Articles

A deep and comprehensive comparison of Figma and Adobe XD at Envato Tuts+. There are unique strengths in both, but overall Figma wins hands-down.

Using his woodworking experience as an inspiration, John W. Long shows how to draw complex gear- and star-like shapes using rotation.

Deep dive into Figma’s incredibly powerful and unique inventions like the Arc tool and Vector Networks.

Last year WebNL team built a new and improved design system from the ground up. Daniël De Wit writes about their switch to Figma, researching designers’ needs, building design system starter kit, documenting it, and working hard to improve adoption among designers and developers.

A fascinating look at how Figma can evolve from a design tool to a visual communication and collaboration platform. Tom Johnson writes about use cases that are not possible today, but it’s exciting to think they might become a reality one day.

Use Figma for presentations? This is how to make any clicker work with it.

The story of how Dropbox Design migrated to Figma and structured their cross-platform design system.

Buzz Usborne writes how Help Scout migrated design systems from Sketch to Figma — why they made the switch, a step-by-step walkthrough of what it entailed, and what they got out of it.

5 practical lessons for content designers on working content-first, collaborating with product designers, and using Figma to its wordiest potential.

A detailed guide on turning Figma design prototype into a native iOS or Android app without writing code. I’ve never used Bravo Studio before but it’s an interesting development in line with the current #NoCode trend.

An interesting observation that what we need next is states, styles groups, and variables. Yes, please!

Not sure if this post should be called ​“quick tips” as it mostly surfaces unresolved problems, but it’s an interesting look at the limitations of the current implementation.

Auto Layout can be used for so much more than just buttons and lists. This post shows how useful it is for working with copy and images.

An in-depth tutorial covering 3 common use cases for Auto Layout — button with an icon, content card, and a chat log screen.

With help from 12 industry experts, this article looks back at the decade and how the role of design transformed during it. ​“So to recap, in 2010 a few factors converged that motivated tech companies to invest more in design. To handle the transition to mobile, they needed people trained in the power of distilling complexity to its fundamental elements. Naturally, once users got accustomed to beautiful and easy-to-use experiences on mobile, that raised their standard for all user interfaces. At the same time, it got easier to start and build a tech company than ever before, so companies faced far more competitors and had to differentiate via their user experience.”

“What fonts, styles, and pantones are most popular? What frame sizes are most common? What does it look like, on the file level, for teams to design together?” Report based on data from over 50,000 active users.

Figma’s Data Scientist created an experiment to see if a well-maintained design system really saves time for designers. ​“We found that when participants had access to a design system they completed their objective 34% faster than without a design system.”

A comprehensive comparison of modern design tools, looking at features, extensibility, collaboration, supported platforms, and price. Not to spoil the result, but Figma takes the first place.

One of the most epic posts in Figma’s archive, diving deep into the history of leading and line height in traditional printing, desktop publishing, and on the web. It explains why Figma works with type the way it does.