Creating barcodes for Sketch

Sketch is a user-friendly app which you can create all kinds of designs with, including those for UI, mobile apps, web sites and even icons. Remember, though, that Sketch may be very efficient for output to computer, tablet and smartphone displays but it is not for printed output.

Even as Sketch is vector-based — which means that every shape you draw can be resized to any dimension without losing sharpness — it isn’t meant to create and output correctly formatted barcodes that comply with industry standards and can be read by barcode scanners. As with any other non-dedicated app, it’s not even time-efficient to create your barcodes in Sketch.

Barcode Producer, on the other hand, is an industry-standard barcode generator and offers design capabilities that fit the standard requirements so that barcodes can be read with a barcode scanner such as the IntelliScanner Pro as well as with area imagers and portable data collectors.

On top of that, Barcode Producer’s workflow is far more efficient, comes with time-saving features and is just as user-friendly as Sketch. Hence, the best way to add a barcode to your design is by creating one in Barcode Producer and exporting it to one of Sketch’s supported formats.

Step 1

In Sketch, select your artboard template or create a custom artboard.Create your design and go to the page where you want to place your barcode.

Step 2

Create your barcode in Barcode Producer and select either the EPS or PDF vector file format from the Save button. As Sketch is vector-based but only features pixel-based measurements and sizes, it is preferable to import your barcode art in a vector format.

Step 3

Drag your EPS or PDF barcode to the page or select Insert > Image… from the Sketch menu. NOTE: You can place a TIFF in your Sketch document, but it will appear huge. Scaling inside Sketch is not a good idea as it potentially ruins the bar to space ratio of the barcode.

Step 4

To export your art including the barcode, select File > Export or click the Export button in Sketch’s toolbar.