: Designing an Android app and supporting multiple devices/screens I have created a UI concept and high-fidelity wireframes for an Android app. The next phase is to transform the wireframes into

@Sent7350415

Posted in: #Android

I have created a UI concept and high-fidelity wireframes for an Android app. The next phase is to transform the wireframes into graphic assets and deliver them to the app developer. Now, since Android runs on a variety of devices that offer different screen sizes and densities, I am terribly confused by this subject... I've read the Android design guidelines, as well as other websites discussing how to design for multiple screen support, but still, I can't completely wrap my head around it and perhaps I am making it more complex than it really is! Therefore I am looking for a simple, straightforward answer:

What's the best workflow to go about designing for Android using Photoshop/Illustrator? I have read about the different screen pixel densities (mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi, etc) and think I understand the idea of delivering each graphic asset in multiple sizes to support different densities. So according to the 2:3:4:6:8 scaling ratio between the five primary densities, if a certain graphic element's size is 48x48px @ mdpi, it should be 72×72px for hdpi, 96×96px for xhdpi, etc.

But then in practice, I don't know where to start. Say I want to open up a Photoshop or Illustrator file and start designing my app's screens for the base standard (MDPI) and later scale up from there, what should then be the dimensions of the Artboard or canvas? Or, what if I wanted to go the other way around and design my screen at the highest dpi first - XXHDPI and then crop out and scale down my assets to other screen densities (XHDPI, HDPI, MDPI) - what should be the initial dimensions of my PSD file then?

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