In previous articles, we shared some of the most popular prototyping tools, and today we’re going to talk about interface design tools. The importance of tools is obvious to designers. Any idea needs to be implemented with tools. In order to be a good UI designer, you need to acquire more skills to be competitive. As well as a few tools for those who want to change careers to UI designers, let’s take a look at the interface design tools that UI designers need to master.

1. Sketch- Powerful vector drawing tool



Supported platforms: Mac only

Sketch is a powerful interface design tool, designed for UI designers to make your interface design easier and more efficient. If you’re a UX or UI designer, you know Sketch is a powerful UI design software. If you want to change careers as a UI designer, you can’t miss this great design tool.

In Sketch, users can easily set the layer panel, batch name layers, intelligent annotation page, fill avatar and text, etc., and realize multi-layer filling, gradient, noise and other operations. Sketch offers “Export all” and because it’s vector-based, you can export PDF, JPG and PNG (2x optional). It has to be said that Sketch provides designers with a wealth of plugins that increasingly cater to the needs of different people. All the tools you need are at your fingertips.

Features:

  • Great user experience
  • Very simple to use
  • Provides a number of useful plug-ins

Collection of Sketch plugins can be poke: Sketch. Im

2. Photoshop- Powerful image processing software



Supported platform: Windows&Mac

Photoshop is one of the most popular image editors and an essential interface design tool for UI designers to get started. I believe you are not a design industry partner, but also know a little. PS as a UI interface design artifact, has a powerful picture editing and processing functions, what you want graphics can be achieved by PS, can be used for post-production photography, can add a variety of filters to the image, adjust brightness, contrast, etc., to generate high resolution graphics. The Layers palette is a very simple and efficient way to fix images. Photoshop also provides the option to save in different file formats, and adjust the image size and resolution without losing the image quality.

PS: If you want to make ICONS, you need to use vector drawing software AI to make them, so that magnification will not be distorted.

Features:

  • Photo processing technology (clipping background, cropping, adjusting light, adjusting color, filtering, eliminating red eyes, etc.)
  • Powerful layer function saves originals when working with copies
  • Batch processing photos
  • Compatible with other Abode Suite programs such as After Effect, InDesign, Illustrator
  • Photoshop can save images in a variety of formats

Mockplus- Powerful prototyping interface design tool



Supported platform: Windows&Mac

Mockplus is an efficient and simple app interface design tool. It is a popular domestic interface prototype design tool among product managers. Software provides more than 3000 packaged ICONS and more than 200 components, drag and drop can be UI interface design, learning cost is low, without code participation, so it is a very good choice for UI designers. If a UI designer doesn’t have basic prototyping skills, how can he communicate effectively with developers?

It’s worth noting that Mockplus recently released a copycat design system (https://ds.mockplus.cn/) that provides UI designers with standard colors, standard fonts, ICONS, layouts, and more, covering almost everything a design specification document should have. It also supports the Sketch plugin, which means that designers can reuse their own design specifications in Sketch with one click, saving a lot of time.

Features:

  • Simple, zero threshold
  • Rich ICONS and components
  • Drag and drop for interactive effects
  • Small program preview, anytime, anywhere with the customer demo

4. Zeplin- Powerful collaboration tools



Supported platforms: Mac only

A collaborative interface design tool for UI designers and development engineers. As a UI designer, you need to communicate your design to the development team, and Zeplin designed to do just that. Zeplin is easy to use. Designers upload the UI design directly from Sketch. The app automatically generates annotations, and you can see the size, color, margins and even code information of each element on the right side of the panel.

In addition, the UI designer can add comments, marks, and remarks to the developer directly on the UI interface. It fills the communication barrier between development and design and saves a lot of valuable time for designers and developers.

Features:

  • Good user experience
  • Easily view interface spacing, size, color, etc
  • Create styles to help the design team stay consistent.
  • Quickly synchronize projects in Sketch with plug-ins
  • Support PS, Sketch, Adobe and other tools

5. AE- Powerful motion visual processing software

Supported platform: Windows&Mac



Adobe After Effects is a graphical and video processing interface design tool launched by Adobe. Nowadays, dynamic effect design has been more and more widely used in UI interface design, and many domestic companies began to pay attention to dynamic effect design, so as UI designers, should also master some dynamic effect design. In fact, the application of dynamic effect in UI design is more powerful than we imagined. Good dynamic effect design can provide users with a good visual experience, so as to strengthen the interactive experience between users.

After Effects is a flexible layer-based 2D and 3D post compositing software. It contains hundreds of special effects and preset animation effects. It works seamlessly with Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator and other software. Create unparalleled visual effects. It also borrows from the success of many excellent software to push the technology of image and video special effects to a new level.

Features:

  • Stunning visual effects
  • Seamless compatibility with Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator

Bonus points tool -Dreamweaver

Supported platform: Windows&Mac



Dreamweaver is a web code editor that helps designers and programmers quickly create and build websites. The reason why IT is listed separately is because I think UI designers not only need to master some interface design tools, but also need to learn and understand some front-end layout and design, so that they can better cooperate with front-end engineers to do a good job in product development. UI designers who have some basic knowledge of code can be a plus in an interview.

To sum up, if you want to choose:

  • Best photo editing and digital painting tool: Photoshop
  • Best icon design and GRAPHICAL interface design tool: AI
  • Best vector drawing interface design tool: Sketch
  • The most useful UI interface design specification management platform: Copy guest design system
  • Simplest and most efficient interface prototyping tool: Mockplus

To be an excellent UI designer, mastering interface design tools is just a part of it. UI interface design requires designers to master color collocation, design specifications, interface layout, communication skills, graphic annotation, dimension annotation, user experience and other related knowledge. Therefore, what is needed is continuous learning, continuous persistence, and continuous enrichment of their comprehensive ability.