Articles

Matt Stoller: ​“My instinct is that this merger is illegal and that it will be blocked or abandoned. But I’m not 100% sure, as there are also technical issues here that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. But even within the merging parties, there is genuine concern about whether this merger will close. Internally, Adobe executives are already telling employees not to write anything down about the merger for fear it will be found by government investigators.”

The Wall Street Journal gathered thoughts and concerns on the deal from folks in the industry, including Scott Belsky, Fons Mans, and Yuhki Yamashita.

Index Ventures is Figma’s first and largest venture partner. In this post, Danny Rimer questions what makes Figma so special and talks about the generational significance of design thinking and Dylan’s focus on the community.

Joey Banks explains why new features are so important for the design systems’ work.

New component property features in open beta: exposed nested instances for more customization, preferred values for more clarity when instance swapping, and simplified instances for more focus on relevant properties.

Mike Davidson, ex-VP of Design at InVision and Twitter: ​“Figma did a lot of things right over the ten (yes, ten!) years they’ve worked on the product, but one thing they did that no one else has been able to replicate is meet and in some cases exceed native app performance inside of a web browser.“ Also: ​“Within the next several years, it’s going to be possible to go from idea in the morning, to prototype in the afternoon, to working code in the evening… and the company who can do that most thoughtfully is going to be one of the most important companies in the world.”

Hunter Walk: ​“Figma had crossed the ​‘this matters to Adobe’s future’ rubicon. They hit $400m ARR and were continuing to double. Figma revenue, independent of margin, was increasingly displacing revenue that might have gone to Adobe, or more specifically, creating pricing pressure on Adobe.”

Adam Nash, one of the early investors in Figma, remembers his conversation with Dylan Field in 2013 about WebGL and moving graphic design to the cloud: ​“Dylan was not deterred. He explained that the heavy compute was the exact reason why moving to the cloud made sense. By providing high powered machines in the cloud, anyone could get access to an almost arbitrary amount of power without spending $10K, and latency & bandwidth had progressed to the point where shipping the UI bits to the client was a solved problem.”

Adobe representative to Protocol: ​“While we have been reducing our investment in XD, we will continue to support it. We are excited about Figma’s vision for the future of product design and the potential of our teams coming together to benefit our customers. After the transaction closes (expected in 2023), we will share more information.” RIP XD.

The official press release from Adobe. ​“Adobe and Figma will benefit all stakeholders in the product design process, from designers to product managers to developers, by bringing powerful capabilities from Adobe’s imaging, photography, illustration, video, 3D and font technology into the Figma platform. […] The transaction is expected to close in 2023, subject to the receipt of required regulatory clearances and approvals and the satisfaction of other closing conditions, including the approval of Figma’s stockholders.” See also Adobe’s Investor presentation on acquisition.

The official announcement from Dylan Field.

The design team at Spotify discusses balancing conflicting goals of creating a playful space for experimentation and fostering interdisciplinary team collaboration in the Figma files. The key to achieving both is balancing the exploratory nature of design with a logical organization in your shared work. ​“A chaotic mess of brilliant designs is incomprehensible without a helpful file structure but too much structure early on might stifle your team’s inspiration.”

Steve Dennis reflects on his experiences of using Figma and tries to identify the biggest pain points. It’s a thoughtful list of possible improvements that I pretty much agree with. Design tokens and the official marketplace would be at the top of my list.

Pavel Babkin shows how to move objects along the path using the Figma Motion plugin.

Yuhki Yamashita is the Chief Product Officer at Figma and leads the product and design teams. In this interview with the Merit Office Hours, they talk about the value of process, adapting to asynchronous work, and the importance of mentorship.

An interview with Badrul Farooqi, the first Product Manager (and 18th employee) at Figma. He spent nearly five years at the company and worked on the two largest customer-facing products at Figma: the core design tool and Figma Community. Learn about solving problems for the most discerning customers, the benefits of being an internal transfer PM, how and where to talk to customers for maximum benefit, and more.

Insightful interview about the role of community in Figma’s go-to-market strategy early on. ​“As Senior Director of Marketing, Claire Butler joined Figma as one of the first ten employees and the company’s first business hire. She began shaping the company’s bottoms-up growth strategy and laying the track for a vibrant community before the product was even publicly available.” The conversation is also available as a podcast.

Jaelyn Brown shares her experience as an Early Career Program Manager Intern with a focus on developing engagement for HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions).

Pavel Babkin explains how to use link animation for layer properties in his popular Motion plugin to easily animate complex scenes.

A quick look at the process of updating an existing component with Component Properties and releasing an update with minimal friction for the design team.