ADOBE XD RESPONSIVE RESIZE REPEAT GRID UPDATE

As our industry’s tools evolve, I hope they add options for stack-based layout, maybe in conjunction with constraints so that everyone can explore this space. I’m convinced that layout is a growing pillar of design, alongside giants like typography, color, and motion. It would be even better with support for dynamic symbols (similar to symbol overrides in Sketch) as entire components could be turned into symbols. You can change 20 margins in a few clicks. Using symbols within stack-based layout is a huge time saver. However, certain scenarios (like pinning an object 12px from the artboard’s right edge) are not intuitive (constraints make more sense in that case). Stack-based layout is also extremely powerful. It turns out that stack-based layout is extremely easy to learn, easier than the constraints Figma uses or the box model used by Antetype. I’ve been able to try Bloks out with several designers for a few months. Strings expand to fit their new containers. The same design can quickly be fit to different sized artboards. These features come together to enable powerfully complex layouts, all within Illustrator. Experiment with values of 1 and 2 to get a feel for how it works. The flexibility property applies to children of a BlokGroup. You can also give objects flexibility, which allows them to fluidly resize. Tools like Adobe XD’s Repeat Grid require each item to be the same height. You can easily stack variable-height items. The result is that the height of a single symbol controls the list’s density.Īccess to such a primitive layout mechanism has the benefit of allowing designs that other tools do not.

ADOBE XD RESPONSIVE RESIZE REPEAT GRID UPDATE

An update to the root symbol cascades to every BlokGroup its used in. Resize a symbol once and all the BlokGroups it’s used in move to make room for it.Ġ% opacity symbols form the spacing between each list item. Perhaps the most powerful feature is the ability to place symbols in BlokGroups. When art is placed in a BlokGroup with an orientation (vertical or horizontal), the BlokGroup keeps them stacked in that direction, edge to edge, no matter what you do.īasic, but combined with a few extra features you can create just about any layout. I ended up creating an Illustrator extension called Bloks which takes a new approach to layout.īloks uses stack-based layout. Not wanting to be left out, I started researching potential solutions. My teammates at Microsoft largely prefer to work in Adobe Illustrator because it’s cross-platform. Unfortunately, these tools are mostly unavailable on Windows. Today, tools like Antetype, Figma, Adobe XD, and Affinity Designer are leading the way with innovative layout features that can save us from tedious tasks like updating the same margin 20 times or the pain of scaling one design to different device sizes. As designers, we need tools that expose us to layout, that let us test and explore layout variations, and most importantly make the best decisions.

Adobe xd responsive resize repeat grid