How to handle Text in Sketch graphics software

Sketch uses the original font of macOS, so the text displayed is very nice and professional. The benefit of using the original font is when designing the website, the display text will be accurate. Sketch also supports Text Styles, so you will own many text layers with the same font style, size, color ...

Sketch Sketch for Mac

Insert text

You can add text by selecting Tools Text from the Insert menu in the toolbar, or press T . The cursor will turn into an input tool icon, then click anywhere on the canvas to insert the text layer.

Users can also drag and drop to create a fixed size text box. When the text is too large for the box, it automatically creates a new line.

Font is missing

When working with Sketch files downloaded from the Internet or received from others, they may contain fonts that your system does not yet have. Sketch handled this very well, the program will display a badge in the top right corner of the window to notify this is the missing font. Just click to see the list of missing fonts in the text and easily replace them with other fonts.

Data

You can enter the content of the text layer by using dataset from the Data menu . For example, after selecting a layer, choosing Names from the menu, the selected name will be applied to that text layer. You can refresh a random selection by pressing Shift-Command-D .

Text Menu

When you click on the Text menu in Sketch, you will see a lot of options available, including changing the font style, bold, italic, or underlined, choose a larger or smaller font. Besides, there are custom tools like Kern, Ligature and Baseline. At the same time, the Text menu also contains the Text on Path function , which allows turning the text layer into a vector path.

OpenType feature

If you use the OpenType feature , you will find it under the Text menu . Select text, then select Text > OpenType in the menu bar. Here, the user will select and enable the corresponding OpenType function.

Rich Text

Sketch software also supports displaying Rich Text pasted from other applications. For example, when you select a paragraph from a website in Safari and copy it, in Sketch, choose Edit > Paste > Paste as Rich Text or press the Option-Shift-Command-V key combination.

Resize text

When resizing a text box, the text will not change. To make text bigger or smaller, you must edit the text size value in the Inspector .

Text Inspector

Once you have selected a text layer, the Inspector will change to display the workable features for that text. You can select and apply features like changing font style, format and size. Even, Sketch app also supports alignment, processing characters, widths, lines and lines ...

In the Inspector, users can easily adjust the font color, choose the font style, text format, alignment, adjust the height of the text ... with the corresponding option in the menu.

Touch Bar

After selecting the text layer, some basic features will be supported on the Touch Bar of MacBook Pro. There will be options to access the control panel in the Inspector as well as the option to change the font color, align and arrange the layer order.

Text style

When designing an interface or website that contains many text layers, most of the layers will have the same properties. In Sketch, you can use Text Style to apply text styles to multiple layers at the same time, saving time and effort while achieving high accuracy.

Text Style is in each layer, but you can take advantage of Libraries to use styles across multiple layers.

Start by creating a custom style, then add the product as a new layer. Not only is the graphic design part, Text Style can also be included in a Library.

Text on the link

Sketch can use text layers for vector paths. To use this function, you need a text layer and a shape layer with a path to place text on it. This layer must be below the text layer in the layer list.

Once you've selected the text layer, press Text > Text on Path from the menu bar, then move the layer forward to the vector shape. It will "grab" it if you drag it in the right position.

Convert to status

To convert a text layer into a vector shape, choose Layer > Convert to Outlines from the menu or press Alt-Command-O . At this point, the user has the right to edit each path and point independently, similar to other shapes. If the text layer contains different colors, it will be recognized and transformed into individual paths.

The process of converting text to status is only recommended if you want to edit the special characters in the text layer.

Above are the basic instructions for handling text in the Sketch app. Hopefully these easy-to-understand instructions will help you master this familiar graphics software !