Articles

Jonathan Saring shows and explains the process of creating a design system with components to standardize and scale the UI development process at Bit.

Willy Wu, Software Engineer at Figma, shares the backstory on the previous versions of Auto Layout, the product tradeoffs that were made, and how the feature has evolved over time. Seeing how the decisions were made really helps understand the feature better.

This tutorial shows how to create attractive blurred backgrounds to get your designs ready for iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur. It’s not specific to Figma, but the advice is solid.

“Putting a Frame inside another Frame sounds like madness, but it’s a core prototyping technique required for true Figma mastery.”

A smart approach to image optimization. The loading effect in the result looks very nice!

A design team at Mono took a dive into the Figma Community to look for high-quality Material Design and Android UI kits. They also show how to bring together components from all these kits into a project library. (Speaking of Mono, check out their free resources in the Community.)

A short overview of Variants, when to use them, current limitations, and how to get started.

“We recently expanded autosave in Figma so you can work offline without worrying about losing changes. Engineer Rudi Chen takes us behind the scenes of building this update: how we made product decisions, managed large merge conflicts, and navigated the complexities of Figma’s multiplayer technology.”

Sketch team wrote a beautiful essay on why they are committed to building a native Mac app. I love high-quality Mac apps, and Sketch is definitely one of them, but most of the time, design apps are not used in solitude. When it comes to collaboration, web-based multiplayer apps are just more open and efficient. See also comments on Hacker News.

Excited to see Adobe shipping new exciting features. ​“We’re introducing an entirely new way to design in XD with 3D Transforms. Now, you can move and rotate objects forwards, backwards, and across planes to bring depth and perspective to your designs and create new types of user experiences.”

Smashing Magazine published an in-depth look at several plugins that can speed up your design workflow.

“Recently, we tried to design some isometric illustrations for one of our projects and we discovered how easy it is to make such visuals in Figma. Here’s a tutorial!”

A quick introduction to Figma Variants and how to work with them effectively by Rojcyk.

A deep dive into how Variants were built and what challenges the team faced along the way.

Best practices for creating and organizing Variants by Figma Designer Advocate Anthony DiSpezio.

Variants are here, even ahead of schedule! 🎉 They let us combine variations of the same component, simplifying the Assets panel and mapping components more closely to code. This in-depth help article shows how to use them.

As it started looking like many students wouldn’t be heading back to campus this year, Figma had to revisit its focus on local, campus-specific programs. Instead, they decided to make progress on classroom resources, student stories, Virtual Campus Slack Community, and hackathons this summer.

“Figma has partnered with leading global digital and design agencies. These agencies have a proven track record of helping their clients run at scale by setting up and migrating their design systems, implementing more efficient processes, and providing an overall elevated level of service.”

Andrew Denty decided to recreate this year’s October Apple event invite in Figma.

“There are tons of tools and platforms available that ease out the design handoff. To maintain a smooth design handoff, both designers and developers must take place into the process. Here are some tips for the designers and developers on how to improve the design handoff.”