MDS pitches in: ​“There is something fundamentally different about freeform exploration versus direct end product manipulation. The same way there’s a big difference between drawing with a pencil on paper, moving objects around on a screen, or writing words in a journal versus typing words on a screen. And now we can have AI do some or all of that for us.”

“So I say let cookie cutter primitives happen. Every font uses the exact same alphabet. Every song uses the same 12 notes. Some people will always want to build something unique regardless of those primitives. […] The idea that everything may become cookie cutter is not an actual problem. It’s a theoretical problem. Meanwhile, there are real problems with real impact waiting to be solved.”

Kaari replies: ​“The ​“make your own things” from generic blocks idea is warm one, and I do appreciate it. Where it starts to lose me is when it tries to force a reality that doesn’t really exist, and it’s not what people do or look for. Look at any craft. The kitchen. The workshop. Purpose-built spaces filled with purpose-built tools, often shaped by centuries of tradition (also sometimes known as experience). Serious craftspeople don’t operate in primitives. A chef doesn’t stock ​“a knife”, ​“a pot”, ​“a carrot”. They have a specific knife, a specific size, a tradition they trust.”

Kaari clarifies his thoughts in an article: ​“I tend to think about design as a search, not a production pipeline. You start with a messy problem. Early on, you do not know the answer. This is why I never fully buy the idea that design is about output. I agree that design is useless without shipping, but the process of designing is not. The design process, and the suffering part of that process, are valuable. […] Use whatever tools you want, but be deliberate about what mode you are in. Protect exploration from premature constraint. Invite constraints when you are ready to learn from them. Use code as feedback, not as a cage.”

On constraints: ​“If you let constraints define the space too early, you do not just get a worse outcome. You lose outcomes that never get discovered.”

On unification: ​“The dream of a coherent universe is compelling. A world where ideas move from chaos to clarity without translation loss. Where designers can build and builders can design. I see the desire, and it can be good. But unification has a shadow side. It can turn into standardization. If everything is built from the same primitives, you get the same patterns repeated across teams. Tools raise the floor, but they can also lower the ceiling if they quietly define what is worth attempting. If the easiest path is always the most conventional path, convention becomes the product.”

Karri Saarinen reacts to the announcement of a visual editor in Cursor: ​“Whenever a designer becomes more of a builder, some idealism and creativity dies. Not because building is bad, but because you start out including constraints earlier in the process than they should. […] People forget that the creative process is not about tools. It’s about forming a vision, and then translating that vision into some form.”

Tommy Geoco perfectly summarized the debate between Karri Saarinen from Linear and Ryo Lu from Cursor.

Designer Advocate Anthony DiSpezio is joined by Christine Vallaure for a walkthrough of best practices for designing responsive websites in Figma Sites. They cover how to design across breakpoints, tips for layout and structure, and other best practices.

Ridd highlights a few examples from his workflow of delivering production-ready code to his product. Love this part: ​“I explored this concept in Make and really liked where it landed. A couple years ago, I would’ve dropped a Cleanshot .gif on the canvas and asked my developer to recreate it as closely as possible. But I’m no longer making concept cars. This component is the design. Every detail is rooted in code and behaves exactly how I want it to in production.”

Luis made an incredibly useful widget to help check off requirements before the component gets to production — states, accessibility, documentation, tokens, etc. Checklists are an underrated tool for optimizing routine tasks, and I’m looking forward to trying this one. (Design Systems Checklist is another great resource worth checking out.)

Ana Boyer designs a web homepage, showcasing recently launched Figma Design and Draw features. ​“Learn how to create a text-inlay parallax hero using Remove background and Isolate object, apply Glass effects, expand an image within a grid, generate illustrations via AI prompts, and add Draw texture effects.”

In his talk at Converge 2025, Luis Ouriach makes a compelling argument that we create too many design tokens — particularly for colors.

Dylan Field shows several demos prepared with Gemini 3 Pro and highlights how this model stood out in one-shot generation and a wide range of visual aesthetics.

Molly suggests using separate color palettes for marketing and product design, as they have different goals and speed of iteration.

Noah Levin, VP of Design at Figma, shows how creative image prompting with the new Nano Banana Pro model can add serious value to your work across all of Figma’s products. I really liked the practicality of examples in this article, from updating a headshot to match the rest of the team to preparing a dark version of the illustration.

In the latest episode of Boz to the Future, Meta CTO Andrew ​“Boz” Bosworth sits down with Dylan Field: ​“Boz and Dylan dive deep into the intersection of technology and creativity, from the early days when designers were scarce to today’s collaborative, cloud-based workflows. They talk about the imminent paradigm shift in interfaces and what comes after text prompting. They discuss what stays evergreen despite rapid technological change, and why the pursuit of craft remains fundamentally human.”

Dylan Field was a guest on the Uncapped podcast with Jack Altman, where they discussed the slow build of Figma vs. the dizzying start of today’s AI startups, the role of AI and humans in design, the importance of staying connected to young people, and what it takes to be a strong and empathetic leader.

Great overflow from Jake on how developers and designers collaborate using Figma’s newest workflow updates and features. He covers design systems, Dev Mode, Code Connect, Code Syntax for variables, Annotations, AI, and code generation.

Luis explores a few approaches for handling components used in multiple design files but not yet ready for the main library. Delaying the creation of components until later doesn’t scale. Using naming conventions and canvas organization to separate local components doesn’t help with bringing them to another file. The best solution is to create Staging Libraries, ​“where your specific team, feature, squad, whatever can create what is in effect an extension of the system for your specific piece of work.” When the component needs to be used across multiple files, it can be pushed from the local level to the Staging library, and once it’s ready to become a part of the design system, it can be moved to the Global library.

With variables now supporting extended collections, Luis Ouriach put together structure recommendations for multi-brand systems.

Also fun to see how Figma uses extended collection for its own multi-brand system.

It’s wild how long it takes to build some of these larger features. Jacob Miller, a Product Manager for the Design Systems and AI team at Figma, shares an early exploration for slots from 3 years ago! I’ve been begging Jacob for slots at this year’s Config and got a feeling that they’re already working on it, but still it will be launched only next year.

If you wonder why it’s taking so long, Jacob wrote an insightful reply on how his team approaches these changes: ​“With design systems features, we have to plan them years in advance. Things like components, variables, and styles are used on the order of billions — one wrong move will result in breaking files and ruining critical design work. We have to be methodical. […] With DS features, I’m usually planning them around 3 years in advance.”

If you’re curious how slots and other new features will work, check out Jacob’s AMA.

Ridd led a panel about how AI is shifting design workflows, where Nick Pattison from Primary, Pranathi Peri from v0 (Vercel), and Henry Modisett from Perplexity were sharing how they use AI for prototyping and exploring ideas. One pattern that stood out to me between this panel and the above Superhuman rebrand case study is how designers now create specialized one-off tools for generating patterns, brand assets, or special effects. Personal software will only get more and more common.