A guide to using Tokens Studio to create flexible component libraries: ​“In headless design systems, the visual representation of components decouples from the logic required for their creation. Your building blocks gain UI after you apply tokens to them.”

I believe eventually starting work on top of a standard headless library will be normalized, similar to standard libraries in programming languages. How many times do we have to recreate all states of a button or create modals from scratch?

The team at Deliveroo built a library of ​“file management goodies” to bring more context to their designs and help people across the business navigate design files more efficiently. Section banners, flow and screen details, highlights, notes, and linked resources helped their team annotate their thinking within Figma.

Jackie Zhang writes about approaches to enhance team communication through logically structuring Figma files, labeling and annotating your designs, and hooking up all your files in a single FigJam flow. I particularly like the last recommendation and going to try it on the next project.

Okay, my mind is blown. ​“Developing plugins for Figma using ChatGPT can be a powerful tool for automating low-level tasks and generating specific parts of code. However, it’s important to have a clear understanding of your goals and the steps necessary to achieve them in order to use ChatGPT effectively.”

In this tutorial thread, Fons Mans walks through the steps of creating Linear-like gradients. The community file is available as well.

Luis is experimenting with a different way of managing styles in Figma. He argues that bringing styles a lot closer to their usage makes it easier to understand the context.

Ana Boyer with tips for using Figma for presentations.

Vijay wrote a step-by-step guide on making a button with a cool multi-color glowing effect.

Clara Ujiie came up with a simple workflow for visually testing components. (The same tutorial is available as a Twitter thread, if that’s your jam.)

MDS with a new live redesign process video from Shift Nudge curriculum on density and style. 

Mix and match 3D illustrations and icons and drop them into your Figma file.

Robert Bye reflects on his first full year at the new Figma Native apps team and how much their desktop, iPad, and phone apps have changed in 2022