It’s only been a few weeks since Figma released whopping 30 quality updates to the editor, and this week they shipped another 9! While most of them are quite small, one was long-anticipated by the design community — shadows are no longer displayed through transparent areas of objects! This means they behave the same way as shadows in CSS, making developer handoff so much easier. Speaking of handoff, I’m excited to welcome Zeplin as a sponsor — I used it in my work in the past, and it’s a fantastic product.

The design community stayed busy as well. Greg Huntoon shared a smart and easy-to-use way to version components using Variants. Jordan Singer announced Tricycle, a set of design automation tools powered by AI. Pablo Stanley recorded his process of vectorizing sketches. Rogie released yet another plugin, this time for importing HEIC files. See all of that and two dozen other links below!

P.S. I’m taking a summer break this month, so the next issue will come out in 3 weeks, on August 23rd. A major update to Figmalion is in the works and getting close to being finished — can’t wait to launch it soon!

Last week, Figma shipped several nifty updates, the most exciting of which is added support for multiple flows in prototypes. Presenting before/​after or alternative flows is much easier now!

Design community shared a lot of great tips recently – make sure to find time and go through them all! Microsoft released the new emojis, and they are beautiful – already available as a Community file, along with two other projects by their design team. If you’re into Marvel Universe, there are two incredible Loki artworks created in highly distinctive styles. If they inspire you to work on illustrations in Figma, Rogie King created a useful plugin for importing Procreate files straight to Figma, complete with layers, masks, and blend modes.

Enjoy the issue!

Have you watched Apple’s WWDC this year? Some folks threw together a Keynote Watch Party in FigJam, which is yet another creative way to use this fantastic app. Joey Banks has already updated his massive UI Kit to iOS 15, which you can find below. Figma shipped a huge set of quality updates to the editor — 30 new features, improvements, and fixes! Make sure to review the community file to not miss anything.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that a new beta of the desktop app for Apple Silicon was the main recent Figma event for me. While the regular app works fine on M1, it’s not as smooth and fast as the native version. For me, this was the last major app still working through Rosetta. Good riddance!

Figma already released videos from the first day of Config 2021, and recordings from the second day should be released today. I missed many of them during the conference and now looking forward to catching up on the Memorial Day weekend!

Have you tried FigJam yet? I adore all the UI interactions and details in Figma’s newest product. Make sure to go through behind-the-scenes reports on building it in a dedicated section below. Subscribers of this newsletter heard the rumors about FigJam and voice chat months ago, but newly announced Branches caught me by surprise. That was the only part of the design workflow I thought Abstract was handling better, and after years of work, Figma finally shipped the beta to Org accounts. Can’t wait to try it!

Dylan Field’s opening keynote with all announcements is already on YouTube, while recordings of other talks will be available in a month. If you missed the conference, check out a few talk recaps and slide decks below.

Figma is setting the stage for the next week’s Config with multiple smaller long-awaited releases. I bet bulleted and numbered lists, switching between accounts, and publishing individual components were their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th most popular feature requests. (Dark mode has to be number one!)

Don’t miss a great article on creating the official Figma kit for Tailwind UI, Yuan Qing Lim’s thoughts on monetizing Figma plugins, and an insider’s look at ordering of Auto Layout elements. See you (virtually) at the Config!

Have you tried the new quick action search yet? Pressing Cmd-/ (or Ctrl-/ on Windows) now provides instant access to hidden features and plugins, similar to Spotlight or Alfred on Mac. Love this update!

Registration for Config 2021 is open until April 15th — don’t miss your spot at this free 2‑day conference! The speakers’ lineup is great, and I’m always looking forward to new product announcements in the opening keynote.