“Specifically designed for creatives, this plugin lets you apply stunning dithering effects to any image. Fine-tune details, add noise, adjust brightness, and enhance glow. With support for algorithms like Floyd-Steinberg, Bayer ordering, Atkinson, and noise dithering, it’s the perfect tool for creators looking to craft unique, dynamic visuals.”

Gary Simon makes a controversial case for not using grids in design. My 2 cents: grids help reduce the number of decisions you need to make, and maintaining a large set of mockups laid out with guides instead of Auto Layout sounds like a nightmare. That said, I think grids and Auto Layout should be added after figuring out the right direction, spacing, and hierarchy, not in the beginning.

My personal Figma account is on UI3, but I spend most of my days in a work account stuck on UI2. Surely I’m not the only one in this boat who found switching between two UIs quite distracting. Can’t wait to start using UI3 in my daily work.

Describing design details with plain text is a nice way to communicate the intent to developers.

You can now rename files in the desktop app by double-clicking the tab name.

Jake made a plugin that brings the power of CSS color-mix() into Figma. Use it to generate swatches, variable ramps, and solid or gradient fills. I highly recommend watching Jake’s video if you’re unfamiliar with this CSS notation.

I look forward to the next release of Supa Palette with support for OKLCH and reusable configs!

A note to app developers: ​“We’re releasing a new embed kit that gives you more control and flexibility over how you embed Figma in your website or app.”

The desktop app on macOS now sports a refreshed app icon.

Quick Tracing easily traces and converts images into vector shapes directly within Figma.

Syntaxer adds syntax highlighting to your code samples in Figma. It preserves your preferences and supports 175 languages and 28 themes.

Zigma connects your design system to the production code, directly syncing design variables from Figma into your GitHub projects. Made by the NextUI team.

The Foundation generates Figma spacing, color, and typography variables based on Tailwind CSS’s utilities, ensuring consistency across your design and code.

I shared a sneak peek at this plugin in issue \#179, but now it’s finally out! ​“Displace brings powerful displacement effects to Figma. Easily create stunning reeded glass, noise, and glitch effects with real-time adjustments. Perfect for photos, typography, and beyond.”

“We’ve added a new export quality setting to give you more control over the file size and quality of images when exporting frames and images from Figma as JPEGs or PDFs. A new quality dropdown in Advanced export settings allows you to choose from High, Medium, or Low quality when exporting as a JPEG or PDF. Low quality will compress your images the most, resulting in the smallest file size, and High quality won’t compress images at all. If you do not select a quality setting upon export, there will be no change to how your files are exported; Figma will follow existing default settings (Medium quality for PDFs and High quality for JPEGs). Also available in FigJam.”

A collection of fun interactions made by Nitish Khagwal.

In this clip of the Sneak Peek episode, Dion Chooi shows how LottieFiles organizes and uses components in Figma.

Molly recommends organizing components with sections to provide a hierarchy in the Assets panel and allow viewing components with a specific background color. Pro tip: set a background to a ​“danger” color for deprecated components.

Speaking of new typefaces, I’ve been enjoying a highly versatile Innovator Grotesk lately. Unlike some of the traditional typefaces from the print era, this one is made with UI design in mind — its well-balanced vertical metrics make it a breeze to center text vertically inside elements or next to icons. It works well as a drop-in replacement for Inter or San Francisco, and I like a slightly wider width and less ubiquitous look. Highly recommend checking out its beautiful specimens and a simple license.

In the first article in the series on Figma’s brand evolution, editor Jenny Xie takes us behind the scenes of the new custom typeface, Figma Sans, designed by Swiss and American type foundry Grilli Type. Don’t miss the Figma Sans page on the foundry’s website.