Apple’s SF Pro and SF Compact fonts are now automatically downloaded in Figma Editor, Slides, and Buzz.

Sebastiaan de With is the co-founder and designer of the award-winning apps Halide and Kino for photography and video. In this article, he imagines what could be next for the UI design at Apple: ​“What would I do if I were Apple’s design team? What changes would I like to see, and what do I think is likely? Considering where technology is going, how do I think interface design should change to accommodate?”

(Reminder that WWDC25 is happening this week, with a keynote on Monday at 10 AM PT. That’s when we’ll find out how close his predictions are to what Apple designers have in mind.)

Speaking of Apple, the latest winners of the Design Award were announced. Congrats to Play for winning the Innovation award!

Whoa! Epic collab between Soleio and Indie​.vc. Six interviews with design pioneers and true first-of-kind designers — Henry Modisett, Colin Dunn, Jessica Hische, Julie Zhuo, Nicholas Jitkoff, and Susan Kare. Now I just need to set aside 7 hours to watch them all ASAP.

Lenny Rachitsky’s survey was all over Design Twitter this week. Next are a few interesting takeaways. 1) ​“Workers at smaller companies report significantly lower burnout levels than those at larger companies.” 2) Designers are the most burnt-out tech workers, closely followed only by Research and Growth — I wonder if it’s because these roles constantly deal with ambiguity and limited autonomy. 3) Optimism about career and current role is on the decline, with designers having the largest negative sentiment change. 4) ​“Fewer than 1 in 3 tech workers (26.6%) rate their managers as highly effective, while more than 4 in 10 (42.3%) rate their managers as ineffective. […] People in product and design roles have the most negative leadership perceptions.” 5) Startup founders are the happiest people in tech.

My friend Christine Vallaure shares a few lessons learned building her educational platform as a company of one. Christine’s approach to running a business is truly inspiring, and she masterfully told her story at this year’s Config and in her new book Solo. (Which I genuinely recommend and she offers a coupon to my readers in the Friendly Promo above, which is not an ad.)

(Read without a paywall.) The Verge interviews Dylan Field about ​“how he sees AI fitting into Figma after a rough start to integrating the technology last year, the new areas he’s targeting to grow the platform, and more.”

Meng To first wrote a comprehensive guide on UI prompting, and now recorded this 44-minute tutorial as well.

“The State of AI in Design report, created by Foundation Capital and Designer Fund, is based on a survey of 400+ designers and conversations with leaders at Stripe, Notion, Anthropic, and more. It explores the real impact of AI on design today, in 2025.”

The new Edit Image feature allows changing an image using prompts, powered by gpt-image‑1. The Make an Image feature got an AI model picker so users can choose between gpt-image‑1, Gemini Imagen 3, or Titan V2. Additionally, the AI beta was rolled out to all Professional, Organization, and Enterprise plans. If you’re not seeing AI features, check that your Admin has your AI access toggle turned on.

If you’re curious about the new gpt-image‑1 model, check out this announcement from OpenAI: ​“Today, we’re bringing the natively multimodal model that powers this experience in ChatGPT to the API via gpt-image‑1, enabling developers and businesses to easily integrate high-quality, professional-grade image generation directly into their own tools and platforms. The model’s versatility allows it to create images across diverse styles, faithfully follow custom guidelines, leverage world knowledge, and accurately render text—unlocking countless practical applications across multiple domains.”

The new curved connectors mode for right-brained people. I’ll stick to my neatly organized ​“elbowed” connectors.

I had a hard time planning my Config agenda across 7 tracks and 5 stages, so I made this visual agenda planner in FigJam. It lays out all sessions by day, track, and stage so you can easily spot any conflicts. Copy it from the Community to plan your day individually or as a group. Here are the talks I plan to attend.

Community events are smaller gatherings and meetups happening around Config. In my opinion, they’re the best way to meet new people as the groups are much smaller, the vibes are more relaxed, and the topics are more focused. I plan to attend a few events below.

My friend Molly Hellmuth Tsacudakis is bringing back her morning hike and coffee on Tuesday, May 6th from 7:30 to 11 AM. I’ll be arriving the night before and might need a caffeine drip along the way, but very excited about this event. ​“Make new connections while stretching your legs, soaking in the gorgeous bay views, and sipping on espresso. UI Prep’s Molly Hellmuth 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 UI Prep.”

The recording of the latest Release Notes livestream is finally available. While these updates have already been covered in the last two issues, I always enjoy watching hands-on demos and explainers. In this episode, Luis Ouriach and Alexia Danton share all the latest goodies like FigPals (RIP), design handoff releases, accessibility contrast info, annotations in design mode, collapsing layers, reordering modes and collections, and more.

Three primary updates: hide and show variable fills, duplicate and copy styles, and the go-to-main component shortcut (Control+Option+Command+K). See the complete list of quality-of-life updates in the release notes. 

“Connected Projects makes it easy for freelancers and agencies on different Figma plans to collaborate seamlessly with clients. Work together to co-edit designs, and share resources like libraries — all while staying on your own Figma seat.”

Freshly baked goodies: FigPals for April Fun Week (extended until April 11); a button for collapsing layers — love that it excludes the layer tree of your selection; quality-of-life improvements to corner radius inputs and flyouts for effects, fills, and layout grids; reordering variables modes and collections; annotations in Design Mode; accessibility contrast in color picker; and finally, an eyedropper added to Dev Mode.

This one is a big ​“finally” for me! BRB, I have some library cleanup to do.

Annotations are now available in Design Mode with new color-coded categories. Love that categories are fully editable, so you can adjust them to your team’s workflow.

See if color contrast meets accessibility standards right within the color picker. I’m glad this is now built-in and the UI looks great (see an X thread from Billy Sweeney), but as a color nerd and creator of Accessible Palette, I wish Figma went a step further and supported APCA. I wrote about issues with the WCAG 2 back in 2021 (see the last section), and Arthur Objartel made a strong case for supporting it as well.

A few tweaks and improvements to the file browser create a more consistent experience.

“Figma is localizing for the Spanish market. This includes full product translation, culturally adapted user interfaces, and dedicated support for Spanish language users. Figma plans to expand product localization to additional languages throughout the year, as it continues to invest in its global community.” (Coincidently, I was in Spain when this was announced. Rest assured I didn’t touch Figma while vacationing with my family.)