Articles

Alek Mackie, a Senior Illustrator at Shopify, shares how he stays creative and productive.

Now it’s official! Katie Szeto, a product manager and member of the New York City landing team, shares a bit about why Figma is growing in New York City, how they’re thinking about the hybrid work model, and what she’s excited about in the months ahead.

“I build several design systems every year and have learned a lot about designing components that are easy to use and maintain. One of the most important ones being inputs. They deserve to be built with great care because of how important, frequently used, and complex they are.”

Creating variants based on a master component makes it much easier to maintain multiple states.

Great explanation of the differences between groups and frames in Figma.

The team at Blush recommends 11 of their favorite plugins for improving a workflow.

In this Smashing Magazine article, Emiliano explains why Interactive Components (now in beta) will improve how we create prototypes. The new feature reduces the time and effort needed to create interactions by bringing down the cost of design exploration.

Compare, test, and present multiple interactive ideas from a single page. Check out a couple of quick tips for using the new feature by Miguel Cardona.

“Not to be confused with the traditional office space of the pre-pandemic before-times, Figma’s hubs are designed to accommodate its new hybrid work model. In this model, each employee — or ​“Figmate” — can decide if they want to be fully remote or associated with a specific hub. Those who are aligned with a hub are expected to go into the office a minimum of two specific days a week, meaning they will be the same for everyone in the office.”

Dylan Field’s internal email to the Figma team announcing a new round of investments.

“Software design company Figma Inc. has raised fresh funding at a valuation of $10 billion, quintupling its pricetag since last year. The company, which allows customers to collaborate on software as they build it, said demand jumped during the pandemic while more people worked remotely. Figma raised $200 million in the funding round, the company told Bloomberg. Backers included Durable Capital Partners and Morgan Stanley through its Counterpoint Global group.”

Not directly related to Figma, but I’m a big fan of checklists, and this one by MDS is really good: ​“The top 101 things to consider when designing visually beautiful interfaces. Use this to self-critique any of your designs, whether it’s homework from this course or your own projects.”

“Because many of us have little to no background in visual arts or graphic design, Figma is not usually prioritized as a skill for writers, and we’re not usually asked if we’re proficient. However, there are numerous benefits to learning the basics. Many folks working in content have become self-taught Figma aficionados because taking the time to master the essentials has made their work easier—and their role on the team more effective—in the long run.”

Karen Liu shares the pains of using Sketch + Abstract combo and why her team at Brave embraced Figma, even while it meant completely rebuilding the design system.

Most ​“best practices” articles are too basic and superficial, but this one by Danny Sapio is a rare gem. All of the recommendations are solid, and by following them you can make a huge difference to your Figma workflow.

“FigJam was built as a space for teams to ideate together, so we wanted to dive a bit deeper into the earliest stage of collaboration: brainstorming. Product Marketing Manager Wayne Ng spoke to Cristen Torrey on the research team and Andrea Helmbolt on the growth marketing team to get their tips on running and facilitating an effective brainstorm.”

“Last week, we launched a timer in FigJam, allowing you to start, stop, and pause activities as a team. There are so many ways to work collaboratively in FigJam, so we talked to Figmates across the company to learn how they come together in the file.”

“Long before we launched FigJam in beta, teams across Figma had been using it for everything from user research to Maker Week projects. Here, Product Manager Emily Lin shares how she and the PM team at Figma use FigJam, along with templates to get you started.”

Good use for links in Figma, especially in a large design system.

Instead of mocking data with a bunch of rectangles in a rough prototype, use a specially designed font like Flow or BLOKK Neue.