
Starters Guide to iOS Design - taybenlor
http://taybenlor.com/2013/05/21/designing-for-ios.html
======
bennyg
The biggest thing of all, I believe, is actually testing your design on a
device. Text you think looks good when you're in Photoshop has a tendency to
be too small or too large, or too gray or not enough saturation on a device.
So, if you're designing - and can't get a build to your phone to actually play
with - email yourself an exported PNG of correct resolution and open it up on
your phone. You should be able to see and "play" with it as best as you can
for absolutely no money.

It seems like this was written for the designer, not developer, so I would
also like to add one more thing. If you're a designer and tasked on working
with a developer to make an app happen (or vice versa really), then work side
by side as much as you can with that person and have regular discussions.
You'll both drive each other toward a better project than just piecewise doing
things in a more waterfall-esque approach.

~~~
gfodor
A nice tool for doing this, fyi, is xScope which lets you mirror your
clipboard on your phone over bluetooth.

~~~
muzzamike
..or LiveView or Skala. Either of which are great for live streaming content
from you computer's screen to your iphone/ipad.

~~~
gte910h
Or Briefs or Preview

------
jcampbell1
This is a very good guide. The only part I found odd was the advice to design
at 1x rather than 2x. My strategy, is design in 2x, but everything must have
even dimensions. For the iPhone I just downsample the assets and don't even
bother to check if they look good. For iPad, I will touchup 1x assets if
needed.

~~~
ianstallings
I've found that the best reason to design at 1x is because the coordinates
match the coordinates for the developer and also because sometimes the 2x size
won't split nice and evenly if you don't keep it in mind. For instance 15px
for a gutter.

~~~
jcampbell1
That is what I actually meant by even dimensions. I meant divisible by 2, not
balanced.

It just seems impossible to take something with texture at 1x, and then scale
it up. I often pick subtle textures for 2x, and then just drop or re-zoom the
texture in the 1x version. How many people really have non-retina devices
these days?

~~~
Steko
iPad mini is non-retina. Maybe 2/3 of new ipads so maybe 15 million last
quarter compared to around 45 million retina devices.

------
gfodor
If you use Sketch to draw your interface, you get @2x exporting and slicing is
built in. It hurts my head to think about what I would have to do if I was
using Photoshop.

~~~
jcampbell1
If you use PaintCode, you get CoreGraphics c code output. If you deliver your
designs to a developer in CG code, their jaw will drop.

~~~
gfodor
what's the point, exactly, to doing this (serious question)

~~~
taybenlor
Things like:

    
    
      * Scalability - you can resize a button and get the correct look
      * Simplicity - you don't need to create 1x and 2x resources
    

Downsides are that it can be slow and it muddies up your code base.

------
mariusandreiana
Question for designers: how do you share your designs with clients/team, in
order to explore both design & workflows? (this would be at Photoshop stage,
no coding started yet. An example: the series of Instanote mockups from the
article)

Do you do this as a series of images in any order, or do you use some tool
such as Invision, to build interactive prototypes?

------
PixelCut
Our app PaintCode can really help with pixel-perfect, Retina-ready graphics.
It is a vector drawing app that instantly generates Objective-C code.

<http://www.paintcodeapp.com>

------
baddox
> A point can be represented by many pixels (normally one or four).

This is a distance vs. area mistake, right? I thought that a point is used as
a one-dimensional (distance) unit, and is generally one or two physical
pixels.

~~~
taybenlor
I've personally seen points used as an area measure, but I think you're more
correct. I'll update the article later tonight.

------
deusebio
I use fieldtestapp.com to test my prototypes. Super easy to work with.

~~~
pablasso
Thanks, but what does this have to do with the post?

