How Sketch Shaped the Way I Design

When I first started my internship, I wasn’t sure what design tools I’d be working with. During my interview, the team mentioned Figma, so I expected to use that. But on my first day, they told me I’d be designing in Sketch. I had heard of it before, but I’d never actually used it. By the end of my first day, I already understood why so many designers loved it.

When I opened sketch, I was greeted with a long list of project folders, each labeled with a client name or project. Inside every folder are wireframes and live design files. Even before I started working, I could tell how structured and collaborative the workspace was. I had my own intern folder where my manager uploaded projects and notes. The first task I worked on was designing email templates for the company’s upcoming campaign.

Sketch turned out to be a great place to start as a beginner. It can definitely get complex, but once someone walked me through the main functions, I felt comfortable using it by the end of my first day. That’s when I started noticing the small details that make design feel intentional. Alignment and visual hierarchy were the two big things that were emphasized. I never realized how much thought goes into the flow of a page. How users scan, where their eyes land first, and how spacing keeps everything balanced.

At my internship, every spacing rule followed a multiple of four. Everything. Paragraphs, line heights, buttons, and even font sizes were built around that consistent 4-pixel system. For example, certain text sizes had 16px spacing, while others used 20px. That consistency created a visual that felt natural. User might not notice these small details it consciously, but they are definitely able to feel that the design is solid.

Once I got more familiar with the workflow, I explored the company’s style guide inside Sketch. It was like a visual design blueprint for every brand they worked with. The first section was the color palette. This included brand colors, secondary accents, greyscale tones, and site-specific shades. You could open the color picker and see all of them neatly organized and labeled. The next part covered typography, listing text sizes for desktop, tablet, and mobile. There were clear styles for headings. H1 through H6 used different fonts and colors. They included “special headlines” as well as reverse headlines (white text for dark backgrounds), and body copy in multiple formats. I learend that Rrsponsive design must typography consistent across every device and screen size.

Next came the UI components. Carousels, content buckets, statistic cards, and blog containers. All were standardized for reuse. There were even detailed spacing rules for how far each component should sit from another. Because the company specialized in e-commerce design, the style guide included layouts for product listings, SKU cards, and filters. I started to understand how these reusable pieces weren’t just shortcuts. They were systems that made large-scale projects efficient and cohesive.

Another section covered buttons, icons, and input forms. I could see exactly how colors changed when users interacted with them. Default. Hover. Selected. Every state was mapped out. It gave me a new appreciation for interactive design. I could see how subtle transitions make interfaces feel alive.

The next file was the Symbols page. It was the heart of every project. It contained basically everything needed to make a functional website. Artboards for buttons and form fields to dropdowns, filters, and full headers and footers. Each one could be reused anywhere. Having all those assets available made design feel structured and consistent.

Later in my internship, I started helping with wireframes for a client project. I worked on arranging page sections, organizing buttons and containers, and adding visual details. This project showed me how design thinking is begins before color and style. There is so much more criticial thinking and structure that goes into it.

After the internship ended, I realized how much my experience with Sketch had changed the way I designed. When I first started coding my own website, I jumped straight coding, but the layout was so off. I couldn’t figure out why spacing, alignment, and text flow. That’s when I remembered everything I learned about structure and consistency in Sketch. I paused the coding and went back to wireframing just like I’d been taught.

I created my own style guide for the project. I used my own headings, color palette, spacing rules, and button styles. I even built my own symbols for reusable elements. Once I started designing that way, everything clicked. The result was AZ Care Finder, a project I’m incredibly proud of. THis project is a direct product of what Sketch taught me: to plan before building, to think about user flow, and to care about consistency as much as creativity.

Sketch shaped how I see design today. It gave me a structured way to think visually and helped me understand how organization, systems, and small details come together to create a user experience that feels effortless. It’s the tool that taught me not just how to design, but how to think like a designer.