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Sketch Community Roundup #2 - June and July 2018

From Mexico to Florence, and Santa Clara to Stuttgart, June and July were jam packed with awesome meetups taking place all over the world.

Sun, sea and Sketch

It’s been a long, hot Summer and a busy one for the Sketch Community. June and July were jam packed with awesome meetups taking place all over the world. From Mexico to Florence and Santa Clara to Stuttgart, Sketch Ambassadors have been working hard to organize events, host workshops and share their skills, knowledge and ideas with the rest of the community.

Our diverse and dedicated community is a massive part of what makes Sketch great and we’re very proud to say there are now more than 100 Meetup groups around the world. Here’s a quick roundup of the brilliant Sketch events that happened in June and July this year.

Sketch Meetups

Sketch & Design — South Florida

On the 5th of July, a group of over 50 designers had a great time learning Sketch basicsand some pro tips from Marcelo Paiva, our local Sketch Ambassador and product designer at Ultimate Software. This was the group’s first official meetup and they are taking a different approach to building an open-source design system, based on Bootstrap 4 and even plan to make it available to the rest of the world! Every meetup will have release notes posted on GitHub and the goal is to become a world class reference on how to design and maintain a community-driven project using Sketch. The group plans on having an event every first Thursday of each month. Sign up and join their great community now.

Sketch & Design — Mexico City, Mexico

Back in June, our awesome community in Mexico hosted their third event at Centraal co-working space. Our Sketch Ambassadors Jay Leon and Migue Martinez have worked hard to build a community of almost 300 creatives! The event was titled Design Systems Vol I, and Jay and Migue plan to continue this theme into their next two events as well — an Atomic Design session this August and a Design Systems handoff session in October. If you’re based in Mexico City or nearby, join the meetup so you can find out when their next event is taking place.

Sketch & Design — Barcelona, Spain

Our Barcelona Meetup group recently hosted another great event at Transforma. During their meetup, titled Sketch for Jedis + Diya + Timeline our Sketch Ambassador, Charles Albert, led the discussion on advanced topics, including how to design unbreakable Symbols, nested Symbols and overrides, SVG files, Sketch Libraries and Atomic Design. They also discussed better organization, collaboration and version control using Abstract. As well as the animation plugins Diya and Timeline. You can find out when the next Barcelona meetup is taking place by joining the group.

Sketch & Design — Florence

Our Florence Sketch Ambassador Ale Mastro organised two events this summer — one in June and one in July! On June 28 Ale held a workshop that covered everything from the early stages of UX to mastering UI design in Sketch, via re-designing a local, public transport app. On July 26 the group held a meetup where they discussed UI/UX and Sketch 51. The next event will focus on user flows — what they are and why they are important — and events run on every third Thursday of the month at NANABIANCA. Check out the Meetup page and join a group of 330 Sketch designers to find out more.

Sketch & Design — Stuttgart

In June, our Ambassador in Stuttgart, Katharina Clasen, held her inaugural event at Alegri, where a crowd of more than 30 people discussed design systems and how Sketch and its expansive plugin system can help you to build and manage them.

The Stuttgart Meetup group also hosted an event in July, at Stuttgart Media University, where everyone had to design a new cover image for the meetup group itself. Beginners were supported by Katharina and learned the basics of Sketch and some handy tips and tricks along the way. We think this is a really creative idea and with loads of positive feedback from Sketch beginners at the event it was obviously a success!

Katharina wants her events to focus on exchanging ideas and getting to know each other just as much as the technical aspects. If that sounds good to you, join the group and get involved.

Sketch & Design — Santa Clara, USA

The team behind our Santa Clara Meetup group organised a fantastic event in July at CA Technologies. They invited Kim Ho and Andrew Aquino, two designers from Facebook to present their talk ‘Borrow, Beg & Steal: Designing as Non-Designers’. They hosted more than 100 attendees and streamed the event online so more people could tune in. Kim and Andrew shared their own perspectives to encourage beginners and experienced designers to look at their work from a new angle. Check out the UX Design and Sketch South Bay Meetup group to find out about upcoming events!

Sketch & Design — Munich, Germany

Sketch Ambassador, Silvia Bormüller hosted her sixth event in Munich at Virtual Identity AG in July. Alex Afanasyeva & Martin Thiemann from smartpatient shared how they use Sketch to design the healthcare app MyTherapy that helps thousands of patients worldwide to take their medication. They discussed tips, techniques and insights for working in an agile-driven startup design team.

Aimilia Tzanavari from proto.io presented best practices for turning your designs into playable user flow diagrams, that tell a story, with Overflow. Silvia hosts regular events in Munich so if you’re nearby, check out the group and sign up for the next one.

More meetups around the world

Back in June, the team behind Sketch & Design Taipei, held their third ‘Sketch Tricks’ meetup at UXabc in the Zhongshan District. In Baltimore, USA, Sketch Ambassador, Olayinka Akinhanmi, hosted an event focussing on Sketch and prototyping. Olayinka has plenty more events in the pipeline so if you’re in Baltimore join the group to find out more. Over in Europe, our Ambassador Grzegorz, who runs the Sketch Polska group, held his second Meetup in Warsaw, Poland and June’s meetups also included an event in Shenzhen, China!

In July, the Sketch App Triangle group, in Raleigh, USA, ran an event looking at tools and techniques for research, and, in Tokyo, our team of Ambassadors hosted an event talking about new features in Sketch and how to make the most of third-party plugins. In Seoul, Sketch Ambassador Sangyong Lee, hosted a very successful event. He’s put together a brilliant roundup here.

Image from the Sketch Summer Seoul event

Sketch Workshops

Creating a Design System in Sketch — Berlin, Germany

Roy van Rooijen and Javier Cuello hosted two awesome workshops in June and July titled “Creating a Design System in Sketch”, designed for anyone who’s getting started, or already designing with Sketch, to bring their skills to the next level. The workshop was so successful that Roy and Javier are bringing it to The Hague on September 7th!

Sketch Academy Helsinki

At the second edition of Sketch academy in Helsinki, organizers Chitrak and Yves hosted a vibrant Sketch discussion at Sangre. Topics included Libraries, Prototyping and plugins, and attendees learned some new tips and tricks for working with Sketch. If you’re Helsinki based,the Meetup group has more info about these events.

Workshop: Fundamentals of Sketch (Sketch & Design — Munich)

Our Sketch Ambassador in Munich, Silvia Bormuller, hosted another great workshop this June on the fundamentals of Sketch. The workshop covered everything from Sketch basics to mastering advanced techniques like nested Symbols, shared Libraries and creating a basic design system, as well as tips for improving your daily design workflow.

A growing community

The list of Sketch meetups, workshops and communities is always growing. While we love watching existing groups get even bigger, we also get a real buzz seeing Ambassadors create new Sketch groups all over the world.

In the last few weeks, Sketch communities have started in Jacksonville, Florida, The Hague, Netherlands, Vienna, Austria, Waterford, Ireland, Coimbatore, India, Dubai, UAE, Nottingham, UK and Vancouver in Canada. A new Meetup group has just been set up in Scotland’s design capital, Glasgow, and they’ll be hosting their first event on the 27th September where attendees will discuss features and tips for improving your workflow in Sketch.

Find events near you or host your own

Check out the Sketch Community page where you can get info about upcoming events, see pictures from past ones and even get in touch to start a meetup in your area. If you’re passionate about design and want to build a community around it, then we’d love to hear from you.

Sketch meetups are happening all over the world in the next few months. Check out the list below and keep an eye on our Meetup page to find out when events are happening in your area.