Tweets

A reminder that Framework is happening on Tuesday, April 16th. Figma published the schedule for this 3‑hour-long event, which will be a great fit for anyone interested in variables, design systems, and design-to-code handoff.

Tom Lowry walks through recent updates to branches — the default zoom level of previews is increased to 150%, the full branch name is now visible on hover, better text legibility, transparent backgrounds for effects, a few changes to improve review of variables, and bug fixes.

Lauri makes a strong case for introducing responsiveness to the prototype mode. Luis hints that something is cooking, and we’ll hear more at Config 2024.

Anthony Rajski is recreating Figma in the Windows 95 style. Hope it supports LAN parties for designing together!

I often rely on the Spread value in shadows but forget why it is disabled. Handy reminder from Ilya Miskov.

Designer Advocate Mal reminds us that it’s crucial to consider the discoverability of components when building a set and points to a new feature of the Assets library that shows a number of component variants and a playground for exploring them.

“Over the next few weeks, we are replacing the bottom right notification button for library updates and replacing with a new library icon for faster entry to library management.”

I’m a simple guy — if I see a beautiful physical UI redrawn in Figma, it goes into the newsletter.

Dmitry Novikov from Rive shows how to do soft page curls in Figma.

There were hints about split tabs for a while, and now they’re available in the beta version of the desktop app. Luis highlights some of the use cases in this thread, including keeping a prototype on the side, managing variables, iterating on designs at different zoom levels, updating local components, and many more.

An update to file search — now you can filter results by owner, type, or organization/​team/​project.

Mark recorded an unscripted tutorial on creating a beautiful animated Aurora effect with the Noise & Texture plugin.

Pablo Stanley shows a few examples of where he will often use the new feature.

In this insightful video essay, Tom Lowry shares some thoughts on freeform design exploration without accruing design debt.

The beauty of Auto Layout in action by Dmitriy Bunin.

Another week, another topic for designers to argue about (even Figma had to chip in)! 100% agree with Yasir: ​“Designers skeptical about Figma’s Auto Layout probably haven’t tried coding their designs. Once you do, you’ll see everything in code is about stacks and Auto Layouts. It’s a basic principle, not a style choice.”

Ridd with a step-by-step process for nailing dark and light modes in Figma. Love his way of thinking about counterpart colors on the opposite ends of the spectrum for specific use cases — texts, backgrounds, borders, and icons.

Creating beautiful gradients in Figma just got easier! New controls for flipping and rotating gradients (see why they’re separate controls), displaying the gradient stop position in percentage (another yay from me!), and even better-looking defaults (although they’re bringing back the old behavior if you add a gradient on top of another fill).

Beautiful illustration by Pawel Olek. Ridd is spot on — we’re entering the ​“circuitry era of web design”.

Beautiful illustration of a Brain turntable made in Figma.