Articles

“Figma is not conventionally thought to be a file organization tool. When our Product Design department introduced it to sort our ever-growing database, I admit – I was awfully sceptical. It still feels weird to write about how to use Figma for sorting out resources. But lo and behold, it turns out to be great file storage and file organization tool. All you need to do is create a transparent process.”

Read how the Elastic UI design system powering the Elastic Stack connects their design (Figma) and code (React) libraries.

Katie Jane Bailey is a senior enterprise account executive at Figma and the star of Figma In Quarantine musical. In this episode of Hey Salespeople, hear about the parallels between musical theater and sales, advice on pivoting different careers into sales, and how to reframe restrictive thinking around sales methodologies.

The team at Mono shares their most-used and favorite plugins for 2021.

Josh Mateo, Design Systems Lead at Netflix: ​“Effectively scaling and extending a brand into a company’s product is a common challenge I’ve noticed throughout my career. If we deconstruct visual attributes and technical constraints into scalable elements, we can begin to influence the brand from the product, or vice-versa.”

Figma started new Q&A series in their blog. To start, they asked Robyn Kanner 25 quick questions.

If you missed Config 2021, Kaila Shatosky provides a great recap of a few of her favorite talks.

Figma Designer Advocate Chad Bergman shares best practices for using branching.

“Today, we’re introducing branching in beta to better enable collaboration at scale. Designers will have the space to iterate and explore freely, while preserving shared files as a single source of truth. Product Manager Meagan Gamache shares a peek into the 13-month journey to beta and what this means for design system management in Figma.”

A short interview with Noah Levin on the process within Figma’s Design Org.

“While it’s always been possible to animate controls using Figma prototypes, it required some crazy workarounds and a ton of views to be created. With the new functionality, it’s super easy, and it allows you to create some pretty nifty interactive and animating prototypes.”

“I frequently stumble upon time-saving features that I wish I knew about sooner — hopefully, some of these are as exciting for you as they were for me when I discovered them.”

Gleb Sabirzyanov on his experience of speaking at Config 2021.

Protocol on a new product: ​“FigJam is a simple tool for brainstorming, and the next step toward the company’s vision for a multiplayer internet.”

FigJam is an online whiteboard made for designers to ideate and brainstorm with their extended teams. Think of it as a lightweight version of Figma that’s easier to learn and even more fun to use. It’s for defining user problems, looking for inspiration, and exploring ideas.

At Config 2021, Figma announced six new ways to collaborate and bring you and your teammates together — their 2nd product FigJam, branching (currently in beta to Org accounts), a new mobile app, voice chat, higher user limits, and publishing to the Figma Community for everyone.

“Last month, South Park Commons community hosted Figma CEO and cofounder Dylan Field for a virtual fireside chat. In this conversation, Dylan walked us through Figma’s inception, building into a growing design market, and what it was like staying in stealth for years. Read on for snippets from the fireside chat at South Park Commons.”

A detailed guide to the latest version of Auto Layout.

Solid plugin recommendations from the team at Superformula.

Great guest post by David Luhr at Figma’s blog on what it takes to ship a commercial UI kit with over 1,400 components and 10,000 distinct elements, all while keeping quality and usability top of mind. I love the work the Tailwind team is doing, and this is a great look into their process.