All we’ve been seeing on Twitter lately is people moving from Sketch to Figma for interface design. So we thought it was about time we tried it for ourselves and wanted to share our journey and thoughts so far with you.
What we’re liking so far
Speed
Compared to Sketch, Figma is super quick. When working on big projects Sketch can become quite slow and lag a lot, whereas Figma doesn’t seem to have these issues. Panning around and zooming in/out of large files is instant and effortless.
Converting Sketch Files
One of the biggest worries about changing tools is how it’s going to work with older projects. The transition from Photoshop to Sketch wasn’t that great. Even with tools like Avocode some things don’t always convert well. We’ve been super surprised by how easy and quick it is to drop a Sketch file into Figma and get working on it straight away. It’s still early days but we haven’t had any issues with this yet!
Components are powerful 💪🏼
How many times have you created a symbol in Sketch and had to detach it? We find that even with nested, resizable symbols there’s always still that time where you’ve got an instance that just doesn’t quite work. Components in Figma are a game changer! They are a lot more powerful than Sketch symbols, although they do take a bit of getting used to.
Being able to create instances of a component removes the need of detaching it to adjust a layer slightly. So far, we’re really impressed with how they’re working and are excited to see how they will work on more complex projects.
Commenting & Sharing
There’s no longer the issue of sharing a Sketch file in a Slack channel just for it to get lost in a few hours time or uploading your designs to InVision just for the commenting feature. Figma allows you to quickly generate a share link to a design file and start writing comments in an instant. This is going to help improve and speed up our workflow.
What we’re still getting used to
Version Control
We’re used to using Abstract to version control our Sketch files. It means that multiple designers can be working on separate branches and then merge in their work. Whilst Figma has version control, which is quicker than waiting to sync changes to Abstract, it doesn’t allow you to create branches for specific pieces of work. This means that changes could get lost in a huge list and they aren’t grouped together.
Access Rights
Our current process involves our development team using Abstract to access Sketch files. Through Abstract they can open files untracked, meaning that they can move things around or make changes by accident and it has no effect on the master design file 🙌🏼 With Figma developers would need to be invited as editors so that they can access the assets and styling they need. This means that they could accidentally make a change without realising and they’re affecting the master file.
Grouping Layers
This is a small one, but when grouping layers the sidebar menu doesn’t jump to that new group meaning that you have to go searching for it in order to rename it. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just something to get used to. But it could perhaps get messy if you don’t group and rename as you go.
So far we’re really enjoying experimenting with a new tool. We don’t know if it’s going to replace Sketch for us right now but we’ll keep you updated on our progress.
If you have any useful tips and tricks for Figma then make sure to let us know in the comments ✨