Work with Illustrator assets in Adobe XD

Adobe XD works with Illustrator to bring high-fidelity vector artwork such as logos, icons, or any other elements you can use in your XD designs. The imported artwork remains editable in XD allowing you to reduce the time involved in creating prototypes.

Read on to learn the many ways in which you can bring assets from Illustrator into XD, and best practices and limitations related to these workflows.

While Illustrator and XD have complementary set of features that helps retain layers and effects, there are  some features that do not have a one-to-one mapping. Before you proceed, read on to learn more about them from Supported Illustrator features.

To ensure that you get a seamless experience when working with XD and Illustrator, we're making improvements to the interoperability workflows. Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions or feedback, do share them on UserVoice.

Ways to get Illustrator assets into XD

When your design is ready in Illustrator, here are some of the ways to get them into XD.  

With XD 57, Adobe has improved color management functionality in XD. You get consistent colors when you copy an asset with an sRGB color profile from 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.

Prototype imported artboards

After your Illustrator designs are imported into XD, let's see how you can use them to create a prototype.

Looking to enhance your XD designs? apply XD-specific features such as Repeat Grids, States, Auto-animate, and Voice prototyping.

Share and collaborate with XD

Is your prototype ready for sharing?

Are you thinking whether the design resolution gets impacted after you share it from XD? The answer is No.

With XD 57 and later, you have the ability to provide a consistent color rendition for your stakeholders. To achieve this, switch the document’s color profile to sRGB. If you try to share selected artboards from a document having an unmanaged color profile, you get a message that informs you about a possible color discrepancy that your stakeholders might experience. For more information, see Color Management.

Your shared designs are optimized with no loss of fidelity, feedback from your stakeholders are available in real-time, and developers can download the shared assets and design specs for coding.

Video: How do I import Illustrator designs?

"Just like how you can import Photoshop files directly into Adobe XD, you can also import your Illustrator files. This is perfect for designers who want to bring in logos, icons, or any other elements to use in their UI or UX projects" — Howard Pinsky,  Senior XD Evangelist. 

To learn more about bringing your Illustrator designs into XD, watch this 2 minute video.

Frequently asked questions

How do I fix the distorted spacing issues between elements when I increase the size of my SVGs? 

Distortion occurs when XD considers imported or pasted SVG related objects as separate objects. To avoid distortion, ensure that Responsive Resize option in Property Inspector is set to OFF. 

Why are my design Icons exported from Illustrator to SVG seems distorted in XD?

Some Illustrator features are not compliant with XD and are transferred as vectors or not transferred at all. SVG has limited capabilities compared to Illustrator and features like freeform gradient cannot be expressed. For more information on the supported Illustrator elements in XD, see Supported Illustrator elements.

What's next?

We've got you started with working with design assets from Illustrator. Take a step forward and learn how to create interactive prototypes and share them with designers or stakeholders for feedback.

Have feedback? We're all ears.