Double Glitch presents the video tutorial on cursor tracking technique as the first part of his series on advanced prototyping in Figma. You might remember his demo of this effect from a few months ago. A smart way to achieve the effect with a grid of interactive components!

Ridd interviewed Nikolas Klein and Garrett Miller from the prototyping team at Figma. Together, they provide a behind-the-scenes look at everything that led up to the advanced prototyping release at Config 2023. For a few takeaways on two types of prototypes and the use of variables, see this thread by Ridd.

Sho Kuwamoto on variables and simplicity: ​“The obvious way to make things simpler is to remove things. Or maybe hide things. But one of the surprising aspects of simplicity is that sometimes, in order to make things feel more simple, you have to add more stuff.”

Jacob Miller, a Product Manager on the Design Systems team, unpacks the new features and answers questions about variables: ​“Our latest updates to variables in Figma allow for even more flexibility with updates to stroke weight, effects, layout grid, and layer opacity, along with nested instance variant binding. These upgrades not only boost design customization, they help align design and code like never before. Here, we share an overview of what we’re shipping with variables, how to use them in your current workflow, and where we’re going next with typography.”

Not mentioned in the article, but my favorite update is that now the variables authoring window can be resized! See also this thread by Luis, and Hugo’s accurate summary of the community’s reaction.

Congrats to Jordan Singer on making it to the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list: ​“Product designer-turned-entrepreneur Jorgan Singer founded Diagram, a startup that created web-based design tools dubbed ​“Magician” and ​“Genius” that used AI and text-based prompts to generate design ideas and suggest design recommendations. Diagram quickly gained steam among its 100,000 users before being acquired by $20 billion design company Figma in 2023.” For more of his story, listen to the ​“Building Design Tools” episode of the Design is for Everyone Podcast and a long list of ideas that he has built since 2015.

A quick tutorial on creating light rays inspired by Rogie and Vijay with the Noise & Texture plugin.

A new webinar is a panel discussion with Hugo Raymond, a Designer Advocate at Figma, and three guests: Karl Kech, Design Engineer at DuckDuckGo; Amber Feinerman, Design Systems at Netflix; and Pranathi Peri, Product Designer at Graphite. They discuss the evolving role of design engineers and technologists in the tech industry, career progression, impact, specialization, and navigating the gap between design and engineering.

Fons Mans partnered with Framer again this year for a new advent calendar of design gifts — everything from heavily discounted apps to free icon and wallpaper packs.

Nice update to the Community resource pages — a new image gallery, plugin videos, and picking a relevant category to better showcase what kind of resource it is and what it can do. Also, remixes can no longer be published as they were misleading when it came to the authorship of the original resources.

If you have a paid resource in the Community, monthly payout statements are now available in your Community profile. Just click ​“View payout statements” under the ​“Metrics” tab to download a CSV of your earnings on Community.

A workshop by Miggi and Alex exploring ways to use FigJam like a pro, including shortcuts, deep-dive features, and ways to speed up your workflow — both independently, and when collaborating with others!

“In this livestream, Figma designer advocates, product managers, engineers, and designers will take you through everything we launched — from new on-canvas previews for the font picker, to fun new ways to collaborate in FigJam and time-saving prototyping updates.”

At this point, Vijay is just showing off. Awesome iteration on an earlier shaders experiment by Rogie.

Luis shows how to make slot components more useful by ​“outsourcing” the component composition to a main component, whilst still allowing for completely flexible content within.

Jordan Singer came up with another wild AI experiment — sketch or design anything in Figma or FigJam and turn it into a functional prototype with one click of a button. This demo is a great example — it built all the functionality correctly based just on a few text labels!

Vice President of Product, Sho Kuwamoto, explains why quality-of-life improvements are at the core of Figma: ​“I don’t want to be at a company that only invests in things that will make headlines. I want to make a product that I feel proud of. The truth is, people do resonate with little changes, and we know that because we pay attention to our users’ individual stories. Plus, when you celebrate the small things and give each one their moment, it gives people a chance to recognize how important each one is.”

Jake goes into the relationship between design and development in product creation and illustrates it using a quadrant model, dividing the process into four key areas: product design, design patterns, product development, and development patterns. Successful collaboration requires trust and a deep understanding of each other’s perspectives.

“Figma can be a magical place to collaborate, build, and ship, but if you’re just starting out, it can be overwhelming. Join our team for a Q&A focused on the need to know features for those just getting started to help you build out your Figma designs successfully and efficiently.”

A new design system from Meng To with hundreds of customizable Figma and Framer components and templates. Looks incredible, and the kit is meticulously organized with variables, variants, and adaptive layouts. See also his recent livestream with a discussion around key challenges while building the design system, the experience of using Figma variables and components, and tips for transitioning from Figma to Framer.

I missed Vijay’s Figma recreations! A great illustration of the Sony Walkman, full of little details and textures. ​“Most of the shapes are created using primitive shapes with shadows and blend modes.”