Time to update your calendars and make travel plans! Next year, Config is coming to San Francisco on May 6–8 and London on May 14th. Early bird tickets are already available with a 50% discount.

Claire Butler, a marketing lead at Figma, shares three principles that help market to designers or other groups of passionate experts. Make sure to watch the video she is referring to.

I furiously nodded while reading her second lesson: ​“If you can come up with and understand all of the content, you haven’t gone deep enough. Whatever you are doing will come across too generic, and thus will not resonate. They’ll sniff you out.”

In-person attendees of Config 2024 received Issue 2 of The Prompt, a print magazine by Figma’s Story Studio and Brand Studio. A digital version is now available on the blog. ​“Featuring leaders working across design, engineering, product development, and the built environment, this collection of essays and interviews takes on questions about how AI might shape the way we create.”

If you’ve already caught up with the Config videos, here is a new YouTube playlist with recordings from the Config APAC, which happened the following week after the main Config in San Francisco.

It’s Nice That talks to Damien Correll, Figma’s creative director, and Jessica Svendsen, its design manager, about designing the identity for this year’s Config and the response from the community. ​“The visual identity that goes alongside Config is a ten-month design project completed mainly internally, this year with help from Danish design team Relay on the motion front. Extending Figma’s core shape-based language with transforming glyphs, the branding is colourful, clean and much-hyped.”

See also Crafting the visual identity for Config 2024 at Figma blog.

If one Config wasn’t enough for you, here is a second one-day event at the Asia Pacific region, ​“full of keynotes, sessions, and programming designed to connect a dynamic community of builders to the future of product design & development.” Most of the talks were unique to this event.

Abdus Salam, Product Designer at Meta, writes at UX Collective: ​“The future belongs to designers who can master AI, not be mastered by it. Our value lies not just in our technical skills, but in our creativity, our empathy, and our ability to wield these tools in service of crafting experiences that resonate on a profoundly human level.” Also: ​“while AI can help us reach ​“good”, achieving ​“great” still requires human ingenuity and an unwavering commitment to quality.”

The beautifully made radio control panel by Yang You, inspired by the Art of Noise exhibit at the SFMOMA. (I also visited it after the second day of Config, and seeing these cult objects by Dieter Rams and teenage engineering in person was a remarkable experience.)

David Hoang on three topics he is thinking a lot about after this year’s Config.

“At Config 2024, we introduced a redesigned Figma, called UI3. This guide is for people who are switching over from Figma’s previous design and want to see how things have changed.”

This is a convenient guide to get familiar with what has changed and where features were moved. As a reminder, for now you can still go back to the previous UI from the help menu.

Behind-the-scenes look at how Ryhan Hassan, Joel Miller, and KC Oh landed on a more streamlined and adaptable interface. Don’t miss How we redesigned Figma talk at Config from this group.

On components: ​“As design systems took off and components became central, we realized that component controls like variants and instances deserved top billing above attributes like color and size.”

On streamlined the properties panel: ​“All layout-related options, including width, height, and Auto Layout, are now merged into a single panel. This departs from the typical x, y, w, h panel in most tools, but aligns more neatly with how products are built in code.”

On interface for usability: ​“UI3 introduces backgrounds on inputs, borders around dropdowns, rounded corners, and 200 expressive icons hand-drawn by designer Tim Van Damme. These serve as visual explanations of how to interact with the platform.”

Config playlist from Damien Correll.

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

All in-person attendees received this beautiful zine from Figma, exploring AI, design, and code.

Gabriel Valdivia on Figma AI: ​“Right before Figma’s keynote announcing the ​“make designs” button, I ​“made code” with another app. On one hand, people can now use Figma to replace designers, while on the other hand, I’m using Cursor to replace engineers. I’m stuck in the middle feeling simultaneously disempowered as a designer and completed empowered to make new software.”

A short recap of everything that was announced at Config in a blog post.

See also an updated What’s New page.

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.

With 87 talks and 36 hours of content, you’ll need a solid plan and structure to watch the sessions. Even conference attendees watched no more than 20% of the talks and have some catching up to do. I prepared a FigJam file with all videos from Config 2024 organized chronologically by the conference track — Design Systems, Innovation, Design/​Craft, Building Products, and Leadership Collective.

Use it as a template to mark what you plan to watch or have already watched with stamps. Add your thoughts with sticky notes. Share your version of the file with recommendations and comments with friends or coworkers. Please help others catch up with all the great sessions from Config 2024 by sharing and liking this resource.

June 27th, 7 PM – 2 AM. A Config afterparty with an open bar, finger foods, and good vibes — hosted by creators Jesse Show, MDS, DesignerTom, and Grace Ling.