If you follow the Design blogs, you might have seen the social buzz around ‘Figma’, a new UI Design program. Product designers in SF have been raving about it and it’s not difficult to see the appeal. Figma takes the best of Sketch, adds a team-friendly workflow and puts the whole thing into your web browser.
- But does it work?
- How does it compare to Sketch?
- Should Bohemian Coding (the folks behind Sketch) be worried?
- Should your incorporate Figma into your workflow?
I put Figma through its paces and here’s what I came up with.
How does Figma differ from Sketch?
Figma lives in your Browser (it’s a Chrome App)
Figma is an in-browser software, making it cross-platform. That means that as long as you have Google Chrome, you can use it on Mac, Windows, and even Linux.
Multiplayer mode
Figma has a feature called Multiplayer mode, which allows multiple people to create on the same document at the same time in a live collaboration environment in a manner very similar to collaborating in Google Docs.
Getting collaborative with @figmadesign ! #pivotallife http://pic.twitter.com/Jz7X9y1tOa
— Nicola Rushton (@nicola_rushton) October 23, 2016
Typography Tools
Figma’s typography tools are outstanding. With type features like paragraph spacing, first line indentation, and vertical alignment, they definitely got it right with this one. Sketch is notorious for bugs when using the type tool, but you don’t need to worry about them with Figma.
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Re-imagined Vector Tools
Figma has an amazing vector tool that allows you to easily create icons with overlapping vector points, which makes icon design a breeze.
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Version Control
That’s right, Figma has a built-in version control system. Version history allows you to keep a history of all your design revisions. If you’ve used GIT for your code, you’ll be familiar with this concept.
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Import Your Sketch Files (and SVGs)
Figma makes it simple to instantly import your sketch files and start editing the document right away. Simply drag in your Sketch file into figma, and it will start the import process automatically.
Collaboration Made Simple
Figma is designed around the idea of easy and effective collaboration. If your design is in Figma, your clients and developers only need a web browser to view your project. A great feature that helps collaboration is the comments tool, which is similar to comments on Zeplin or InVision, developers and clients can comments on specific parts of the document, making project changes a breeze. Figma brings this features in-house and natively allows people you’ve shared the document with easily create comments without having to sign up to anything.
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What does Sketch have that Figma doesn’t?
Sketch has Market Share
Sketch has a much bigger market share for both individual designers and design teams, as well as the support of huge tech companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook. That makes it less likely to disappear in a year or two.
Sketch has a Bigger Pool of Free Tutorials and Resource
There are a lot of Sketch tutorials on Youtube as well as complete courses available here on SitePoint Premium created by your’s truly. Sketch also has a much larger community so you can reach out to other designers for help in Sketch. Figma is quite new for now, but I imagine a lot of designers creating ebooks and video tutorials in the coming months.
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Continue reading %Is Figma a Serious Option for Sketch Designers?%
by Adam Rasheed via SitePoint
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