Issue #37 •

Bulleted lists, switching accounts, and publishing components

Figma is setting the stage for the next week’s Config with multiple smaller long-awaited releases. I bet bulleted and numbered lists, switching between accounts, and publishing individual components were their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th most popular feature requests. (Dark mode has to be number one!)

Don’t miss a great article on creating the official Figma kit for Tailwind UI, Yuan Qing Lim’s thoughts on monetizing Figma plugins, and an insider’s look at ordering of Auto Layout elements. See you (virtually) at the Config!

— Eugene

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Book “Designing in Figma”

My practical guide to Figma, showing how to create layouts that will evolve over time, build design systems at scale, and stay organized and efficient in the process.

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App Updates

About Figma’s new Starter plan

Figma is changing its free Starter plan on April 21, 2021. Drafts are becoming a personal space for work with unlimited files, pages, and viewers. If you want to co-edit with others, you have to move the file to a team space. They’re removing the two-editor limit in the team space but adding a new maximum of one project with three files and a cap of three pages per file.

Bulleted and numbered lists

Use bullets and numbers to organize information, emphasize important details, or outline steps. Check out the video by Anthony DiSpezio with a quick demo. Hope you caught the fun lists launched as an April Fools joke!

Publish individual components

You can now select specific components to publish changes in your libraries. Miguel Cardona gives a quick demo in the video, and Figma’s Director of Product Sho Kuwamoto provides context behind this release.

All of your Figma accounts, connected

Seamlessly switch between your work and personal Figma accounts while preserving a single Community handle.

Behind the feature: building multi-account

“Product Manager Ben Stern shares how delivering on a seemingly simple user request required navigating a surprising amount of complexity: the technical foundation, design explorations, and building towards a new north star, while solving for short-term needs.“

Create new projects and files from the team browser

Miggi from Figma points to another small improvement shipped as part of this release.

Using Figma

Behind the scenes of creating the official Figma kit for Tailwind UI

Great guest post by David Luhr at Figma’s blog on what it takes to ship a commercial UI kit with over 1,400 components and 10,000 distinct elements, all while keeping quality and usability top of mind. I love the work the Tailwind team is doing, and this is a great look into their process.

Our favorite Figma Plugins: Part 1

Solid plugin recommendations from the team at Superformula.

Auto Layout in Figma

A detailed guide to the latest version of Auto Layout.

Auto Layout order

Speaking of Auto Layout, this tweet by Rasmus Andersson (Figma’s Staff Designer in the past) and the following discussion in replies provides an interesting look into why the items in an Auto Layout go backward and why this probably won’t change soon.

Stats and thoughts about monetizing Figma plugins

Great thread by Yuan Qing Lim, a prolific author of over a dozen of Figma plugins.

Figma for Marketers #1

Luis shows how to use Figma for creating a quick Instagram post.

Individually copy and paste effects

A reminder about an essential feature from Joey Banks.

Community

Official Tailwind UI Figma Kit – Free Preview

A free preview of the official Tailwind UI Figma Kit, containing all the Text, Color, and Effect Styles found in Tailwind UI, along with 40+ complete components that use the latest Auto Layout and Variants features. See also a blog post on its creation above.

Update from November 2nd, 2021: Figma assets have been discontinued.

Cross-functional Team Collaboration Kit

A Figma template from Dropbox to help facilitate cross-functional collaboration across teams.

Mobile Chat Kit

UI kits & sample apps for building in-app mobile chat.

Cards for Humanity

Cards for Humanity is a tool for inclusive design. Deal the cards to get a person and a trait. Your challenge is to work out how you can design for their needs.

Figma to React

Convert Figma designs to React code (React Native and Next.js). See also a discussion on Hacker News.

Plugins

Mesh Gradient

This is epic! One less reason to use Illustrator. ​“Mesh Gradient generates a gradient image with an underlying 2d mesh, and lets you edit the vertices & edges of the mesh to get the perfect gradient look.”

Master

Gleb Sabirzyanov released a major update to his popular plugin for working with components.

Ghost UXWriter

New plugin providing sensible UX copy templates with multiple variations in voice and tone.

All Hands Mockup Generator

A new plugin by Metalab for dropping your designs into one of several hands in two easy steps.

Backstage

The messy reality of building a startup and the myth of overnight success

Great thread about the early days of Figma by Sam DeBrule.

Accessible Design for a Remote World: In Conversation w/Dylan Field of Figma

“Last month, South Park Commons community hosted Figma CEO and cofounder Dylan Field for a virtual fireside chat. In this conversation, Dylan walked us through Figma’s inception, building into a growing design market, and what it was like staying in stealth for years. Read on for snippets from the fireside chat at South Park Commons.”

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