Luis Ouriach released a free shadcn/​ui Figma kit, including Tailwind colors, semantic light/​dark colors, typographic variables and styles, effects, components, example pages, and space utility variables. If you’re curious how it was made, Luis documented every step of the process, starting back in September of last year.

I loved this example of going deep on a topic using FigJam. Tom Lowry, Figma’s Advocacy Director, shows how he approached researching and building a custom mountain bike by mapping out and thinking through every aspect of the build in FigJam.

Mal and Akbar discuss ways to bridge the gap between designers and developers.

Jacob Miller from Figma ran a poll and discovered that ¹⁄₃ of designers misunderstand DPI. In this post, he explains the relationship between pixel count, DPI, and physical size.

Miggi shows three updates to frame presets in UI3: the first frame dropped onto a blank canvas will land at 0x0y coordinates; when clicking on the canvas to add a new frame, Figma will default to the size of the last-used frame; when using the frame tool, quick-add indicators will appear beside and between frames so you can quickly insert additional frames.

Prevent accidental removal of FigJam sections by locking the background of a section.

Molly Hellmuth had Brad Frost, author of Atomic Design, as a special guest at one of the recent cohorts of her Design System Bootcamp course. Molly’s students asked him so many great questions that after the Q&A, he recorded a video answering them again for a wider audience. Topics include design systems, workflow, atomic design, the future of design systems, buy-in, designer-developer collaboration, personal development, and global design system stuff. 

The next cohort of Molly’s 5‑week course starts on January 13th, which is the last scheduled cohort for now. Molly generously offers Figmalion readers $100 off with the coupon code FIGMALION100.

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!

A new plugin from Meng To turns Figma designs into production-level code with the power of Claude AI and GPT-4o. I mentioned it in the last newsletter, and it looks very promising so far. The plugin is free, but you’ll need to bring your own API keys.

Watch the video where Meng explains his Figma to SwiftUI code workflow.

A new introductory Figma tutorial from Miggi, updated for UI3. It covers basic concepts like shapes, vector graphics, typography, resizing, Auto Layout, and applying them all to build a simple user interface card.

Molly Hellmuth with a tip on using the ​“Ignore auto layout” feature to add a scrollbar to the menu, among other things. It’s one of my favorite features, making it easy to preserve Auto Layout while making designs more realistic and interesting.

Steven Levy from WIRED discusses with Dylan Field how Figma is reinventing design tools to meet the needs of tomorrow’s creators and the evolving role of designers in an AI-driven world. I was so happy that Steven asked Dylan about his hoodie and let the fascinating nerdery unfold.

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

Meng To is working on a free plugin (requiring API keys) for turning designs into code using Claude.

Luis measures and compares the performance of a complex component built as a single mega-variant vs. nested and bubbled instances. While the nested instance approach is faster and more maintainable, he shares a few alternatives that are worth considering.

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.”

Ridd brings up an important point — design systems became too complicated and associated with scale, but they’re still the perfect first step for startups. The solution is to keep things simple and focus on a few basic components and primitives in the ​“design toolkit”.

I had a few conversations about building design systems lately, and my general approach was to start from scratch only if a dedicated team is working on it. Most often, picking an open-source component library like shadcn/​ui or similar and customizing it to your needs is a much faster and more aligned approach.

Vijay shows how to create a cool flower illustration in a few simple steps.

Joey Banks on creating responsive and robust components within Figma: ​“Creating a component in Figma is relatively easy. However, building a component that works well in various situations and for different screen widths and heights using tools like constraints and auto layout can be more challenging and intimidating. Let’s first talk about those tools and how they work within Figma, and I’ll share the techniques and practices that have helped me ensure I’m building reliable components for those depending on the system.”

Jenny Wen on the design process: ​“The way I’ve seen great work made isn’t using any sort of design process. It’s skipping steps when we deem them unnecessary. It’s doing them out of order just for the heck of it. It’s backtracking when we’re unsatisfied. It’s changing things after we’ve handed off the design. It’s starting from the solution first. It’s operating on vibes and intuition. It’s making something just for the sake of making people smile. It’s a feeling that we nailed it. It’s knowing how to bend the process in your favor. It’s the sense to know how to keep making your work better. And it’s a clear, unwavering ideal of what good looks like.”