Welcome to the 1st issue!
Welcome to the 1st issue of Figmalion! After discovering Figma back in 2016 and moving most of my work to it this year I became excited about the disruption of design tooling and started following news and discussions around it more closely. I figured that as I am looking for and reading all these articles anyway I may as well share them with others. Please feel free to send me any related links by replying to this email or contacting me directly. Thanks for subscribing!
— Eugene
Top Stories
Tool tips: How our design team switched to Figma
Intercom’s distributed design team faced challenges with the complexity and limitations of their toolset as the company grew, so they looked for an alternative and picked Figma. This post tells why they moved to it, what they liked, and what they did not. Interestingly, document organization and the absence of files were some of the most important reasons for them.
What We’re Working On: Pitch (and our thoughts on Figma)
Metalab got to try Figma while working on a presentation tool Pitch. They are not ready to completely switch from Sketch yet but provide a few tips on moving from to Figma.
Figma Ninja – Chapter #1
Figma Ninja is a small game-like project that teaches the basics of Figma shortcuts. More chapters are promised in the future.
Goodbye Sketch…
Another story about switching to Figma?! Yes, but this one also highlights how agency replaced not only Sketch but also InVision prototypes and Principle animations with it.
Migrating to Figma: Taking the stress out of your move
An hour-long live stream of a panel organized by Figma with their customers like Workday, Uber, and Dropbox. They are at different stages of migrating to Figma and share their experiences and challenges.
Everything you need to know as a UI designer about spacing & layout grids
“This guide will walk through spacing and layout grid best practices based on Material Design, Bootstrap, and Figma.”
Oldie but Goodie
Optimizing for Collaboration in Figma
Recap of a presentation at Figma Chicago Meetup. Trucy led the move to Figma at Yello and shares her experience in fostering collaboration with engineers, PMs, and other designers. I especially liked the idea of using custom cover images to indicate the statuses of tasks.
How I designed a famous building in isometric 3D using Figma
While Figma is most definitely not the right tool for the job here, it’s interesting to see how experiments like this push the limits of the tool. See also: Places I’d Rather Be by David Kulakevich at Figma Community.
Interesting Plugins
Vectary 3D plugin
“Imagine how awesome would it be if you could manipulate and place photorealistic 3D objects in Figma with any view and perspective you like. Vectary is bringing customizable and interactive 3D elements and mockups right into your design process.”
Graphviz
“Generate and maintain complex information graphs in Figma using Graphviz. Graphs are defined using a simple text language (“dot”) and the source code for a graph is stored on the canvas graph object, making it really easy to share graphs that are editable as well as making changes.”
Minimap
Adds a small map to help orient in large designs. It can be very helpful when there is a large number of frames on a single page.
Artboard Studio Mockups
“Create mockups in Figma easily by getting access to thousands of world-class quality Artboard Studio mockup items right inside your Figma files. Easily render Figma frames into real-life product mockups with a click of a button.” Check out their demo video if you design “real life” products or need to present mockups on a device screen.
From the Headquarters
Let’s create Figma’s first user conference together
“Figma’s first user conference will take place on February 6, 2020, in San Francisco, CA. The cost is $299 but scholarships are available. Get involved by submitting our Call for Proposals or filling out our Attendee Application by November 20th.”
Beyond multiplayer: Building community together in Figma
Introducing a redesigned workspace with a focus on the people in your team and Figma Community, “a public space where you can now publish live design files that anyone in the world can inspect, remix, and learn from.”