The design assets for the U.S. Web Design Standards have always been a great tool for designers to quickly get a wireframe, vision, or high-fidelity compositions created. As the Standards continue to evolve and mature, these assets need to be re-evaluated and updated. The team recently did this and discovered that it takes way longer than originally thought to keep three formats of design assets maintained and up to date.
Based on this experience, the team took a look at how frequently these design assets are downloaded and which formats are more likely to be used by digital service teams across the federal government. Here are a few of the highlights:
- Adobe Illustrator Format - This has been downloaded over 2,000 times over the last year. Illustrator is also the most likely format to be used by digital service teams as the presence of Mac laptops in the federal government is estimated to only be 4%-5%.
- Sketch Format - The Sketch sticker sheets have been downloaded over a 1,000 times, and while Sketch is a Mac only application, this is a signifiant level of use to justify continued support.
- Omnigraffle - In the last year, the Omnigraffle format has only been dowloaded 335 times. Given the low number of downloads and the fact that Omnigraffle is another Mac only application, the team has decided to retire this sticker sheet.
Going forward, the team will continue to maintain and update the design assets for both Illustrator and Sketch. If your team needs a different format, please feel free to file an issue requesting that or better think about contributing a sticker sheet of your own.