Luis shared a set of recommendations on how to approach naming conventions for components, props, and values within Figma component libraries.
Org and Workspace admins on the Enterprise plan can now mark libraries as approved for the organization or workspaces they manage. “Approved libraries are badged with a checkmark and pinned to the top wherever they appear — be it in the assets panel, the properties panel, the admin console, etc. Approved libraries help users know which libraries are sanctioned by their admins and help them find them more easily.”
Paavan gives a few tips on organizing your Figma files if you include them as a part of your job application or portfolio review.
It’s time to re-share this plugin to help designers fulfill a New Year’s resolution of naming their layers! It uses AI to rename layers and is free and open-source.
Molly Hellmuth suggests building small design habits in a new year that will make future you grateful — sticking to one naming format, avoiding groups, adding thumbnails to files, naming all your layers (good luck!), and unifying the name of your icon shapes.
5 mini resolutions for your Figma Files
— Molly Hellmuth (@molly_hellmuth) January 2, 2024
Start building small design habits now that will make future you grateful. Like better naming and organizational practices.. pic.twitter.com/yM3rao96ja
Molly Hellmuth recommends dividing design system assets into four files for increased flexibility and improved performance. These include Foundations, Icons, Components, and a separate design file with “local” assets.
Most Figma Design Systems should start with ~4 files
— Molly Hellmuth (@molly_hellmuth) December 19, 2023
Let me share why.. pic.twitter.com/3t8p5qewd0
A prototype of what page dividers in Figma might look like — considering this tweet’s engagement, it’s clearly something many of us would love to see!
Page dividers in Figma is a feature I’m badly missing.
— Natko Hasic (@natkohasic) November 22, 2023
Seeing how many projects in the community use the “hack” on the left makes me think I’m not the only one.
And yes, this is a Figma prototype of... Figma. pic.twitter.com/jmCkDFBAJe
Lee Munroe shares some ideas on using file templates to organize pages for projects in Figma.
Not everyone on your team knows how to navigate Figma the way you do.
— Lee Munroe (@leemunroe) November 1, 2023
Other designers have different methods. Engineers and PMs may not know where to start.
This is how we organize our project files and pages in @figma... pic.twitter.com/D0jpp0kEJ5
This plugin helps organize your files with pages, sections, and separators.
A big update to one of the most helpful plugins. Design Lint can now automatically fix missing fill, text, stroke, and effect styles using styles found in your designs. It will make type suggestions (!) if a text layer is close to an existing type style. Import your styles by running Design Lint in a design system file, then the plugin will use these styles to make suggestions (stored only on your computer). You also can now create and apply styles in bulk directly from the plugin.
“In this livestream Hanju Kim and Marvin Messenzehl from RTL+ dive into the file to understand the intricacies of designing for a wide array of platforms while maintaining impeccable structure and facilitating seamless collaboration.”
Raquel Piqueras and Christina Yang from Microsoft on organizing Figma files and making a few intentional changes which resulted in fewer meetings, higher quality work, a more agile environment, and a few praises from their partners along the way. (Thanks for sharing the friend’s link!)
Ridd shares a free annotation components library to help designers communicate more effectively and nail down the handoff process. Comes with a video lesson on organizing Figma files using the helpers library.
A refresh to the file browser, so you can spend less time searching, and more time creating. New shared projects and files tabs help you easily find files that others have shared with you. Search, Recents, and notifications now include content across your entire account.
Matan Rosen on how creating starter kits in Figma can help deliver products faster by letting designers focus on user experience instead of pushing pixels and doing repetitive design work.
Sections are great for organizing components, documenting states, grouping elements in external embeds, and better visibility of component and frame names.
Are you using #sections in @figma yet? They are one of the most underrated features in Figma. I switched my Figma component documentation entirely to sections and it has made a huge difference. Here's why: pic.twitter.com/WaqErkYBLi
— Christine Vallaure (@moonlearning) April 11, 2023
You can now keep your workspaces, teams, projects, and files more organized with custom sidebar sections on Organization and Enterprise plans.
Patrick Morgan with tips for tidying your Figma account with a file thumbnail component.
Feeling like your @figma account could use some tidying? I know, I've been there.
— Patrick Morgan (@itspatmorgan) February 25, 2023
Here are the 8 steps I follow to build a file thumbnail component that's minimal, consistent, and scales: pic.twitter.com/iJhBEoK0Es
Luis shares a few tips on structuring library files. He recommends optimizing variants for searching and usage rather than maintenance, and suggests this file structure: Page → Section → Variant. Also, check out his other thread on naming and splitting your library files.
We spend a lot of time talking about component structure, but the library files themselves are often ignored
— luis. (@disco_lu) February 27, 2023
So what goes into structuring a good Figma component library?
Here are a few tips, hopefully a good starting point 📈 pic.twitter.com/2zL7xk9eSx
Miggi shows how to use Figma sections for prototyping. Besides being a wonderful organizational tool, sections give you the ability to remember the states of areas of your prototype.
Anyone else love sections in Figma? @miggi takes it one step further to show you how to use sections for prototyping. pic.twitter.com/Z3IJZnRGjW
— Figma (@figma) February 13, 2023