Articles

Speaking of Apple, the latest winners of the Design Award were announced. Congrats to Play for winning the Innovation award!

Sebastiaan de With is the co-founder and designer of the award-winning apps Halide and Kino for photography and video. In this article, he imagines what could be next for the UI design at Apple: ​“What would I do if I were Apple’s design team? What changes would I like to see, and what do I think is likely? Considering where technology is going, how do I think interface design should change to accommodate?”

(Reminder that WWDC25 is happening this week, with a keynote on Monday at 10 AM PT. That’s when we’ll find out how close his predictions are to what Apple designers have in mind.)

My friend Christine Vallaure shares a few lessons learned building her educational platform as a company of one. Christine’s approach to running a business is truly inspiring, and she masterfully told her story at this year’s Config and in her new book Solo. (Which I genuinely recommend and she offers a coupon to my readers in the Friendly Promo above, which is not an ad.)

Lenny Rachitsky’s survey was all over Design Twitter this week. Next are a few interesting takeaways. 1) ​“Workers at smaller companies report significantly lower burnout levels than those at larger companies.” 2) Designers are the most burnt-out tech workers, closely followed only by Research and Growth — I wonder if it’s because these roles constantly deal with ambiguity and limited autonomy. 3) Optimism about career and current role is on the decline, with designers having the largest negative sentiment change. 4) ​“Fewer than 1 in 3 tech workers (26.6%) rate their managers as highly effective, while more than 4 in 10 (42.3%) rate their managers as ineffective. […] People in product and design roles have the most negative leadership perceptions.” 5) Startup founders are the happiest people in tech.

As Christine Vallaure writes, ​“if you want to master Figma’s new Grid, you need to know how CSS Grid works.” In this in-depth guide, she explains how both of them work and shows where Figma ends and the browser takes over to do the heavy lifting, so you don’t miss out on the flexibility, responsiveness, and layout power that only the browser can fully deliver.

“The State of AI in Design report, created by Foundation Capital and Designer Fund, is based on a survey of 400+ designers and conversations with leaders at Stripe, Notion, Anthropic, and more. It explores the real impact of AI on design today, in 2025.”

Bloomberg: ​“Design software business Figma Inc. hired Morgan Stanley to lead what could be one of the year’s biggest initial public offerings, according to people familiar with the matter. Figma, backed by Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, has also brought on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Allen & Co. for the listing, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information wasn’t public. Figma, which said in April that it had filed confidentially for an IPO, could go public as soon as this year, the people said.”

(Read without a paywall.) The Verge interviews Dylan Field about ​“how he sees AI fitting into Figma after a rough start to integrating the technology last year, the new areas he’s targeting to grow the platform, and more.”

“With Figma Buzz, brand designers and marketers have a shared space to build beautiful, on-brand assets at scale.” Non-designers on my team use Canva a lot for event materials and marketing assets, and I can’t wait to set them up with customizable on-brand templates.

“Today we’re introducing Figma Make, a new prompt-to-code capability to help you quickly explore, iterate, and refine — whether it’s generating high-fidelity prototypes or getting into the details in design and code.”

“Today, we’re launching Figma Sites, an all-in-one tool for you to design and build custom, responsive websites. Here, we share how you can go from design to production in the most efficient — and expressive — ways.”

“Figma Draw pairs faster, simpler vector editing with powerful tools for visual expression — so designers of all stripes can bring their vision to life without breaking focus.” One thing I keep wondering about is how much visual design will change in the coming months. Medium and tools define the end result, and Figma just got way more powerful and artistic.

A help article on the new grid flow for Auto Layout.

A grown-up version of zines from previous years. Didn’t read it yet, but flipped through, and it’s a beautiful historic artifact.

If an hour-and-a-half keynote is too long for now, this blog post provides a good recap: ​“Dylan Field runs down everything we launched at Config 2025 and explains why pushing design further matters more now than ever.”

After wrapping up his time as a PM at Figma, Robert Bye reflects on what he learned there and shares a few patterns that he thinks made the difference. This post focuses on craft: ​“There was this unspoken agreement that craft mattered. Everyone, from PMs to engineers to designers, took serious pride in their work. But no one took themselves too seriously. It was confident without ego. People wanted to do great work and genuinely cared.”

Claire Butler demystifies the role of marketing and sales in Figma’s bottoms-up go-to-market (GTM) strategy. It starts with a framework you can apply to your business, and this post will help you decide whether this approach is right for you.

John Maeda: ​“Even with these shifts, I don’t believe AI is replacing designers. If anything, it’s forcing us to focus on what only humans can provide: judgment, empathy, ethics, and the ability to ask the right questions. AI lets us scale and experiment in ways that weren’t possible before, but meaning, care, and resonance still come from human insight and intent.”

“In UX design, a single misplaced verb can lead users astray, frustrating their expectations and creating confusion. That’s why UX Writer Henry Freedland chose his words very carefully when he was brought in to help polish a new prototyping feature.”

“What seemed like a straightforward request — add a horizontal scroll bar to the Layers panel in Figma — presented unexpected challenges. Here’s how the design and engineering teams iterated and prototyped to find the right solution.”