![]() ![]() Developing the first version of Sketch for OS X wouldn’t give Omvlee the biggest audience, but it would help him target the right audience-not to mention the fact that developing Sketch for two operating systems would have been too much work.The precise timeline of events leading up to Sketch’s initial launch is hazy. Although Omvlee could have reached a considerably wider audience by designing Sketch for Windows (or OS X and Windows), focusing on the Mac market was highly strategic graphic designers tend to favor Macs due to long-held perceptions in the design community that Adobe products-and, by extension, other graphics-focused software tools-run better on Macs. Omvlee decided to design his application to run natively on OS X. ![]() Experienced artists and designers might be able to navigate Illustrator’s many menus with little trouble, but for casual users, the barriers to entry were comparably high. Illustrator had undergone immense changes, particularly to its user interface (UI) with the release of Creative Suite 4, one of the most significant updates to Adobe’s Creative Suite at that time. Nothing else came close to approaching Adobe’s dominance.Īlthough Illustrator was an incredibly powerful software program, it was intimidating to newcomers. Its flagship software product, Photoshop, was the undisputed king of image editing tools, and its sister product, Illustrator, was king of the vector editors. For graphic designers, Adobe reigned supreme in 2008. The iPhone was less than a year old, and the sprawling app development ecosystem that we know today had yet to exist. Pieter Omvlee was enrolled in a computer science class in 2008 when he began creating a lightweight, nimble vector drawing application for Apple’s OS X.Īt that time, the indie software development scene was a lot smaller than it is today. Omvlee didn’t set out to create a “Photoshop” killer app but ended up solving many of the problems faced by web and app designers-a process that began by seeking to eliminate the bloat that plagues many industry-standard software tools even today. How Sketch outgrew its roots as an OS X tool and sought a broader audience by leaving Apple’s App Store.What made Sketch an ideal tool for specialized designers.Why Sketch’s minimal UI has proven incredibly popular in the design community, even as competing products (including Photoshop) have gone in the opposite direction.Here are some of the most interesting aspects of Sketch we’ll be looking at: ![]() Designed to be as lightweight and responsive as possible, Sketch lacks many of the bells and whistles favored by design industry heavyweight Adobe and its industry-leading product, Illustrator, but has positioned itself as the go-to tool for user interface (UI) designers and other creative professionals working in demanding, highly specialized industries. Since launching in a private beta in 2008, Sketch has amassed a relatively small but fanatically loyal following. That app was Sketch, and Omvlee’s business instincts were right on the money. In the late 2000s, the vector drawing app market was a lot smaller than it is today, and it soon became apparent to Omvlee that his app had real potential. ![]() When Pieter Omvlee was tasked with designing a simple drawing application as part of his computer science class at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, he set about creating a lightweight app that would fulfill his homework assignment. ![]()
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