The new design tool Paper entered public alpha and is now open for signups: ​“We are launching with features like image generation, shaders, real flex layout, Copy as React, OKLCH color picker, vectorize, and many more.”

Stephen Haney, founder of Paper, thought it’d be fun to let everyone try the Apple heat map invite effect on their logos and shared a public playground file. Mind-blowing that a complicated animation like this made with shaders could just be copied from the design app straight to React.

“For years, the boundaries between product development roles have become less defined. Our latest report quantifies this shift and explores what it means for you and your team.”

The Shape Builder is a newer vector tool added to Figma Design from Draw. First, Miggi shows how to use it to easily cut up a shape with a path. Next, he makes a yin-yang symbol with it in just a few seconds.

Somehow, I didn’t realize how powerful the pattern fill is in Figma. Another reminder from Miggi that you can select any source you want to be a pattern, and it will live update. You can control the pattern type, scaling, spacing, and orientation.

MDS with a pro tip on using the Measurement tool: ​“Use Shift+M to measure spacing as you adjust. This makes dialing in your line height and Auto Layout container sizes much easier.”

“In this replay of our July 9th webinar, we’ll deep dive into Figma’s Dev Mode to learn how it transforms the design-to-development workflow. We’ll walk through how Dev Mode streamlines handoff, bridges design and code, boosts developer efficiency, and scales design system adoption.”

“The Community tab is back in the file browser, replacing the previous Templates & Tools tab, for easier access to your favorite public Community templates, plugins, and more. Now you can also easily discover internal templates published by your teammates with the new Resources tab in the file browser under your team space.”

“Explore ideas and riff on product flows with templates in Figma Make. Create an accurate representation of an existing product experience, then replicate it as a sandbox to experiment with design directions, new feature ideas, growth campaigns, and more.”

Short Buzz tutorial on resizing an asset for different ratios and platforms, plus setup tips so templates scale cleanly.

Dima Belyaev open-sourced his React and Figma components for building beautiful products or starting your own design system: ​“The React library source code is now on GitHub and the Figma library is available in the Figma Community. I’m especially excited because Reshaped bridges both design and engineering, and I hope it helps both communities learn best practices for building design systems that scale while staying minimal.”

“We’ve added three new Apple UI kits, watchOS, macOS, and visionOS, to help you design across even more surfaces. The kits are off by default, giving you the flexibility to switch them on only when you need them.”