Rasmus Andersson shared a few screenshots from the early days of Figma.

Dylan Field is interviewed by Guy Raz, a host of the How I Built This podcast, ​“where innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists take us through the often challenging journeys they took to build their now iconic companies.” See a few highlights from this conversation in the blog post 7 moments that shaped Figma, as told by Dylan Field.

Figma acquired Payload, an open-source Next.js CMS. James Mikrut, founder of Payload: ​“Figma and Payload together can and will solve a problem that’s been bugging me (and probably all of you) for years. The gap between design and code still exists. Designers create in Figma, then devs recreate in code, then content teams struggle to maintain it all. It’s inefficient and frustrating. And historically, the CMS tends to make it worse. With Figma, we can (and will) solve these problems in new ways without compromising.”

Kris Rasmussen, CTO of Figma: ​“When we announced Figma Sites at Config, we shared that we’ll be rolling out a CMS for it in the months ahead. Figma CMS will make life easier for marketers and designers who need to update website content, and Payload brings all the stuff developers love—a powerful, customizable backend for building scalable websites and apps, plus an intuitive admin panel for editors. By teaming up with Payload, we’re creating something special.”

This is huge! A few months ago, I wanted to use Framer for a marketing website but ended up recommending building a custom website only because its CMS was so lacking. When Figma announced that Figma Sites CMS is ​“coming soon”, I expected something just as barebones in the beginning. Getting a proper CMS in addition to code layers and Figma Make components makes Sites insanely customizable and powerful.

Robert Bye keeps sharing lessons he learned at Figma. In part 3, he talks about autonomy, creativity, collaboration, communication, and camaraderie which he saw at Figma’s most inspiring teams daily. ​“Before joining Figma, I experienced far too many teams riddled with people playing politics, jockeying for credit, and optimising for performance reviews. Thankfully, that culture was refreshingly rare at Figma. Instead, most folks genuinely enjoyed collaborating, celebrated each other’s wins, and championed each other’s successes. Whether it was PMs ensuring designers presented their own work to leadership or team leads publicly praising IC engineers for fixing gnarly bugs, ego-free collaboration was consistently modelled.”

Bloomberg: ​“Design software business Figma Inc. hired Morgan Stanley to lead what could be one of the year’s biggest initial public offerings, according to people familiar with the matter. Figma, backed by Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, has also brought on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Allen & Co. for the listing, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information wasn’t public. Figma, which said in April that it had filed confidentially for an IPO, could go public as soon as this year, the people said.”

Noah Levin, VP of Design at Figma, gives a shout-out to designers behind the new product releases. First, I love seeing the individuals getting recognized for their hard work. Second, this is a great list of people to follow right away.

After wrapping up his time as a PM at Figma, Robert Bye reflects on what he learned there and shares a few patterns that he thinks made the difference. This post focuses on craft: ​“There was this unspoken agreement that craft mattered. Everyone, from PMs to engineers to designers, took serious pride in their work. But no one took themselves too seriously. It was confident without ego. People wanted to do great work and genuinely cared.”

Claire Butler demystifies the role of marketing and sales in Figma’s bottoms-up go-to-market (GTM) strategy. It starts with a framework you can apply to your business, and this post will help you decide whether this approach is right for you.

“What seemed like a straightforward request — add a horizontal scroll bar to the Layers panel in Figma — presented unexpected challenges. Here’s how the design and engineering teams iterated and prototyped to find the right solution.”

“In UX design, a single misplaced verb can lead users astray, frustrating their expectations and creating confusion. That’s why UX Writer Henry Freedland chose his words very carefully when he was brought in to help polish a new prototyping feature.”

Robert Bye reflects on his time at Figma. I love the way he defines product sense as ​“Reading data + Listening to users + Taste + Intuition + Craft”. Here is how to develop it: ​“I’ve come to believe that product sense isn’t really something you can learn in the traditional sense. You can’t just read a book or take a course and expect to be good at it. It’s something you develop over time – by being curious, by trying things out, and most importantly, by surrounding yourself with people who have great taste who are willing to constructively critique each other’s work.”

“We founded Modyfi to build the design platform that multidisciplinary designers deserve. We have known the team at Figma for a while, and have admired what they’ve built for the broader design community, as well as their shared mission to make design more accessible. We believe that together, we can continue to innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible for designers. As part of this transition, Modyfi will no longer be available after Friday, June 13th.”

The design community never lets a good meme opportunity go to waste. ​“Figma slapped Swedish AI coding startup Loveable with a cease-and-desist warning for naming one of its new product features ​“Dev Mode.” It turns out Figma successfully trademarked the term Dev Mode in November last year, according to the US Patent and Trademark office, having introduced its own Dev Mode feature in 2023.”

The time has come: ​“Design software maker Figma said on Tuesday that it has submitted paperwork to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.”

Jay chats with Natasha Tenggoro who shows how she designed AI features for Figma Slides. You will learn about Natasha’s design process, AI design, designing shadows, design explorations for Slides and more.

Claire Butler: ​“A love letter to scaling from 10 to 1400 people and 0 to millions of users over a decade as Figma’s first marketing and business hire.” One of my favorite insights: ​“As a product marketer I’d been trained to lead with ​“benefits over features,” but with designers that didn’t work. They cared about what the tool could actually do. They’d believe the benefits once they experienced them.”

“In this interview, Jay chats with Natasha Tenggoro who shows how she designed AI features for FigJam. You will learn about Natasha’s design process, AI design, presenting to leadership and more.”

So excited to dive into it! ​“This file showcases the UI3 design language from Figma’s internal design system, featuring the styles, components, and variables that help Figma’s design team build products. By sharing this publicly, we hope to support other teams and creators, whether it’s with developing Figma plugins/​widgets, exploring ideas, or even creating your own design guidelines and UI Kits in Figma.”

In time for fully transitioning to UI3, Jay chats with Tim Van Damme who shows how he designed UI3 icons in Figma. You will learn about Tim’s icon design process, preserving visual weight, how he makes icons playful, and more. Don’t miss part 2, where they discuss designing UI3.