What next for Sketch?

Sketch successfully took down Photoshop for UI Designers, but has it done enough since then?

Raise your hand if you remember when Photoshop was the de facto standard for creating UI. Before Adobe XD, Figma, or Sketch — UI Designers had to endure creating concepts with a piece of software that wasn’t really up to the task. A piece of software thats roots go all the way back to 1990, with the release of v1 on the Apple Macintosh. The clue was right there in the name, the whole time — Photoshop. It was for photographers, graphic artists and retouchers. Cropping, adjusting levels, sharpening soft images — that sort of thing.

It was very good at it too, but it had no real business being used as means to create designs for apps or websites.

Just thinking about my early career and my dependence on it fills me with dread. Concepts for multi-page websites were almost always problematic. File sizes were often bloated, sharing PSDs with other designers was awkward, performance issues were a regular occurrence, and having 100s of layers was just a downright convoluted experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Don’t even get me started on creating concepts for multiple devices either. It was never supposed to be utilised as a UI tool full-stop, but we persisted because, well, what was the alternative? If there…