Patrick Keenan spends his days at Google working on ways to amplify humanity’s productivity, through things like notes. He spends his weekends locking willing participants in rooms and designing clever ways to escape. In the time that’s left over he’s delves into front-end frameworks, prototyping tools, and enjoys seeing science fiction become reality.
In the past year, adoption of Sketch at Google, where I work at, has taken off and is now a widely preferred tool. The more tools in our belts, the better, so here’s my take on why Sketch and the new material design system are a great match.
Tools are an extension of our hands, and as such, they should be versatile, quick and intuitive. A lot has changed between the print era of offset presses and the digital era of cross-platform screens. Developers have attempted to adapt our tools, but Sketch is perhaps the most successful app in this regard — its creators have removed the bloat, started afresh and presented a smaller, fit-for-purpose feature set. What may seem on the surface to be a simple drawing tool in fact nails the core workflows of digital design.
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