Little Big Updates. Thinking colors. Style Organizer.
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4 ways to overcome Figma handoff challenges
One of the biggest struggles in bringing a product to life is handoff between designers and developers. Here are 4 ways to make handoff clearer, easier, and faster.
Figma Updates
Little Big Updates: More improvements for design and collaboration
Figma shipped a batch of lovely small improvements. See demo videos in their blog post, or read a full list with a few behind-the-scene links below.
Redistribute gradient steps evenly
One of my personal favorites 🙌 Organize the gradient panel faster by double-clicking on gradient stops to evenly distribute them.
Annotate with a Pencil tool
Annotation is a lot smoother with Pencil strokes no longer getting clipped or disturbing Auto Layout in frames. See also Marcin Wichary’s short thread on how they got to this solution.
Improved emoji support
Not mentioned in the blog post, but a very timely and important update!
Quick align as a group
No more group/align/ungroup — quickly align objects as a temporary group by holding Shift while pressing alignment buttons. (Option/Alt also seems to work.)
Select top-level frame
Get more efficient in your selection — if a top-level frame is selected, Figma will now select any subsequent top-level frames registered.
Retain text formatting
Retain formatting, including bullets and text styles, when pasting between text nodes.
Text alignment shortcuts
Text alignment shortcuts (⌘-⌥-L for left, ⌘-⌥-T for center, ⌘-⌥-R for right) also work when you apply them inside the text box.
Removed interstitial in comments
Navigate to links in comments without the interruption of an interstitial.
Desktop bell notification in the desktop menu bar with activity feed
Stay in the loop on notifications when you’re in the desktop app, with a new notification bell that lives in your menu bar. Install or update the beta app to the latest version.
File Search improvements
Search preview now includes recent searches and a list view shows file owners.
FigJam Updates
Perfectly centered connectors
Another personal favorite! 📐 Connectors will automatically straighten when objects look center aligned — no more wonky lines!
Quick create improvements
Create shapes and stickies faster with new auto-create prompts at the top, bottom, left, and right.
Connector tool stays selected
Stay in the diagram flow, with Connector tool (X) now persisting by default; hit Esc or V to return to the Move tool.
Snap to shape size
Easily size shapes to the same dimensions using new guidelines to match height and width.
View stickers in their set
Find more stickers by right-clicking on one to reveal a link to the parent library.
Quick replace image fills
Now you can use copy and paste to quickly replace image fills in FigJam.
Apple Pencil more responsive in FigJam for iPad
Experience a more responsive Apple pencil when you’re using FigJam on iPad mobile app.
New undo/redo gestures for FigJam on iPad
Undo and redo faster in FigJam iPad mobile app: two-finger tap to undo, three-finger tap to redo, and three-finger swipe left/right to undo/redo.
Observation mode and spotlight on FigJam for iPad
Jam seamlessly in FigJam iPad mobile app with Observation mode and Spotlight.
What’s New
Thinking colors: balancing between visual and abstract
As you may have noticed, I have a soft spot for color tools supporting perception-based color spaces. Taras Brizitsky writes about the plugin Generator that he built with Alex Bourt. It’s a really cool idea and implementation — start with a color, apply a set of visual modifications and conversions, and generate an entire palette from it. Change the starting color or modifiers to update all generated colors. Awesome!
Preview Figma links in Notion
Notion got inspired by Figma’s Little Big Updates and shipped a nice improvement as well.
Using Figma
My dad had a Stroke — I made him an app to communicate
Gary Simon created an accessible app to help his dad. An entire thing is based on a Figma prototype. Hope it worked out well!
Netflix icons
Bonnie Kate Wolf designs pictograms for Netflix in Figma.
Shortcuts for working with fonts
Miguel with a few useful shortcuts for adjusting font size, weight, letter spacing, and line height.
Design system structure guide
Luis Ouriach walks through updates to the design system structure recommended by Figma Advocates.
How to create the ultimate design swipe file in Notion
Ridd finally launched his YouTube channel! That’s an instant-subscribe. There are already a bunch of great videos, including the latest on building a product design inspiration database in Notion. See also his best practices for component properties.
Plugins
Style Organizer
I was looking for a plugin to clean up my file and convert all color values to matching color styles, and this plugin got the job done perfectly. Thanks to Dave Kover for the recommendation!
Propstar
Generate all possible instances for your components, including every combination of variants and component properties, all in a tidy labeled table.
Backstage
How Figma uses Figma to build Figma?
The founder of Cron wondered about this question, and Figma’s Design Director Noah Levin came up with some great links in replies.
What made Figma so successful?
In light of the sad news of InVision layoffs, Nathan Barry tried to answer the question of what made Figma so successful that it completely changed the design tools landscape.
Cool Thing
Setapp
If you ever looked for a Mac app for a specific task, you probably sifted through a ton of low-quality apps to find some gems. And the gems were probably paid apps or required a subscription, which is not always feasible for one-off tasks. Setapp is an alternative app store offering a single subscription to a curated catalog of high-quality apps. I’ve been using it for a few years and always check first when looking for a new app. Some of my favorites installed on all computers include CleanShot X, TablePlus, Bartender, and Sip. Bonus point: Setapp is made by a Ukrainian company based in Kyiv. (My referral link gives both of us a free month.)