On Tuesday, March 28th, 2023 at 9:00 AM PT, Figma will livestream the launch of 30+ little updates “that will be BIG improvements to your workflow”. The video teaser mentions the preview of blend modes and on-hover previews 👀 Sign up for a free webinar by their team of designer advocates and product managers.

Figma published their internal design team career levels and accompanying Skills Chart widget to the Figma Community! Last year they refreshed the leveling framework and Design Manager Sara Culver wrote a detailed post documenting this work. For additional context, I highly recommend Noah Levin’s thread on this project. Also, don’t miss their templates for performance reviews and calibration.

FTE is an open-source tool for creating an automatic communication channel between design decisions (represented as design tokens) and code. The main objective of the tool is to simplify the standardization and update of these decisions throughout all the digital products sharing a Design System. Its creator Daniel Casado shows how to install, configure, and use the FTE to transform design tokens (either as Figma styles or from Token Studio) into CSS styles.

“Now you can create tables in FigJam right from the bottom tool bar. Organize information and ideas in custom-sized tables to build project plans, decision matrices, pro/con lists, and more.” Check out a quick demo video and read the blog post on how the product team arrived at the approach, tackled multiplayer bugs, and finessed design details.

Such a fun thread by designer Jakub Świadek on how the FigJam team redesigned the sticky note curl. See also another thread by Noah Finer on how it was implemented with CSS and SVG animations.

“You can now seamlessly copy-and-paste between your iPad and desktop. Just open a FigJam file on your iPad, and another FigJam or Figma file on your desktop at the same time. Copy something on iPad and an in-app notification on desktop will ask you if you want to paste the selection from the other device. You can copy-and-paste from desktop to iPad, too.”

Paid resources are finally available on Community! The days of dealing with license keys, paying through 3rd-party websites, and importing downloaded files are over. As a customer, you can try most resources before buying, and if something went wrong easily apply for a refund.

While this release makes the whole experience much smoother for end users, it’s a huge change for Community creators — “there’s no dealing with payment integrations, license keys, emailing files, or even managing refunds — just set your price, publish, and start earning”. A few years ago, I was delighted to learn that some creators earn a living from selling Figma plugins and resources. This will become much more common now because of additional exposure and a lower barrier to entry. There has never been a better time to start contributing to the design community.

The Figma Store is now available in the EU, and to celebrate the occasion they’ve dropped a new swag collection. My favorite additions are the new washi tape, Dress Code hat, and Toolkit mug!

Figma always supported #RGB and #RRGGBB CSS syntaxes in color fills, but now you can also use rgb(), rgba(), hsl(), and hsla(). Pretty neat!