![]() A diagram illustrating the two opposing narratives emerging in the design tool space. There are two opposing narratives in the design tool space which have been evolving for many years. These narratives reflect two very different schools of thought when it comes to understanding the specific value our tools provide and which direction they should be headed. The first narrative is selling the notion that design artefacts can and should be the Single Source of Truth™ for the product. In this narrative, code is secondary-its job is to reproduce the design artefacts as accurately as possible. Platform constraints are mostly ignored in favour of speed and boundless creativity. Let’s call this the “ bridging the gap” narrative. The second narrative is centered around the idea that everyone collaborating on a product can and should be contributing to that same product. In this narrative, code is everything-it is the product. Platform constraints are respected and understood. We will call this the “ collaborative” narrative.ĭecisions are made in context and tools embrace their target mediums. So where did these narratives come from? How much sense does each one make? Let’s take a closer look.ĪDVERTISEMENT Narrative #1: Bridging the gapįor as long as digital designers have used design tools, we have always had a burning desire to have our ideas realised in production. To own the design process from idea to deployment has always been the holy grail. If you look at the evolutionary timeline of our design tools, you can see this desire manifesting itself.Īround 2005, when my digital design career began, most of us were using either Illustrator or Photoshop to create vector-based illustrations of whatever product we were designing. This remained the status quo for many years-with most design job postings demanding fluency in Adobe’s Creative Suite. Until one day, in 2010, Sketch arrived and shook the tree. Sketch was simpler, cheaper and much more focused. Of course, designers fought it at first, but ultimately found its clean UI and refined feature set refreshing. Figma expanded on the revolution that Sketch started. The feature set is very similar, but in terms of execution, I don’t think it’s close. Almost every feature has been surprisingly well implemented. Prototyping tools added an extra layer of realism-taking the static pictures our design tools exported and stitching them together, simulating touch events and screen transitions.īut there was still an observable gap to be bridged between design and development workflows. The controversial “Developer Handoff”, of course. InVision and Abstract launched “Inspect”. Avocode, Marvel and Zeplin released “Handoff”. Figma and Sketch attempted to export CSS. The idea being that when designers had something worth sharing, they could hand their work off to developers in a format that developers understood. The most recent notch on this timeline has been a new breed of tools promising to convert static pictures into production code. Supernova Studio, Rapid UI, PageDraw, Teleport, Sketch2React and Anima Launchpad are just a handful of the startups leading this charge.Īt first glance, you may not notice anything unusual about this timeline. Our tools have just been improving exponentially, as one might expect. They’re becoming more performant, more robust, and more feature-rich. If you limit your outlook to the past 10 years, this all seems like a natural progression.īut go back just a little further and you will notice something very peculiar. Let’s journey back, for a moment, to a time when print was the primary form of marketing communication. Endless debates about tools or frameworks were kept to a minimum. ![]() Occasionally, some upstart would mention QuarkXPress but the rebellion never lasted long. Most design professionals used Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. ![]() Most notably though, designers were designing the end product, not imitations of it-the end product being stationery, posters, books, brand identities, brochures and other print material. Designers had direct influence over the product they were designing. This was possible because print designers had (and still have) a good command of the medium they were designing for. There was a close correlation between input and output constraints.įor example, print designers knew there would be slight differences in how colours might be reproduced on a thick card stock as opposed to a lighter 120gsm letterhead. ![]()
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