[preommr]

Sketch was the market leader in ui design tools. Before that, it was photoshop. Only a step away from using something like blender or after efffects tbh. It was also mac only. And desktop only. It turns out design is one of those things that people like to see, and is not insrcrutable like code. So stakeholders asked to see your ui and you would send them... this file. They would then have to download the application, and deal with all the joys that come with different platforms, asking how to install the thing, security complians, licenses, etc.

Figma came in with a web app that made designing and sharing as easy as sending a link. They also had... let's say creatively viral approaches to licensing where anyone that edited a file automatically got added as a seat. But unlike those desktop applications, you could also leave notes - that's editing! So it wasn't just for designers the way photoshop or sketch was. Now instead of your team of 2-3 designers, it's like half the company. It's beautiful in a way that the latter group is way more numerous and uses <1% of the software features, yet gets charged just as much. Beautiful. And lucrative.

Anyways, they're similar because Figma made a web-based ui tool, and the base model for the workflow was already established by Sketch, so their fundamentals are very very similar.

[eagleal]

> Sketch was the market leader in ui design tools. Before that, it was photoshop

No before the current iteration there was Fireworks, then the smaller web apps for wireframe prototyping (Balsamiq, etc).

Professional Designers used inDesign for bigger portals or complex and vast UIs. Or AI for the prototypes.

Photoshop lacked good vector tools and comprehensive styling of corpus.

[zdragnar]

You've got all the players named, but I do believe there was a time inbetween where Sketch was noteworthy, if not as a market leader, then as the most notable rising star.

[Lalabadie]

Yeah, for a good period (roughly 10 years ago) my serious choices were between Photoshop and Sketch, with less of a clear winner.

At my former app dev agency, the design team stayed on Sketch + inVision until Figma was already very well established.

[lastdong]

For those who are not as skilled in design, "AI" refers to Adobe Illustrator. :)

[wdb]

Never seen anyone design UIs in InDesign. Mostly they would go for Illustrator or Fireworks.

[darkwater]

> It's beautiful in a way that the latter group is way more numerous and uses <1% of the software features, yet gets charged just as much. Beautiful. And lucrative.

I know that I'm in a small/medium European company (~400 people total), generally very mindful of how we spend money but this is the exact billing model that would turn us away because too expensive for the features actually used.

[thecupisblue]

Wouldn't say it's just that.

- Design sharing was great and easy, yeah. - Autolayout easily won over folks who didn't wanna learn Sketch - Sketch was moving too slow at a critical time, leaving a lot of ground uncovered for Figma to jump in

But most important:

It was free.

[cluckindan]

Sketch also had a cloud service for sharing designs and prototypes, and commenting on them.

You could also get a constraints plugin for Sketch. That’s built-in on Figma.

[afandian]

That model reminds me of Gitlab. You need all these features so a seat has to be expensive. But you need a seat for even the smallest interaction with repos, whether you’re a dev or you just want to raise issues. Left a bad taste in the mouth.

[addandsubtract]

It took this comment for me to realize Figma is not Sketch. I thought Sketch rebranded or got bought up by Figma. Never realized they are two different apps.