“The Justice Department is preparing to open an in-depth investigation of Adobe’s $20 billion takeover of design collaboration company Figma, according to four people with knowledge of the matter and a document viewed by POLITICO.”

Seems like Figma’s design team had a fantastic time together in their San Francisco hub.

I’m indifferent to the Halloween celebration, but the fact that the Figma team took the time to add so many fun touches across both apps makes me happy.

In this CNBC interview, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen shares his thoughts on the company’s plans to acquire Figma and innovation in a hybrid work environment.

Noah Levin talks about Figma’s unique processes in hiring and culture on the Design To Be podcast.

An unofficial audio series (definitely not a podcast!) from the Figma designer advocates team.

One of the most interesting takes on the acquisition I’ve read so far. Wenting Zhang left Adobe over a year ago, but before that she spent 1.5 years working on Adobe XD and 5 years on Adobe Fonts (ex-Typekit). While as an ADBE investor she has a clear bias about the price, her observation about the org chart oddity is really interesting.

“On the Figma security team, our goal is to help Figmates ship new products and features as securely as possible — all without slowing them down. We wanted to share our operating model, which prioritizes transparency, decentralized and reusable solutions, and earning trust over mandating processes.”

“Knowing how people use Figma is a critical process for making design accessible to everyone, and it requires us to carefully collect and analyze different types of user data. It’s a big responsibility to be entrusted with this data, so we want to be sure our customers know what we use it for and why.”

Figma asked the design company COLLINS to help craft a brand story and campaign that would debunk the Myth of the Lone Genius and get everyone from the intern to the C‑suite collaborating on their platform. The two companies worked closely together on this fantastic story.

Francisco Tolmasky asks an important question — after Figma did the unimagined and released design tool in the browser, where are all other cool web apps built with this technology? A few examples I can think of are Framer and Spline.

Kavir Kaycee explains why Figma won over the competition from the perspective of the Product Manager. He explains Figma’s success by being collaborative, community-driven, and affordable. I also like his point that Figma might become the starting point for all software development in the future.

On this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast – Interview Series, the host Daniel Newman is joined by Ashley Still, Senior Vice President of Digital Media/​Marketing, Strategy & Partnerships for Adobe, to take a look at Adobe’s acquisition of Figma.

Congrats to the FigJam team! It’s definitely the most fun and delightful product I’ve used in a while.

Sho Kuwamoto describes how the editor team works. Building the process around ​“What do our users want us to make better?” instead of self-centered questions is probably what makes Figma so magical.

A piece on why businesses should adopt a design-centric mindset to ensure success, with commentary by Nikolas Klein, Product Designer at Figma since 2018.

The Wall Street Journal gathered thoughts and concerns on the deal from folks in the industry, including Scott Belsky, Fons Mans, and Yuhki Yamashita.

Matt Stoller: ​“My instinct is that this merger is illegal and that it will be blocked or abandoned. But I’m not 100% sure, as there are also technical issues here that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. But even within the merging parties, there is genuine concern about whether this merger will close. Internally, Adobe executives are already telling employees not to write anything down about the merger for fear it will be found by government investigators.”

Garry Tan on 10,000 landmines that Dylan Field and Figma had to overcome on their way to success.

Index Ventures is Figma’s first and largest venture partner. In this post, Danny Rimer questions what makes Figma so special and talks about the generational significance of design thinking and Dylan’s focus on the community.