Musings on the major design trends that are shaping 2021 — Almost a year ago, I wrote an article on visual trends that UI designers should keep an eye on. Many trends that we discussed are finally starting to take shape. Some trends that were making headway in 2020 are now entering 2021 with full force. Experimentation with Type A few years back, the…

These plugins are my all-time favorites for boosting productivity in Sketch. — 1. Anima Toolkit Anima Toolkit is a must-have, especially when creating a design system. It allows one to stack layers and to define direction, alignment, and spacing. It also lets one add a default padding and pin a layer to its parent.

I was introduced to design in a serpentine fashion. I don’t have any formal training. Instead, I’ve learned everything through the Web, books, and by interacting with designers daily. Since my skills have been a continual work in progress, I’m always looking for ways to improve. In retrospect, I…

Have you ever noticed elements in an interface that feel raised off of the page or inset into the background? Let’s learn how to recreate this in Sketch. — Creating a user interface with depth can seem daunting at first, but it only requires you to understand one fundamental rule — emulating a light source. Emulating a light source When emulating a light source, it’s important to keep in mind that, most likely, the light will come from above.

7 effective tips to learn iOS typography in today’s mobile-first world. — iOS has slowly gone back to its roots. We now see bold typography everywhere. Titles are usually big and black. This only makes sense given the recent surge of larger devices such as the iPhone 11 and the iPad Pro.

Hand-picked designer tools and tips to make your experience more enriching. — Today, we’ll talk about some insanely useful tools that will completely revolutionize your workflow. There is a myriad of tools and techniques available online. Picking the right tools for the job has quickly transitioned from an exciting to a daunting task. I’ve bucketed these tools based on recurring themes and…

Exponentially boost your productivity in Sketch with these handy tricks and shortcuts. — Keyboard shortcuts can play a major role to boost your productivity in Sketch. Since you save a couple of seconds for each action, this starts to compound, saving precious time otherwise wasted on mundane tasks. Inspector When working with many pixel densities (1x, 2x, 500w, 200h, etc.), designers need to be…

Learn vector fundamentals to push the boundaries of what’s possible. — SVG or Scalable Vector Graphics is a format capable of many great things: from building blazing-fast sites, to enabling a better user experience. I like to think of SVG as a party where JavaScript is the event coordinator (“event,” get it?). You’ll soon get a “fill” of what I’m talking…

Learn how to apply color theory to your designs and effectively communicate the messaging of your products. — Color is an extremely strong tool that we can apply to solve many design challenges. Colors can draw attention to the right parts of the design when used logically, along with some intuition of course. Since color plays such a major role in shaping the aesthetics and usability of…