Get started with artboards in Adobe XD

Meet Jeanee, a graphic designer who has been chosen to lead a UX design project. She is pitching Adobe XD to her team, the members of which have varying levels of expertise with UX design and tools.

Jeanee is training herself on basic design terminologies and working with artboards to create her first prototype in XD. Read on to learn how we can help her get started.

Look at the basics of XD:

• Overview of Adobe XD
• Get to know the XD workspace
• Color Management

Set up artboards in 4 easy steps

What is an artboard? Artboards represent the screens in your application or pages in your website. It streamlines the design processes and creates interactive designs for multiple screen sizes in a single document. Use artboards to create your XD project.

Read on to learn how you can set up your artboards.

Create a new artboard

Adobe XD provides you with artboards for popular screen sizes such as those for different versions of iPhones, iPads, and Web. You can create a custom artboard if the choices do not meet your requirements.

Use an existing artboard from Photoshop and Illustrator

You can import existing artboards from Photoshop or Illustrator into XD without having to recreate them. 

With XD 57 and later versions, you get consistent colors when you use an existing asset with an sRGB color profile from Photoshop and Illustrator into an XD document with an sRGB color profile. If the XD document has an Unmanaged color profile, you get a message that prompts you to switch the color profile to sRGB.

Manage artboards

Changed your mind about the artboard size? Resize them. You can also rename them based on your design needs. Want to create more artboards and manage their placement? Duplicate and rearrange them.

Apply layout or square grids

Want to define the underlying structure of your design content added within artboards? Apply Layout grids. Want to get an idea on how to measure quickly and align your design content while laying out objects or text on your artboards? Use Square grids.

Design artboards

Now that you have created your first artboard, learn how to add visual and text elements, change the background, and create scroll effects.

Add visual and text elements

Now that your basic artboard is in place, you can create or modify the background color, add graphics, and create or format text styles into reusable assets. Want to create an editable grid of repeated elements? Use Repeat Grids.

Create scrollable artboards

Want to add vertical and horizontal scroll effects in your design? Use scroll groups to prototype a window of content.

Do you want to achieve a realistic simulation of scrolling on desktop and mobile? Set the fixed position of an element on the artboard to allow other elements to scroll beneath. 

The final design

Now that you know enough about artboards, you can play around with what you’ve learned so far and create more amazing artboards for your design projects.

Learn more

Here is a sample 4-minute video to get started. You can also download the sample files to try alongside the videos. 

Sample Files

Tips and tricks

Now that you've got the basics of artboards in XD, here are some handy tips and tricks:

• To measure the distance of an object from the edges of an artboard, click the object and press the Option (on macOS) or Alt (on Windows) keys.
• To turn OFF the scroll option in an artboard, select the artboard and in the Property Inspector, change Scrolling to None.

For more pro tips on working with artboards, follow @Elainecchao, XD Product Manager on Twitter.

What's next?

We've got you started with creating, managing, and sharing artboards. Take a step forward and learn how to create custom artboard guides and position your artboard using grids.

Have a question or an idea?