Casey Newton interviews Dylan Field about antitrust issues, keeping control of his product road map, and whatever DALL‑E and other AI tools might mean for the future of design.
Web design meets e‑sports in a live Figma Arena. Inspired by Layer Tennis, this is a 1‑on‑1 tournament where players have 30 mins to come up with a design based on the brief provided during the stream. The audience votes to decide the winner.
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.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how @figma does product work.
— Sho Kuwamoto (@skuwamoto) September 23, 2022
And what makes Figma “Figma”?
This, in turn, made me realize I never followed up on my previous thread about roadmap prioritization.
So here goes….https://t.co/WqInVKd1xj
Luis shares jumping-off points for starting a new design system in Figma.
If you're looking to start a fresh design system within Figma, here's a jumping off point:
— luis. (@disco_lu) September 23, 2022
1️⃣ Team for design system
2️⃣ UI Kit project
3️⃣ Separate files for: Styles, Icons, Components
*️⃣ Extra platform-level libraries if your developers are split into platform teams pic.twitter.com/je5UCOpI78
Vijay Verma shares a few techniques for adding simple halftone effects in Figma. See also his experiments with Rogie’s upcoming NT plugin and how he achieved a frosted glass effect.
Yes, this is @figma. Simple halftone effects can be easily added to your photos and illustrations to give them a retro look.
— vijay verma ᵍᵐ (@realvjy) September 18, 2022
Another experimenting with @rogie NT plugin. Sharing techniques here 🧶 pic.twitter.com/X43m4oXSWg
Ridd with a pro tip on using Variants. Good prep work for the design tokens in the future!
Variants pro tip incoming 👀
— Ridd 🏛 (@Ridderingand) September 18, 2022
Create a single set of height variables.
And then apply them across all of your core "atoms" (buttons, inputs, etc.)
3 reasons why 👇 pic.twitter.com/McUW6B2Ua8
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.
Molly Hellmuth with a detailed walkthrough of beta features and why they’re worth using right away.
💡 Figma Tip: Starting using the new BETA PROPERTY features now!
— Molly Hellmuth (@molly_hellmuth) September 20, 2022
This update is huge! There are 3 major ways it’s going to make using component instances much easier for your design team.
Keep reading to learn how.. pic.twitter.com/T0OOkkXRIO
Joey Banks explains why new features are so important for the design systems’ work.
Sho Kuwamoto, Director of Product at Figma, on new features and applying the concept of “composition” from engineering to design systems.
One of the reasons I'm so excited about this new set of features is that it lets people use composition effectively.
— Sho Kuwamoto (@skuwamoto) September 20, 2022
I know that "composition" (used in this way) is an engineering term and not a design term, but I think it applies.
1/n https://t.co/SL5mNhoMNm
Vijay Verma with a gorgeous poster for Pixar’s upcoming Elemental movie. See the file and techniques he used in a thread.
From all the #D23Expo, I am most excited about Pixar's #elemental movie.
— vijay verma ᵍᵐ (@realvjy) September 12, 2022
The colors and overall poster really inspired me, so I created it in @figma over the weekend 😍 pic.twitter.com/sAaJqo8170
Fons Mans shows how to create rich gradients without any plugins — like this one, for example.
New tutorial! ✨
— Fons Mans (@FonsMans) September 13, 2022
Learn how to create an 'ultra gradient' with @figma, without using any plugins!
Let's get started 👇 pic.twitter.com/5eMYoPJc3z
Luis on why it’s important to optimize for the usage of components.
Something I'm see a lot is that we prioritise component *creation*, not *usage*
— luis. (@disco_lu) September 13, 2022
This usually ends with something like this (simple example). Building is easier, but usage harder
The "notification" component is buried in variant settings. It's also a different component! pic.twitter.com/R5s63ptJ4w
MDS with another take on Figma/Adobe: “The magic happens in the details and typically in things that you didn’t plan for”.
What makes software magical? Another take on Figma/Adobe for those of us who still wanna talk about it. pic.twitter.com/g2m5mQBEj0
— MDS (@mds) September 16, 2022
Andrei Herasimchuk, the ex-Lead Designer at Adobe, shares a list of “big wins” and “small wins” that Figma cofounders and he wrote down in December 2013. Pretty amazing to see how almost all of it is a reality now. (“Modernizing masking & gradient UI” sounds pretty sweet though!)
Found this recently. Taken Dec 2013. It’s the list of things @zoink, @evanwallace, & myself wrote down for @figma while still in the temp office in Palo Alto. The list of “Big Wins” was all Dylan & Evan, esp. the community and team use part. They had the vision, even back then. pic.twitter.com/6mZg6cJvhp
— Andrei Herasimchuk (@Trenti) September 16, 2022
Adobe representative to Protocol: “While we have been reducing our investment in XD, we will continue to support it. We are excited about Figma’s vision for the future of product design and the potential of our teams coming together to benefit our customers. After the transaction closes (expected in 2023), we will share more information.” RIP XD.
Adam Nash, one of the early investors in Figma, remembers his conversation with Dylan Field in 2013 about WebGL and moving graphic design to the cloud: “Dylan was not deterred. He explained that the heavy compute was the exact reason why moving to the cloud made sense. By providing high powered machines in the cloud, anyone could get access to an almost arbitrary amount of power without spending $10K, and latency & bandwidth had progressed to the point where shipping the UI bits to the client was a solved problem.”
The official announcement from Dylan Field.
A super useful tip by Miggi. The power of combining FigJam with Figma always keeps surprising me.
Blur out areas in your FigJam file with some @figma background blur shapes pasted in! #figmatip
— professor figma (@miggi) September 6, 2022
👉 Make a white rectangle in Figma
👉 Set blend mode to multiply
👉 Add background blur effect set to 50
👉 Paste into FigJam, resize + place over objects pic.twitter.com/TXhQmpPIyc
Clara Ujiie shows how to archive your work using pages and version history.
Want to archive your work in Figma?
— Figma (@figma) September 6, 2022
Here's how to do it.
Thanks, @claraujiie for the #FigmaTip 🤩 pic.twitter.com/rgBoePMlTA