Matt recorded his first reaction walkthrough of the new UI3 and Make Designs AI features. Regarding UI3, I’d also love an option to hide a floating toolbar and ​“Ready for dev” actions. (There are no developers in my personal workspace, and even at work we have Figma projects with only marketing assets that would never require development.)

A very timely episode of Dive, where Ridd interviews Jordan Singer live at Config about his journey from the Diagram acquisition to Figma’s 2024 AI release. In the middle, they discuss how Figma’s generative features work and why they needed to create a UI kit. (A funny inception moment — at 45:22, I’m coming into view to take this picture.)

The next day, Dylan Field posted a thread stating that ​“the accusations around data training in this tweet are false” and reiterating that Make Designs ​“uses off-the-shelf LLMs, combined with design systems we commissioned to be used by these models.”

The Make Designs feature was disabled until the team completes a full QA pass on the underlying design system.

Ridd shows his advanced Raycast setup. One thing I adopted immediately is the Figma File Search extension he recommended — what a wonderful time-saver! The Color Picker and Ruler extensions might replace some of the third-party tools I’ve been relying on as well. 

Femke made a template for the presentation deck as an overview of your next design project.

Mihika shares the inspiration and the process of making one of the coolest Slides features.

I shared Lenny’s interview with Mihika a couple of months ago, but it’s worth recommending again now that it’s clear that this ​“0 to 1” product she talked about was Figma Slides.

Mihika Kapoor shares the story of taking Flides from the Maker Week pitch to reality. That team photo in the end is a poor gold. Also, see Keeyen’s demo tutorial from a year ago with an early prototype, where he pretends to be Zander Supafast.

“You’ll now find Figma Slides templates featured on our homepage, a new much-improved navigation, and simpler category pages.” Oh, and there is also a new homepage!

A base UI kit from Advocates Luis and Jake is available in the Figma assets panel by default. It’s backed with a fully Code Connected React codebase. See Luis’ thread on how and why it was made.

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.”

Pablo Stanley highlights some of the little details that were announced at Config.

Recap and wishlist from Joey Banks: ​“While the updates felt a little more iterative this time around rather than innovative, what Figma shared seems to be paving the way for all that’s near and far ahead. In case you missed the product keynote, or if perhaps you’d just like a recap of the highlights from the perspective of a design systems designer, I’d love to share all that’s new with you in this newsletter.”

This session is a must-see if you have time for only one. CEO Dylan Field’s opening keynote walks through how Figma rethinks product development from the ground up and introduces new methods to help you make great work.

A new free resource by Fons Mans.

Martin Bekerman is back with a new vector illustration made in Figma.

A 2‑hour course by Meng To on building a real website from a Figma template using Codux. ​“You’ll master responsive design, collaborate with developers on a real React project, export CSS from Figma using Locofy, set up breakpoints with media queries, add CSS animations, improve SEO, create multiple pages with React Router, and publish your site. By following best practices, you’ll bridge design and development, improve your web design skills.” 

Double Glitch made a new tutorial on creating a real working parallax effect in Figma. Don’t miss the Community file as well! 

Ridd explains how to make your components easier to use by exposing nested instances.

Jacob Miller shares two variables tips to avoid the most common problems: 1) ​“Never create a mode that shouldn’t be set at the page level” (read more about inheriting a context), and 2) ​“Never publish a variable that users shouldn’t consume” (see why component-scoped variables can 10x the number of variables you ship). Don’t miss discussions in replies.