Rob Hope interviews a design wizard Vijay Verma. ​“Vijay Verma is a talented designer renowned for his intricate Figma art and his extensive portfolio of free digital resources. In this episode, we explore his humble beginnings as an electrician in India and his rise to become one of the most beloved designers in the Figma community. Additionally, we have a special case study where Vijay walks us through his character design process, complete with a bonus time-lapse recording he sent after the interview.” 

Whoa, finally! Can’t believe this is getting fixed a few days before Config. Add bold, italic, underline, or strikethrough font style to a portion of text with an applied style without detaching it first.

Jordan Singer shares a few things he learned while designing and building AI at Figma.

Christine Vallaure made a responsive and modular type scale using a scaling ratio approach.

Designer Advocate Ana Boyer with a reminder to plan your tokens and variables implementation before creating them in Figma. ​“In general, building then refactoring your variables is much more work than taking more time to plan before implementing. As they say: measure twice, cut once.” (That said, making refactoring easier in Figma won’t hurt.)

Dan Hollick shared his Creator Micro setup (with a beautiful illustration, of course!), and there are some good ideas in replies as well. I also shared my setup on Twitter.

Using it for a few weeks made me dream of eink key caps that can be updated based on the current mode. I find it hard to remember what keys do across four modes, so I rarely switch them. Elgato Stream Deck might be the answer, but I’m not a big fan of the look.

Matt D. Smith boiled down his design process into eight steps. I love how a big part of it is conditional on the project’s complexity. So many designers make the mistake of following a complicated process and taking extra steps on more straightforward projects, where that time is better spent on another round of experimentation or iteration. (See also the above quote from Linear.)

The move of drafts to teams caused a big enough uproar in the Figma community to warrant an explanation from Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma. Dann Petty made one of the strongest arguments against this change.

The strong feelings made me wonder about the differences in how we use Figma, and it probably comes down to handling multiple accounts and teams. I usually have two Figma accounts — one for personal projects and another tied to my work email address. Each account has its own drafts, so my personal drafts are never mixed with work. If you’re a freelancer and a part of multiple teams with a single email address, all your drafts are mixed, and separating them can feel like an invasion into your personal space. I don’t share the strong feelings on this change, but can see where Dann and others are coming from. (Pro tip: I use a separate Figma Beta app for the personal account, so I never have to switch accounts in the app.)

Christine Vallaure’s talk at last year’s SmashingConf on CSS Container Queries and how designers can tackle them using Figma. If videos are not your jam, see her article on Why UI designers should understand Flexbox and CSS Grid.

A new video in Luis Ouriach’s ​“My First Variable” series on the typography support within variables. He explains using string and number variables to set font weights, combining weights with styles such as italics, grouping text variables, aliasing font families, naming conventions, and more.

Vijay is doing his magic with a modular illustration built from components.

Meng To shows a website made entirely in Figma and exported to React with Loco​fy​.ai, which I wrote about in issue #155. Responsive layout, breakpoints, pages, animations — everything just works. He gives a few tips on preparing your design for the seamless export to code.

That’s not all! Now, you can also select multiple pages by holding Shift to rename, delete, or move them in bulk.

I fully expected all big product announcements to be saved for Config, but we have an unexpected treat! Jokes aside, this is a very elegant solution based on how people already organize their files. Reminds me of how Twitter came up with retweets and the book The Best Interface is No Interface.

“When you name a page in Figma using only hyphens, en/​em dashes, asterisks or spaces, that page will now automatically convert into a page divider.”

Dylan Field, cofounder and CEO of Figma, discusses the company’s next phase of growth with Bloomberg’s Brody Ford at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco.

Vijay Verma’s new project is a collection of over a hundred abstract shapes with cool grainy gradients. It is available as a Figma Community file and React package and is free for both commercial and personal usage. See the behind-the-scenes process on Twitter.

MDS launched a free course that teaches the basics of Figma in one hour with 12 fast-paced videos. The production quality is totally bonkers, and Matt’s knowledge is so deep that even Figma experts might pick up something new.

Designer Advocate Clara is interviewed by Lovers Magazine about her path into design, getting inspiration, community work, and workstation.

New plugin from Meng To: ​“AI Text Generator is a super handy Figma plug-in made for designers who want to rewrite their text in a couple of clicks. It uses OpenAI GPT‑4 to give you smart, creative text suggestions—think names, titles, or even Lorem Ipsum dummy text—right where you need them. It automatically detects the selected text’s length and generates the perfect amount of words for your alternatives. You can also add custom prompts, which is useful for more control, generate any type of text, in different languages and amount of words.”

Luis built a starter kit for system font stacks with 123 variables, including numbers and strings for font weights in CSS, SF Pro, Segoe UI, and Roboto fonts.