

Sketch keeps winning. Anyone ready to challenge it?
Sketch designs account for 62% of all design files added to Avocode in 2017. For two years in a row, it has defended the title of #1 tool for screen design and has attracted other players such as Adobe XD, Figma, inVision Studio, or Phase. The question is who will change the game?

Illustrated by Lina Leusenko
Sketch files are 8x smaller than Photoshop designs
Avg. Sketch file size is 4.76MB while PSDs generally take up 36.76MB. To make the switch easier, we have built a free Design Converter. Are you too considering converting from Photoshop to Sketch, but don’t have the time to recreate your legacy designs?

Illustrated by Adam Mihalov
Designers and design systems are becoming inseparable friends
The use of Sketch Symbols has grown by 25% in 2017 and designers started using shared libraries. Over 4 Git-like design version control tools have launched in 2017 to give designers one source of truth. Where did this smart-and-synced design approach come from?

Illustrated by Stefano Marra
Layer count per design goes down as minimal design trend goes up
Designers have adopted the flat approach to screen design. Between 2016 and 2017, the avg. layer count per Photoshop design has dropped from 327 to 148 (46% drop), and per Sketch design from 177 layers to 101 (32% drop). And what happened to layer effects?

Illustrated by Diana Stoyanova
Text layers take more space with the rise of story-telling
Storytelling is apparently not just a buzzword but has significant implications in screen design. Only in 2017, the average amount of Photoshop text layers per design grew by 25% and by 10% when it comes to Sketch designs. Where did all the text layers come from?

Illustrated by Nugraha Jati Utama
Vector graphics are closing on exported bitmap images
SVG has become the second most exported image format after PNG. High-res digital products caused a shift in image export, and there is a growing demand for image assets optimization. Why should you keep your images lightweight and scalable?

Illustrated by Janis Andzans
This report is powered by top design talent
9 talents have helped us visualize data from over 2M Sketch & PSD designs from top creative teams that hand-off design files with Avocode. Since early 2018 Avocode supports also XD and Figma hand-off, so next year you can look forward to even broader data analysis.
Created with <3 in Avocode
Well done, you made it!
Thanks for going through our 2017 UI Design Report. We’d like to reward your effort with a promo code for 30 days free trial of Avocode, so you can save time on preparing assets and speed up your design hand-off.