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.
Performance updates are always welcome: “We’ve reduced the amount of CPU usage FigJam and Figma take up. Large files with many users should run more smoothly now.”
Recently I’ve shared a few no-code tools for generating code from Figma mockups, but this one is different and works in reverse by generating Figma components and variants from your code and Storybook stories. Nifty idea!
Bruno Figueiredo talks to Miguel Cardona about his journey to the world of design, work at Figma, and design education.
A few improvements to the file browser. As you type in the search field, Figma now shows a preview of matching search results, sectioned off by resource type (files, projects, people, and so on). There is also supposed to be a new filter by a file type, but I couldn’t find it 🤷♂️
In this tutorial, one of the designers from Noun Project gives a few quick tips on using Figma’s “Smart Animate” tool to animate icons in your UI.
A cool explainer of impressive interactive effects made with Figma, Spline, and Anima.
Amanda Kleha, CCO at Figma: “We want Figma to be a place where everyone can participate in the design process together—from brainstorm to build—while also making it easy to stay organized and flow from one task to the next. That’s why we’re excited to launch new FigJam plans, as well as a new Figma Enterprise plan, to welcome more people into the design process.”
FigJam is out of beta with new paid plans for teams that want to collaborate without limits. Figma also got a new Enterprise plan “that provides the structure, granular controls, advanced security, and support that organizations need to support all the groups that take part in their design process.” (The Twitter thread by Sean Chin provides a curious look behind the scenes on how long it takes to ship something like this.)
A few bug fixes related to prototypes.
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.
Welcome to the last issue of 2021! I hope you’re taking some time off work and enjoying the holiday season. It’s been a busy year for me — besides launching the new website and redesigning this newsletter, I shared 715 links in 26 issues of the Figmalion. To find the best things to share, I reviewed 30–35 thousand items in my internal daily digest. That’s quite a lot! 😅
The team at Figma was busy too. Here is a shortlist of my favorite updates shipped this year: quick action menu, bulleted and numbered lists, desktop app for Apple Silicon, Branching, knockout shadow, Interactive Components, new comments, and of course FigJam! (Reminder that App Updates topic is the most comprehensive way to see all changes.)
Looking forward to what 2022 will bring us!