular layers. You can export some or all of these from there. Let's start by focusing on Artboards.

Exporting a layer by itself means that no other elements on the canvas will be exported with it. If there's a layer on top or a background below it, neither of those will be included in the export. This is how we break our design apart into individual assets to export for developers to build our actual app.

Last and most definitely not least, will you be able to get your design turned into something functional?