Now you can use the power of AI to generate and expand mindmaps and create visual timelines in FigJam. See examples in the gallery of ready-made FigJam AI prompts.

On April 1^st, Figma makes URLs shorter and easier to read. If you call Figma’s REST APIs, embed files in your websites or apps, or use these URLs in your plugin or widget, you may need to make a few tweaks to your code.

Not the acquisition we had in mind: ​“Canva, the world’s only all-in-one visual communication platform, today announced the acquisition of Affinity, the award-winning creative software suite for professional photo editing, illustration, graphic design and page layout.”

Anthony Rajski is recreating Figma in the Windows 95 style. Hope it supports LAN parties for designing together!

Lauri makes a strong case for introducing responsiveness to the prototype mode. Luis hints that something is cooking, and we’ll hear more at Config 2024.

A guide to creating icons in Figma with a solid introduction to basic tools, grids, and approaches to designing a cohesive set.

Mark Bennett with an in-depth walkthrough of his process for creating CyberBlade illustration.

Free 40-minute DesignCode course on designing a realistic smart home mobile app. The video explains using the Arc tool, dashed lines and stroke settings, boolean tools, Auto Layout, and more.

Tom MacWright writes about his experience building the Placemark plugin for creating vector street-level maps and Placemark Globe for rendering a globe. He covers several interconnected topics, including tracking usage, sandboxing, plugin architecture, and authoring flow.

Weavely is the AI form builder for Figma. You can design a form in Figma, and Weavely will generate a working web form from it. It supports answer piping, conditional logic, AI form generation, and more.

I loved this article by Karri Saarinen from Linear on why redesigns are important and its sequel, ​“How we redesigned the Linear UI,” on tackling that kind of project. ​“This incremental way of building the product is hugely beneficial, and often necessary — though it unbalances the overall design, and leads to design debt. Each new capability adds stress on the product’s existing surfaces for which it was initially designed. Functionality no longer fits in a coherent way. It needs to be rebalanced and rethought.”

On paying off the design debt: ​“While the design debt often happens in small increments, it’s best to be paid in larger sweeps. This goes against the common wisdom in engineering where complete code rewrites are avoided. The difference is that on the engineering side, a modular or incremental way of working can work as the technical implementation is not really visible. Whereas the product experience is holistic and visual.”

On exploring the next version without considering practicality: ​“A secret I’ve learned is that when you tell people a design is a ​“concept” or ​“conceptual” it makes it less likely that the idea is attacked from whatever perspective they hold or problems they see with it. The concept is not perceived as real, but something that can be entertained. By bringing leaders or even teams along with the concept iterations, it starts to solidify the new direction in their mind, eventually becoming more and more familiar. That’s the power of visual design.”