Learn Modern App Design with Figma!
This book guides you through designing modern mobile apps using fundamental design principles.
This book is for intermediate iOS and Android developers who already know the basics of mobile app development but want to also learn how to design apps with attractive and effective UI and UX.
Topics Covered in App Design Apprentice
- Figma: Learn the basics of this modern design tool.
- App Teardowns: Analyze and pick out the best parts of other well-designed apps.
- Wireframes: Explore what makes good app user flows.
- Reusable Components: Learn to create and use reusable components such as buttons and toolbars.
- Typography: Basics for communicating hierarchy, order and emphasis.
- Color: Leverage visual styles and palettes.
- Transitions and Animations: Create different transitions between screens to communicate relationships.
- Design Systems: Implement best practices for creating good app experiences in each ecosystem.
This book will leave you with the knowledge needed to design modern mobile apps that are functional and attractive.
Before You Begin
This section tells you a few things you need to know before you get started, such as what you’ll need for hardware and software, where to find the project files for this book, and more.
What You Need
FreeDedications
FreeAbout the Team
FreeAcknowledgements
FreeSection I: App Design Apprentice
Start your journey through designing modern mobile-app UI and UX using fundamental design principles!
Get an overview of the book including a brief look at what’s coming up in each chapter. Set up your Figma design workspace and learn how to access the project files. Jump in and get started right away with a quick project.
1Get an introduction to key tools in Figma like shapes, frames, sizing, alignment, colors and layers and apply your learnings to design a screen from scratch.
2Trace over provided screenshots for two popular apps to study their layout and identify patterns and structures used to build them.
3Learn about the importance of wireframing and how to incorporate it into your design process. Create wireframes of a few screens and their components and build a scaffold of the app flow by defining the navigation between screens.
4Learn to build reusable components for common UI elements like buttons, toolbars and content cards. Incorporate sample text and image data for more realism. Leverage resuable components for faster iterations and to build more flexible designs.
5Learn typography basics for communicating hierarchy, order and emphasis. Use Figma's text style feature to build a typographic scale from scratch.
6Learn the basics of color theory and the importance of colors in building accessible and inclusive products. Use Figma's color style feature to build reusable color styles from scratch.
7Explore the prototyping tools to create a full app walkthrough. Create different transitions between screens to communicate the relationship among elements.
8Explore the collaboration tools to test designs and solicit feedback about the app's goals and overall user experience.
9Learn about design systems and how they help introduce structure, coherence and flexibility into your projects.
10A recap of what you learned the previous chapters and suggestions about where to go from here to improve your design skills.
11Meet the team
Who is this book for
This book is for intermediate iOS and Android developers who already know the basics of mobile app development but want to also learn how to design apps with attractive and effective UI and UX.
Concepts covered in this book
Reviews
Version history
Second Edition · Figma
First Edition · Figma
First Edition - Early Access 1 · Figma
First Edition Pre-Order · Figma
App Design Apprentice
The best book to guide you through designing modern mobile-app UI and UX using fundamental design principles.