After being at Figma from 2019 to early 2024 and seeing the company grow from less than 100 to over 1,500 employees, Software Engineer Andrew Chan wrote down some notes on what brought him to Figma and why he thinks it succeeded. He highlights two factors that created Figma’s ultimate moat — browser-first link sharing brought non-designers into the product, and their multiplayer technology was hard to copy for existing products like Adobe XD and Sketch: ​“I would guess that this was less of a ​“collaborative algorithms are really hard to implement” and more of a ​“existing products are really hard to make collaborative” problem: Framer moved to browser-based collaboration pretty successfully, but it did so by completely ditching its old product, while Figma-like design collaborative design tools created from scratch are pretty common these days.”

Another great point is on forming strong product opinions early on and crunching on them until they’re right: ​“One clear thing to me is that Figma’s astounding success in design was due in large part to the company identifying a gap in the design space and working on it essentially in secret for years. Folks like Rasmus and Sho formed strong opinions on nearly every aspect of the product-to-be, which we would spend the next few years realizing in fairly recognizable form. I will make this claim mostly without evidence, but suffice to say that many features like auto-layout and component variants had their bones laid out years in advance (although most newer features like variables were designed later AFAIK).”

Vincent van der Meulen, Design Engineer at Figma, talks about Figma’s approach of complementing designers rather than replacing them as a part of the SaaStr AI Summit panel. They follow four key AI principles: improve existing user behaviors, embrace frequent iteration, systematic quality control, and foster cross-functional collaboration.

First Round’s deep dive into how Figma Slides founding PM Mihika Kapoor transformed a hackathon project into one of Figma’s most anticipated launches.

Did you know that Figma’s cofounder Evan Wallace created a custom programming language Skew for their mobile rendering architecture? This story slipped my attention, but Andrew Chan wrote a fascinating look at some of its interesting features.

Erin and Carol from the Awkward Silences podcast are joined by Andrew Hogan, Figma’s Head of Insights, to explore the nature of collaboration today and how the structure of that collaboration can impact our ability to effect UX change.

Jay from Sneak Peek asked Tim Van Damme (UI3), Tammy Taabassum (AI), and Kelly Li from Figma to share their working projects and walk him through their file organization. Tim had one of the most humble takes on the design collaboration and process.

Ridd interviewed Andrei Herasimchuk, who had one of the most enviable design careers as an interface designer of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and later the first designer at Figma, with stints at Twitter, Yahoo, and Booking in between. I’ve been following him since the Adobe days, but I had no idea he also contributed to Figma early on!

Dylan Field talks about startups and European regulation on stage at Slush 2024.

Designer Advocate Ana Boyer: ​“UI3 prompted us to rebuild our own design system from the ground up. Here’s how designers and engineers came together to create a new foundation for building consistent, accessible products.”

Figma is opening an office in Sydney, its first in Australia: ​“The​opening of Figma’s Sydney office builds on​Figma’s​impact in Australia and will help deepen relationships​with its growing local community and key​customers​, such as Telstra​and Atlassian, who is also a Figma integration partner and investor. ”

Mihika Kapoor and Yuhki Yamashita gave a talk at the Lenny and Friends Summit on doing product reviews the right way. While I look forward to watching the full video when it’s available, the slides are pretty comprehensive. They point out that the main goal of product reviews is not making decisions but winning trust.

Claire Butler, a marketing lead at Figma, shares three principles that help market to designers or other groups of passionate experts. Make sure to watch the video she is referring to.

I furiously nodded while reading her second lesson: ​“If you can come up with and understand all of the content, you haven’t gone deep enough. Whatever you are doing will come across too generic, and thus will not resonate. They’ll sniff you out.”

Jenny Xie interviewed Marcin Wichary, Joel Miller, Ryhan Hassan, and KC Oh about the new Figma UI: ​“Our goal with UI3 is to keep designers in the flow by minimizing distractions and placing their work center stage. With that north star in mind, our team worked for over two years, iterating on myriad approaches — even reversing some core design decisions, like the floating navigation and properties panels, after launch.”

“Collaborative-design software maker Figma Inc. accused competitors of breaching a contract and copyright infringement by stealing its source code. Singapore-based Motiff Pte. Ltd., along with Chinese companies Yuanfudao HK Ltd. and Kanyun Holding Group Co., accessed Figma’s product under a subscription agreement and reverse engineered its copyrighted code for their own product in violation of Figma’s Master Subscription Agreement, according to a complaint filed Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.“

The court document includes a fascinating list of examples.

Fast Company on Figma’s rebrand: ​”Today, the company is launching a refreshed visual identity that represents its growing, post-Adobe breakup ambitions to be, well, just about everything. Figma’s been making moves to expand beyond its founding idea of being being a single product company for designers, to a multi-product company for multi-role creative teams. Now, the company’s refreshed brand is catching up and speaking to an expanded audience that includes developers and supporting team members like project managers, who help bring a design deliverable to life.”

Olivia Hingley for It’s Nice That: ​“Sitting at the core of the concept is a new brand idea: ​‘build by design’. Short and sweet, the idea reinstates that design is more than just a skill, department or process, it’s the ​“gravitational centre” of the brand. Three brand beliefs come from this idea: ​‘design is everyone’s business’, which speaks to the flexibility and broad nature of design, while the second, ​‘craft as a differentiator’, centers on the care and attention to detail that Figma propagates. […] And, the third and final belief is ​‘the idea is just the beginning’.”

I love how Figma showcased the community work on a giant screen at Times Square.

A deep dive into Figma’s brand refresh. ​“Figma’s visual identity has gotten a bold refresh. From playful primitives to a vibrant new palette, we’re unveiling our latest brand evolution — one that speaks to all product builders.” 

Last June, Figma acquired Diagram — one of the most promising startups building at the intersection of design and AI. Their small team of five joined Figma to build the AI features announced at this year’s Config.

During the last few weeks, 3 out of 5 ex-Diagram teammates left Figma. Founding Engineer Sidd announced his departure first and soon joined Vercel to work on v0. Founder & CEO Jordan Singer and Founding Product Designer Marco Cornacchia announced their resignations on the same day. I’ll be keeping an eye on Design Engineer Vincent van der Meulen and ML Engineer Andrew Pouliot.

Happy birthday to my favorite design tool!