Welcome to the big post-Config issue! Dylan Field announced lots of improvements to Figma and FigJam during his keynote, so let’s dive in. FigJam got a new collection of widgets for working with tasks and issues in Jira, Asana, and GitHub, as well as cute greeting cards and voice memos. Figma finally got dark mode, variable fonts, spring animations, individual borders, and component properties. Auto Layout was completely redesigned, and now it’s even more powerful. The newly introduced Spotlight makes it easy to gather and guide everyone through a demo. There are even more updates and improvements, so I suggest watching the keynote and going through some of the links I collected. Enjoy!

It’s the week of two-day Config 2022! What’s on your wishlist for product announcements? Is it dark mode? Long-promised font previews? Wrapping elements inside Auto Layout? Multi-page prototypes? Or maybe a new flavor of delicious prototype noodles? Whatever it is, I’ve never been disappointed by the keynote and really look forward to it!

Hi friends! It’s been a minute. On February 25th, I took a break from Figmalion after Russia attacked my home country Ukraine. While I moved to the US almost 10 years ago, my family and friends are still there. Most of them had to flee their homes to get to safety. After two months, dealing with war and its consequences became a part of our daily lives, and now I’m trying to return to regular activities and get some sense of normalcy. I’m grateful to everyone who sent me words of support — that meant a lot!

Working on this issue reminded me how much I love design, great tools, and this community. So many exciting things happened during the last two months! While I couldn’t include everything, this issue should be a good recap of the most important things.

Hello from the snowy Northeast! Congrats to the Figma team for finally getting @figma handle on Twitter. It’s a small thing, but I’m sure it took a lot of work to make it happen. (I have a glimpse of hope that one day Twitter will let me take over someone’s suspended @figmalion account.)

The community has been talking a lot about the mechanics of components — usability vs. maintainability, managing spacing, and automating grunt work. Lots of good topics in this issue!

P.S. Thanks to Webflow for sponsoring Figmalion again! Don’t miss the official trailer — it’s a dramatic masterpiece.

Hello! A few interesting news from the last week: Figma explained how data shaped a new comments experience, Spotify updated their icon system, and Framer announced the beta release of Sites, their new no-code service. See also a deep dive on hexagons and layers naming by Figma Designer Advocates.

Have a wonderful week!

Hi there! This is the first weekly edition of Figmalion, so it’s shorter and more digestible. Last week, the new comments were rolled out to everyone after release was postponed in November because of a bug. Figma is beta testing the iPad app, and I’m really excited to use it with FigJam — so many great possibilities for spatial thinking. They also launched the Figma Store with really fun and well-designed merch. The website itself is fantastic as well, with witty copywriting and an Easter egg when you’re inactive. Treat yourself to something nice!

While launching this newsletter in 2019, I was worried there may not be enough content to justify a new issue every two weeks. Clearly, I underestimated how vibrant and active the Figma community will become. Since then, I’ve heard from readers that some issues can be a little overwhelming — not surprising, considering, on average, there are 27 links per issue and sometimes as many as 41. The launch of Figmalion 2.0 in October simplified my publishing process, so now I’m finally ready to start sending the newsletter weekly. Hope you’ll enjoy shorter and more regular issues in the future!

P.S. Thanks to Denislav Jeliazkov for sponsoring the last few issues! Check out his book ​“Master UI Design Elements — The hidden secrets” or follow him on Twitter for great threads and tips on UI design.