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2.8 Styling layers

Time to make things pop. Learn how to use opacity, blending modes, fills, borders, shadows and much more to make your layers look fabulous.

Some UI in this video is outdated — no worries, this doesn’t affect how things work. We’ll share an updated version soon!

Key learnings

  • Fills can be colors, gradients, or images. Add and stack as many as you want!

  • Borders work a lot like fills. You can add as many of these as you like, each with different thicknesses and colors.

  • Shadows let you quickly add a bit of dimensionality to your layers.

  • Blurs can help you achieve a variety of interesting effects.

  • To scale a layer as well as its style, head to the Layer menu and choose Transform > Scale… or press K on the keyboard.

Lesson files

  • How do you duplicate a document?

    To duplicate a document to your Workspace, click on Three dots in the top bar and choose Duplicate to My Drafts. Have fun!

Mentor

Profile photo of Joseph Todaro

Joseph Todaro

Head of Video at Sketch

Joseph is our Head of Video at Sketch. He brings over a decade of product, design, and education experience. Before joining Sketch, he was a Senior Product Designer at InVision and was also responsible for the design education courses for InVision Studio and DSM.

While designing in-flight entertainment software at Fuse IFX, he migrated his team to Sketch – a tool that would go on to change the way he works. Eventually, he founded LearnSketch.com as a side project to share his knowledge and passion for the tool.

Joseph currently teaches UI and UX design at the Laguna College of Art and Design. He continues to share resources with the design community through projects like LearnSketch.com, Shapefest.com, LUTHOUSE.com and RandomUI.com.

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