Which tools should designers use in 2018
Things change, I once used Photoshop now I use Sketch for this task, will this change for 2018?
If so what would that be?
I won’t use much time introducing the software as I believe most of you know these from before, but I will list them, and base the content from discussions online from other designers.
Figma
Figma has grown very strong lately, and I am very close to trying it out soon next year, from what I’ve read around a lot of designers have been converting to Figma lately.
The only reason I am a little skeptical is that is web-based, but that means I can work from anywhere as well, there is a certain ease of mind of not being dependent on web-connectivity, and work offline, which I believe Figma does not support right now.
But there are a lot of positive feedback, most users love the way to work on Symbols if you know them from Sketch, you don’t need an override tab, you simply edit on the artboard.
It seems like there is a very interesting take on editing object, you can create small variations of an instance, but still keep some of the parent UI settings. Just look at the image below, makes more sense if seen.
This was said in Designer News.
Figma’s components and the handling of instances is the main reason that made me switch from Sketch.
So thumbs up for Figma next year.
Sketch
I’ve been deeply in love with Sketch, yes it lacks some functions but the plugin integrations make this for me the most versatile tool out there.
They have released some significant updates to the tool allowing it to make more “natively” but if you are missing anything, there probably a plugin for that. So, for now, I’ll keep faithful, but I keep my options open as well.
Take a read on my sketch plugins to read why this is my favorite tool for now.
Framer
So Framer is this powerful design/code tool, it’s not just trying to be a design tool, as it is trying to solve high-end prototyping in one go as well, but it is based on coding so you will need to understand some basic coding if you are to prototype.
The tool itself is divided in 2 as you can see on the top “design/code” and you can work on only one of them if you want to, but strength in this tool comes in being able to use both.
But it lacks integrations for content pass-over to developers, (i can be wrong) but it can very clearly showcase what the designer wants to achieve better than the other tools.