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AMA: Framer Team On Framer 2.0, The Complete Product Design Tool

over 6 years ago from Asha Indralingam, Content Strategist @ Framer

  • Weston VierreggerWeston Vierregger, over 6 years ago

    Congrats on the launch! Looks like a truly amazing product, and I'm already big on Framer Studio so I can't wait to check this out.

    My question is: With Sketch already so deeply ingrained with studios already, and with Sketch being a first-class citizen in Framer, do you plan on making designs made in Framer directly transferrable out to Sketch? With the new file format in Sketch, it seems to be open to this sort of thing - but obviously the code can't follow the design... The reason I ask is my team is essentially 100% Sketch, with homegrown toolkits and plugins already. But I'd love to be able to work in Framer Design as well, and export a Sketch file.

    17 points
    • Rhys MerrittRhys Merritt, over 6 years ago

      100% agree with this.

      My concern is that I will be creating great prototypes in Framer, only to have to replicate them in Sketch so that I can keep my team updated with Zeplin / Abstract

      4 points
      • Jonathan SimcoeJonathan Simcoe, over 6 years ago

        I hope they evolve Framer to supplant Sketch as the primary design tool. Imagine all your designs versioned in diff-able code snippets.

        2 points
    • Aiden Bordner, over 6 years ago

      Sketch is the standard at the moment, but it's only been so for a short number of years. Big design teams were still switching away from Photoshop less than 3 years ago.

      It was the first of its kind that solved the right needs for designers—vector-based, simple artboards with web-native layouts, awesome export support for multi-size output, etc. But as the industry has evolved in more tools, Sketch has increasingly become bloated, bug-ridden, and unreliable. I'm more than happy to see someone step in with an attempt to replace it. In this industry, I feel becoming stuck with a particular workflow is foolish—there's always going to be better tools next year.

      3 points
      • Weston VierreggerWeston Vierregger, over 6 years ago

        Correct. But the reason I ask the question (and sure, I probably already know the answer unfortunately) is that even if I want to use this tool right now, I can't. I can't use it because everyone else I work with uses Sketch.

        Edit: To be super clear, if Framer Design had the ability to push Sketch files out the same way it pulls them in then you'd probably see adoption skyrocket immediately.

        1 point
    • Koen Bok, over 6 years ago

      With Sketch’s cool new file format, we definitely could. But generally, it’s pretty hard to get two design apps to render in exactly the same way. Especially when eagle-eyed designers notice every pixel :-) On top of that, Framer is browser-based and has different capabilities than Sketch (for example, we don’t have grouping). Framer Design was built as an alternative to Sketch, as a way to express graphics especially for interaction work, with a focus on hard problems like layout and hierarchy.

      So I don’t think we’ll be focusing on integrating Sketch and Framer Design (or Figma or Photoshop), but rather on making Framer Design better and better.

      18 points
      • Weston VierreggerWeston Vierregger, over 6 years ago

        That's fair. Thanks Koen.

        0 points
      • Brian HintonBrian Hinton, over 6 years ago

        The main concern I have is importing Sketch assets into Framer. Until something like redlining (colors, font, etc. re. Zeplin) exists in Framer Cloud I'm going to have to continue to use Sketch.

        1 point
      • Timur NurutdinovTimur Nurutdinov, over 6 years ago

        Hi Koen,

        I was investigating the opportunities of Sketch importing with Framer Inventory and would like to continue exploring. If there is a kind of API to create objects in Framer Design, I will definitely take a look.

        Even the ability to sync back from code would be really handy!

        1 point