Material Theme Editor
It’s no secret that designers like to experiment with design choices. Sometimes you just don’t know how something is going to look until you try it, and then try it again (and ok, maybe one more time) in a different shade of blue or with even more white space. But making separate style adjustments to individual design elements can be tedious and inefficient. With the new Material Theme Editor, you can change one theme value, and it cascades throughout your design. It’s essentially a control panel that lets you apply global style changes to component color, typography, and shape. The editor also guides you through the process of making your own Material theme, with even more customizable systems in the works for release later this year. For now, Material Theme Editor integrates only with Sketch, and you can access it by downloading the Material Plugin. Watch how to get started making your own Material theme.
Gallery
For anyone who’s ever named a file “FINAL_final_v2.png,” you know how annoyingly hard it is to track design changes and feedback. No more! Now anyone can use Material Gallery to review and comment on design iterations. This is the same tool that Google designers have used to collaborate for years, and now it’s open to all. Gallery isn’t only an intuitive platform for sharing designs—when it’s time to code, designs made with the Material Theme Editor (and uploaded to Gallery) display auto-generated redlines, and info on exactly which Material Component is in use, and how it’s been customized. So developers have an immediate resource for implementing pixel-perfect designs. Watch an intro to Gallery and all its new features.
Material Icons
Have you ever tried to customize hundreds of icons? Unique system icons can add polish and expression to a digital product, but painstakingly crafting each individual symbol is also a lot of work. From day one, Material's ready-to-download icons have been extremely popular with product teams looking for an elegant off-the-shelf solution. Now, even these tiny images pack a more expressive punch. Material Icons are available in five different themes, so you can choose from baseline, rounded, sharp, outlined, and two-tone styles.