Dann Petty has been one of the most vocal Figma critics lately. (See his previous post for some context, or go all the way back to moving drafts drama in the summer.) I don’t think corporations need help defending themselves, but in this case, I see the situation from a different angle and want to share some thoughts.

First, I built my first Framer website recently and thought it was a compelling alternative for designing websites. It often takes me longer to prototype a throw-away interaction in Figma than to do it straight in code (especially with AI!), so designing and animating the actual website instead of a mockup felt refreshing. I missed some of the more advanced features (no variables, really?), but I’m sure they are on the roadmap. In the end, it wasn’t the right tool for this project, but I agree with Dann that similar tools will be ​“owning the web design market”. That said, they have nothing to offer product designers.

Here is the part I disagree with: “(People are) mad at Figma because they lost focus on designers and got over bloated with useless features no one wanted or needed and started to focus on developers and their Config event.” Dann doesn’t specify which features he considers useless, but I assume it’s those related to larger design systems and developer handoff. Personally, I rarely feel restricted while working on visual design, but often hit the wall with a lack of CSS grids, inability to replicate the props.children behavior in components, still incomplete variables support, barebones design system analytics, Dev Mode, prototyping, etc. On my product team engineers outnumber designers 5 to 1, so a lot of our time and attention is spent on cross-team alignment. These features might be useless to freelancers and agencies, but worth their weight in gold to product teams.

Lastly, a note on Figma becoming ​“incredibly expensive.” First, they kept the same $15/​m price of the Professional plan since 2018. According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, $15 in 2018 had the same buying power as $19.31 today — pretty close to $20. Second, at least in the US, $20/​m or $192/​year is not much for a pro tool — some of my streaming and newspaper subscriptions cost more. Third, it now includes two more products! My team just upgraded our Figma account to the Organization plan and it was cheaper to wait for the new pricing as we no longer needed separate licenses for FigJam and Slides. This will not be true for everyone, but not all seats increased in price while getting some perks.

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.)

An event by Dann Petty on Config Day 0? Count me in! Love the idea of making friends before the conference — that will dramatically change the experience of the next 2 days.

Dann Petty asks for the best Figma tips for setting up a design system, and there are lots of golden nuggets in the replies. One of my favorites is ​“to not over eagerly start the design system when you start a project”.