“After finalizing and polishing their work in Figma, designers often expect developers to magically make sense of it. However, as that’s not usually the case, things can end up looking pretty grim. What’s going wrong?” The authors blame the outdated handoff mindset and suggest the four steps that can turn the handoff process from a potential headache into a smooth collaboration.

Designer Advocate Hugo Raymond shows all the places where you can bind variables inside the Figma UI, including the newly released typographic variables and gradient stops.

Chad with a timely reminder that the variables icon appears only if there are variables with the right type in your file.

“Did you know that ¹⁄₄ of mobile users tweak text sizes on their phones?” I didn’t know that! In this thread, Branimir shows how to set up accessible interface scaling with the latest typography variables.

Joey Banks recaps the Framework announcements. On choosing between styles and variables: ​“Wait, but styles don’t allow for modes, right? Wouldn’t the use of styles prevent us from switching themes or brands? Actually, this is what I’m most excited about with this update, and it’s the further positioning of how styles can be useful in combination with variables. Because all styles (yes, typography now, too!) can use variables, adjusting one variable mode within a style will adjust all variables to reflect that new mode change.”

In this session, Verizon Design Systems Leads Talia Fisher and Kshitij Tambe explain how their team implemented variables and how it’s helping them take their design system to the next level.

Bumble, GitHub, and HP discuss the challenges their design systems teams face in connecting design to code and share first impressions of Code Connect.

Code Connect delivers code from your design system to Dev Mode, helping developers build with consistency and speed. In this session, Jake Albaugh, Figma Developer Advocate, shares an overview of Code Connect and some tips on how to get started.

Designer Advocate Ana Boyer takes us on a deep dive into typography and gradient variables, sharing best practices for leveraging these new features in your design system.

Jacob Miller, a Product Manager for Design Systems at Figma, gives an overview of everything launched at Framework — Code Connect for developers, typography and gradient variables, and the new Library Analytics API. All of the above is designed to drive design system adoption across the teams because ​“building a design system is only half the battle — the real challenge is getting it adopted by both designers and developers.” If you missed the event, that’s one summary you need.

Color variables can now be bound to gradient stops and saved as a style.

“Now, your team can access Figma library data outside of the app, so you can organize the data based on your organization’s needs. This will include component insertion, detachment, and instance data, as well as team and file-level breakdowns. Enterprise plans only.”

A starter kit from Luis Ouriach shows how to set things up with typographic variables.

Developer Advocate Jake shows Jason Lengstorf how to bring your code into Figma with Code Connect.

The String and Number type variables can now be bound to typography fields and saved as a style. Included fields are font family, font weight (numeric or named alias) and style, font size, line height (no percentages support yet), letter spacing, paragraph spacing and indent. Use Modes to create responsive typography scales for different screen sizes.

“Code Connect is a tool for design systems and engineering teams to bring component code into Dev Mode. When inspecting a component with connected code snippets, developers will see design system code from their libraries instead of auto-generated code.” Currently in beta. Available on Enterprise or Organization plans only.

Tokenbase is a free tool for creating, managing, and distributing design tokens. Easily create your design systems and export tokens to code in a few clicks. It’s currently in beta, and I wonder if importing from Figma is on the roadmap?

Jason Lengstorf from Learn with Jason talks to Figma Developer Advocate Jake Albaugh about how Dev Mode improves the design handoff and how the Figma plugins API enables more powerful customization.

Ridd published a crash course on advanced Figma prototyping with variables. He explains when to use variables instead of variants and shows how to streamline the prototyping process by using variables to update UI elements without requiring multiple frames. Additionally, he prepared a community resource with slides and examples.

“The Washington Post’s inclusive process for creating new design system components bridges the gap between design and development to make features that help navigate the news online.”