Whoa, finally! Can’t believe this is getting fixed a few days before Config. Add bold, italic, underline, or strikethrough font style to a portion of text with an applied style without detaching it first.

Lots of small improvements and a few bigger changes, like an unread filter and inline comment replies. 

Unlimited developer seats & all the features at 1 flat rate. Zeplin has all that and a new look, with plans tailored for teams of any size. Try it for free!

Rob Hope interviews a design wizard Vijay Verma. ​“Vijay Verma is a talented designer renowned for his intricate Figma art and his extensive portfolio of free digital resources. In this episode, we explore his humble beginnings as an electrician in India and his rise to become one of the most beloved designers in the Figma community. Additionally, we have a special case study where Vijay walks us through his character design process, complete with a bonus time-lapse recording he sent after the interview.” 

Essential Figma shortcuts as A4 and A3 posters, via Nick Babich.

June 24th, 5:30–8:30 PM. ​“Join Design Buddies & Product Disrupt at a pre-Config social mixer at Bunny House! Make new friends and share what you’re working on. Hosted by Grace Ling and Darshan Gajara.” 

June 25, 7:30–9:30 AM. ​“Make new connections while stretching your legs, soaking in the gorgeous bay views, and sipping on espresso. Molly Hellmuth and Socrates Charisis will guide you along a coastal trail with views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Afterward, we’ll enjoy some well-deserved coffee on the beach courtesy of Wix Studio!” 

June 25th, 5:30–8:30 PM at GitHub’s SF office. ​“You’ll hear from GitHub designers, developers, and researchers, about their work on design systems, accessibility, brand, and AI.” 

June 26th, 6–9 PM. ​“Fireside with founding designers at Instacart, Nike, Maven, and IFTTT.” 

June 26th, 7–10 PM. ​“Join us on the first evening of Config for a special event celebrating designers at the forefront of building with AI. Connect with over 50 designers and see lightning demos from companies like Perplexity, Visual Electric, Chroma and more.” 

Jun 26th, 10:00 PM – 1:00 AM. ​“Figma fans, join the unofficial Config Afterparty at frog HQ! Mingle with fellow designers, enjoy eclectic beats, drinks & bites, win prizes, and keep the creative energy going. Get inspired by an engaging talk from Pablo Stanley, a Latin designer based in Mexico and co-founder and CEO at Musho & Lummi, and fun activities to help slow down and refocus your attention.” 

June 27th, 6:30–8:30 PM. ​“Meet the designers and developers behind your favorite screens after the conference.” 

June 27th, 7 PM – 2 AM. A Config afterparty with an open bar, finger foods, and good vibes — hosted by creators Jesse Show, MDS, DesignerTom, and Grace Ling. 

If this Config is your first time in San Francisco, check this guide by product designers who live or have lived in the city for recommendations on places to eat, shop, and things to do.

Jacob Miller shares two variables tips to avoid the most common problems: 1) ​“Never create a mode that shouldn’t be set at the page level” (read more about inheriting a context), and 2) ​“Never publish a variable that users shouldn’t consume” (see why component-scoped variables can 10x the number of variables you ship). Don’t miss discussions in replies. 

Draftocalypse seems to be over, but it’s still worth sharing this video that Tom Lowry, Director of Advocacy at Figma, put together to walk you through what’s changing and answer a few common questions. 

James shows how to achieve a very cool mesh gradient effect with simple tools: ​“It’s kinda silly how much you can achieve with a single blurred vector line, a gradient and a blending mode.” 

Great advice from Jayneil Dalal and Cecilia Uhr that I follow religiously: ​“A mistake junior designers make is they delete or overwrite their design iterations in Figma. You shouldn’t do this because you never know when you might need to use that deleted design iteration or explain to your team why that iteration didn’t work.” 

I had no idea that a Spread value in drop shadows can be negative! This effect could shrink the shadow and simulate the object’s elevation. The article explains the box-shadow property in CSS, but luckily, Figma’s drop shadow is based on it and works similarly. 

Ridd explains how to make your components easier to use by exposing nested instances.

Double Glitch made a new tutorial on creating a real working parallax effect in Figma. Don’t miss the Community file as well! 

A 2‑hour course by Meng To on building a real website from a Figma template using Codux. ​“You’ll master responsive design, collaborate with developers on a real React project, export CSS from Figma using Locofy, set up breakpoints with media queries, add CSS animations, improve SEO, create multiple pages with React Router, and publish your site. By following best practices, you’ll bridge design and development, improve your web design skills.” 

Checks out.

A new free resource by Fons Mans.

Martin Bekerman is back with a new vector illustration made in Figma.

Gavin Nelson made a beautiful alternative icon for the desktop Figma app. 

Daniel Destefanis from Figma made a plugin that shows how text layers within a selection are styled (or unstyled). This plugin complements the existing native Figma feature Selection colors and is a great way to see what layers aren’t using styles or select layers by font. Read more in Daniel’s Twitter thread.

A new project by Gavin McFarland makes creating and bundling Figma plugins easier. ​“Plugma uses Vite to bundle Figma plugins and is configured to inline all styles and scripts into one file. It uses a local server for development, that passes messages from Figma’s main thread to the local server using web sockets.”