Tom Lowry walks through recent updates to branches — the default zoom level of previews is increased to 150%, the full branch name is now visible on hover, better text legibility, transparent backgrounds for effects, a few changes to improve review of variables, and bug fixes.

“Managing your team’s community resources just got simpler. Now you can save, approve, and manage resources for your entire organization without switching profiles or ​‘browsing as admin.’”

A reminder that Framework is happening on Tuesday, April 16^th. Figma published the schedule for this 3‑hour-long event, which will be a great fit for anyone interested in variables, design systems, and design-to-code handoff.

What a great conversation between two wonderful human beings. Rob Hope goes deep as an interviewer and does a huge amount of research and production work for his Yo! Podcast. Rogie is a pillar of the design community and ​“a larger than life designer who rides the intersection of art and code”. I spent an hour watching an entire interview in one sitting on TV and enjoyed how personal and intimate it felt. Discussion covers the role of the Designer Advocate, the Figma community, creating Figma plugins, and — of course — horror movies.

Ana Boyer wonders, what if we also marketed design systems like products? ​“In my time at Figma, I’ve talked to dozens of design systems teams looking to drive adoption and prove the value of their work. Now, more than ever, it’s important to think, strategize, and execute like a marketer. Here are some of the tactics and strategies for helping you position your design system as an integral asset — whether launching anew or revitalizing existing efforts.”

“The Washington Post’s inclusive process for creating new design system components bridges the gap between design and development to make features that help navigate the news online.”

Sam shares math equations she used in Token Studio to build all sorts of dimension tokens and even a proportional scale that snaps to a 4 or 8 pixel grid. This guide uses typography as an example, but the same ideas apply to sizing and spacing. There is even a free playground in the Community.

Ridd published a crash course on advanced Figma prototyping with variables. He explains when to use variables instead of variants and shows how to streamline the prototyping process by using variables to update UI elements without requiring multiple frames. Additionally, he prepared a community resource with slides and examples.

Jason Lengstorf from Learn with Jason talks to Figma Developer Advocate Jake Albaugh about how Dev Mode improves the design handoff and how the Figma plugins API enables more powerful customization.

Lee Munroe and the design team at OneSignal learned how to create Figma plugins from scratch and shared the first steps for building something simple. Between an excellent Create Figma Plugin toolkit and ChatGPT, I recommend giving it a shot.

A new plugin from Pablo Stanley is an AI design assistant that turns simple prompts into websites. The promise is to ​“get your design 80% of the way, so you have time to obsess over the final little details”.

Tokenbase is a free tool for creating, managing, and distributing design tokens. Easily create your design systems and export tokens to code in a few clicks. It’s currently in beta, and I wonder if importing from Figma is on the roadmap?

“The Knob is a low-profile mechanical keyboard being designed by 3D Artist and Motion Designer Ben Fryc, and developed by Work Louder. Evoking the look of both classic and modern technology, the Knob is designed to be a beautiful and functional part of your every day workflow.” This looks incredible 🤤 I wish Apple licensed Touch ID to other manufacturers or sold as a standalone device, as I can’t imagine using the keyboard without it. Here is a Figma playground for a Knob screen.