A year ago, a lot of my Twitter friends were raving about Sketch and I thought it was really interesting as well.

That article that I linked to was what really intrigued me about Sketch. Meng To, a designer that I’ve been following for quite some time, really was a big promoter of it. It seemed like such a great tool that was perfect for UI/UX designers. Although I really wanted to try Sketch out, I didn’t want to get out of my comfort zone. And everyone at my job used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, so I told myself that I would try it out later.

Time for something new

I recently took on a new role as a product designer for SmartRecruiters and on my first day at work (March 2nd), I had a conversation with my fellow designer, Jason Hegyessy about the tools and processes of the design team.

Me: So what does the team use? Photoshop? Sketch? Jason: I’ve been using Sketch and I really like it. You’re free to use whatever you would like. Your machine has Adobe Creative Cloud, so you can still use Photoshop if that’s what you want. Me: I think I’m gonna give Sketch a try. I’ve wanted to learn it and now is the perfect time to finally give it a try.

Veering away from what you’re already comfortable with is always nerve-wracking, especially when you’re doing it at your new job. But I’ve always thought that the best way to learn is by diving right in, so I decided that I would immerse myself in it for 30 days. If it sped up and improved my current workflow, then I would make the switch permanent.

Teaching an old dog new tricks

I received my first project at work, and I was off to the races. After reading through the spec and a doing a few sketches, it was time to finally use Sketch. I opened it up and started designing. Everything was pretty straightforward, and although there were a few nuances, I was quickly getting the hang of it.

One thing that did slow me down quite a bit was not knowing the shortcuts. As a Photoshop user for 10+ years, I could work incredibly fast because I did everything with the keyboard. Sketch keyboard shortcuts were quite different, and that was extremely frustrating to me. In order to learn the keyboard shortcuts, I took some advice from Google designer Jean-Marc Denis and decided to hide my toolbar.

Look Ma, no toolbars!

It was a bit painful at first, but I finally learned most of the shortcuts and have since went back to using the toolbar.