Display P3. FigJam & Community updates. X100V.
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Figma Updates
Display P3 color management
So excited about this release! I spent a good chunk of my Config talk discussing workarounds for using wide gamut colors in Figma, and this update addresses them all. See this thread by Qi Linzhi on the engineering challenges of implementing support for Display P3.
The next thing I hope for is a more precise way to select colors. Figma relies on hex values in the UI, but they’re supposed to be limited to sRGB and aren’t representative of what you’ll see in the browser. The Dev Mode uses the correct color(display-p3 R G B) syntax as an output, but that doesn’t help much with input. Besides that, I’d like to see when the color is outside of the sRGB range and what is its closest fallback. OkLCH isn’t the easiest color space to use, but OkLCH picker gets that part right.
Add custom icons to workspaces
“On the Enterprise plan, workspace admins can now brand the workspaces they manage to reflect their group by adding custom icons to workspaces. Organization admins can do this for any workspace in the organization as well.”
FigJam Updates
Custom color palettes in FigJam
That’s pretty cool, especially if your team has multiple products with distinct color palettes! “Introducing custom color palettes in FigJam: you can now create custom color palettes for your team, so your files can match your team’s own aesthetic or company branding (Organization and Enterprise plans only).”
Videos in FigJam
You can now embed videos in FigJam. MP4 and MOV files are both supported.
Community Updates
Community ratings and reviews
The number of installs or downloads used to be the only metric in the Community, but over time it was replaced with how many times a resource was used. Now you can also rate and review Community resources. It’ll be interesting to see which of the most used resources are also the most loved ones.
Save your favorite Community resources
“Saving” and “liking” resources are now combined to make Community simpler to use. Your saved resources are available from your Community profile or the Resources dropdown in a Figma file.
What’s New
Running up that hill: Creativity, AI, and the human pursuit of uphill thinking
John Maeda shares takeaways from his Design in Tech Report, thoughts on designing with artificial intelligence, and why we should embrace uphill thinking in a world optimized for shortcuts. See also the livestream “Diving deeper: Designing with AI in the future”.
Using Figma
A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Responsive Grids
Ozan Öztaskiran shows how to create responsive grids in 5 simple steps.
Quickly add color variables
Christine Vallaure reminds us of using Selection Colors for applying variables to multiple objects.
Office hours: Variables migration best practices
Interested in learning how to migrate from Styles to Variables? Join Luis Ouriach, Akbar Mizra, Jacob Miller from Figma, and Jack Minogue from Ford for a look at approaches you can use to lower the friction of your rollout of variables.
In the file: Chaos & collaboration, balancing creativity with stakeholder visibility
Creativity is great, but it can get messy. How do you balance creative chaos and stakeholder visibility? Hugo Raymond spoke to Bupa to uncover their approach.
Made in Figma
Figma Typer
Amazing animated illustration of a typewriter by Samarth Jajodia.
Fujifilm X100V
Vijay recreated a Fujifilm X100V camera using mostly primitive shapes with shadows and gradients. As a Fuji shooter since the days of X‑T1, I love seeing his attention to detail in this illustration! See this thread for his tips on creating a metal pattern and a camera texture.
Resources
Figr 2.0
Figr is a collection of editable UIs of popular apps that can be copied to Figma. “Figr is created to simplify design research and decision-making. It’s your one-stop solution for design inspiration, research, and editable files, freeing you to build great products.” Won the “2nd Product of the Day” at ProductHunt on August 3rd.
Plugins
Apply variables
A new plugin from the Tokens Studio: “Already have your variables set up and want to bulk apply them to your work? You can swap styles with variables or apply variables that match raw number values to elements in any file with access to your variables collections!” See also the walkthrough video.
AI Image Generator for Figma
Use Stable Diffusion to create unique AI images for your designs without ever leaving Figma with this text-to-image plugin. Won the “3rd Product of the Day” at ProductHunt on August 1st.
Roast for Figma
A preview of the design lint plugin for identifying and fixing issues like missing tokens or styles.