Design Engineer Vincent van der Meulen explains how it was built.

Designer Joel Miller: ​“We’ve reorganized our properties panel to focus on component properties and added the ability to resize the panel to see more of a component description and longer label names.”

He also shows a new approach to layout properties with new Position and Layout panels, the new Auto Layout panel, a new setting that allows you to see labels above controls, and a way to join the waitlist.

Rasmus Andersson was one of the early designers at Figma and greatly impacted how it looked over the years. His thoughts on the redesign: ​“Not a fan of the floating sidebars, the rounded icons or the tiny layer hit targets, but I think pretty much everything else is good.”

Designer Ryhan Hassan shares insights into an incredibly challenging task of redesigning Figma. See also one of the early demos of UI3 from a few years ago.

Tim Van Damme created all the beautiful new icons for the UI3. (In his podcast with Lenny, Dylan Field shared how, in the early days of Figma, he often traced Tim’s icon sets from Dribbble to test Figma’s vector capabilities. Now, his icons have come full circle back to Figma.)

Behind-the-scenes look at how Ryhan Hassan, Joel Miller, and KC Oh landed on a more streamlined and adaptable interface. Don’t miss How we redesigned Figma talk at Config from this group.

On components: ​“As design systems took off and components became central, we realized that component controls like variants and instances deserved top billing above attributes like color and size.”

On streamlined the properties panel: ​“All layout-related options, including width, height, and Auto Layout, are now merged into a single panel. This departs from the typical x, y, w, h panel in most tools, but aligns more neatly with how products are built in code.”

On interface for usability: ​“UI3 introduces backgrounds on inputs, borders around dropdowns, rounded corners, and 200 expressive icons hand-drawn by designer Tim Van Damme. These serve as visual explanations of how to interact with the platform.”

Jordan Singer shares a few things he learned while designing and building AI at Figma.

“Cloud-based designer platform Figma is closing a deal to allow its employees and early investors to sell their stake to new and existing investors at a valuation of $12.5 billion, the company said on Thursday.” Good news for the team. After the Adobe deal was canceled, I assumed they’d do a liquidity event for employees and early investors.

“Figma is widely considered as a candidate to go public after antitrust regulators in Europe and Britain in December blocked what would have been among the biggest acquisitions of a software startup. New investors including Fidelity, Franklin Venture Partners and existing ones such as Sequoia and a16z are expected to acquire stakes totaling about $600 million to $900 million in the secondary sale. Figma was last valued at $10 billion in a private funding round in 2021.”

Designer Advocate Clara is interviewed by Lovers Magazine about her path into design, getting inspiration, community work, and workstation.

A new episode of Lenny’s Podcast with Mihika Kapoor, a design-engineer-PM hybrid at Figma, where she was an early PM on FigJam and is now spearheading development on a new product at the company that’s coming out this June (!!!) ​“She’s known as the go-to person at Figma for leading new 0‑to‑1 products, and, as you’ll hear in our conversation, beloved by everyone she works with. Her background includes founding Design Nation, a national nonprofit focused on democratizing design education for undergraduates; spearheading product launches at Meta; and community building within the NYC AI startup scene.” See also a few key takeaways from this conversation on Twitter.

Michael Mignano talks to Jordan Singer, AI lead at Figma and former Founder & CEO of Diagram. They covered the role of human designers in AI, what it’s like building AI features for the world’s leading product design platform, Jordan’s path from coder to designer to product builder to founder, and much more.

This April Fun Day, Figma had some fun with cursors. ​“What better way to celebrate this icon of interaction than with a look back at digital eras through the decades? For one week starting this April Fun Day, you’ll be able to choose throwback cursors inspired by four aesthetics from internet history: We’re calling them 8‑bit, Y2K, Skeuomorphic, and Aero. Here, we reminisce about bygone trends and reveal how we brought these vintages back to life.”

“Researcher Gus Griffin recently completed one year on artificial intelligence work at Figma. In this conversation with Figma’s Head of Insights, Andrew Hogan, Gus walks through AI feature fatigue, what people really want from artificial intelligence, and how his anthropology background helps him do his work.”

“Inspired by the Figma design team’s principles and methods for running design crits, a core group of Figma engineers, led by Ojan Vafai, set out to introduce a process somewhere in between a design crit and a technical review. This was the genesis of Figma’s engineering critiques, dedicated time for the engineering team to brainstorm novel approaches to technical problems, get feedback on existing work, and unblock each other. Today, engineering crits are a core part of our workflow, but it didn’t start out that way.”

In this episode of the Designing with AI podcast, Mia Blume chatted with Noah Levin, VP of Product Design at Figma, about the emotional ups and downs of the recent acquisition announcement and how it impacted the team, explored the implications of artificial intelligence on creativity and curiosity, leading teams through times of change and learning, decision-making, democratized access to information, and even the concept of love.

Dylan Field joins Sarah and Elad at No Priors podcast to discuss what’s next for an independent Figma, how AI can augment design and speed up the iteration loop, and how Figma is expanding beyond design with products that help the entire product team’s workflow.

An interview with Figma’s CTO Kris Rasmussen about Dev Mode and targeting developers. His take on low-code and no-code tools, like the two featured above: “…we’re actually really supportive of Locofy and also Anima — another example of one of these plugins on the Figma ecosystem. So we’re definitely thinking about their needs as well, as we continue to evolve.“ He added that Figma itself is looking at similar problems, but ​“at different ends of the spectrum”: ​“So we’re very much focused on helping to make the actual design process, the act of essentially visualizing what’s in people’s heads and aligning around it, more accessible and easier for the organization to participate in.”

Figma acquired Dynaboard, a collaborative low-code IDE for developers building full-stack web apps.

Here is what stood out to me in one of the interviews with Dylan Field I shared last week: ​“Dylan considers using this fee to do more strategic mergers and acquisitions in the future, and has an insightful way of thinking about what kind of products that could be: ​“Let’s figure out the value chain of what it takes to think about, get buy-in for, design, code, ship, and measure software. How do we complete that value chain?”

The original reporting by Forbes from last month on employee equity packages refresh and severance program. ​“Under Figma’s compensation update, employees who joined the company in the 16 months since the announced Adobe deal will receive additional shares of Figma, up to 70% of the initial intended value of their pay packages negotiated under the higher $20 billion price tag.”

On the updated valuation: ​“Figma’s move comes as the company must readjust to a startup environment more austere than the one during which it raised $200 million at its original $10 billion valuation in June 2021. Over that period, many startup unicorns […] raised down-rounds or saw their prices in the secondary market slashed. In his messaging to staff reviewed by Forbes, Field admitted that he didn’t know exactly what shares of Figma […] were worth.”

Regarding the Adobe acquisition, The New York Times writes about a few things that I don’t remember being covered before: ​“In the spring of 2020, Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer, tried buying Figma, according to regulatory filings. Mr. Field said no. A year later, Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s chief executive, tried again. Mr. Field declined. […] In June 2022, Adobe offered to buy Figma again, this time for $20 billion. Figma solicited another buyer and aimed for a higher price, according to a filing, but ultimately accepted the $20 billion. A week before the merger was announced that September, Adobe canceled work on ​“Project Spice,” a new product that regulators said would have put it in direct competition with Figma.”

Sounds like providing employee liquidity and IPO are on the table for the future: ​“Employees and early investors expect Figma to let them sell a portion of their shares this year in what is known as a tender offer, though no plans have been made. The company’s best option for a payout now is to go public, which could take years.”