Tweets

Component properties v2 are out of beta with the ability to bubble up and expose properties of nested instances. It’s also now possible to define a list of preferred instances for swapping. Great for selecting a subset of a larger icons library or working with card components.

Honestly, I always assumed that SVG bugs are just a part of the game and will always be here — not a surprising conclusion when 49% of imported SVGs relied on buggy features. In retrospect, it was a silly assumption considering SVG is one of only a few open vector formats. In this fantastic thread, Figma engineer Lauren Budorick shows how much work went into detecting, analyzing, and fixing these bugs. I didn’t realize that luminance mask support was a part of this work as well, and Miggi is already exploring creative applications for composited motion visuals in prototypes.

“You can now more confidently approve library updates with a visual preview of the changes and the ability to apply them to individual instances and layers.” I don’t even know how I’ve dealt with the stress of accepting library changes sight unseen in the past.

While color and layer blend modes have the most noticeable previews, this update is a part of the larger initiative for adding previews to all settings. Previews were already added to Effects, and the team is considering supporting boolean ops, component props, and the font picker.

My guess is we’ll see hanging punctuation in the wild more often now. (Good luck, developers.)

The timing of this release is impeccable — just a couple of months ago WebKit added support for leading-trim CSS property to Safari Technology Preview (although other browsers are not rushing). For a deeper dive into why it’s important, see Leading-Trim: The Future of Digital Typesetting by Ethan Wang from Microsoft.

This way to monitor the use of system resources was around for a while, but it’s a nice reminder to check it if you’re working on a huge design file or a massive library.

The lack of precision in the gradient tool is an old annoyance, but as this tweet grew in popularity I’ve been quietly hoping that maybe the fix would make it to the Little Big Updates. Regardless, the replies provide a ton of smart workaround — distributing stops through double-clicking, nudging stops, using the Precise Gradients plugin, and even looking in the Inspect tab!

Jordan Singer shares what Diagram learned from participating in OpenAI Converge with early access to GPT‑4 and how they’re using it in Magician and Genius plugins.

Fons Mans is back with a colorful poster tutorial.

Vijay Verma wraps up his Figbruary challenge with a full list of 28 experiments he made last month. 

Luis keeps digging into different ways of structuring Figma libraries and styles. In this thread, he thinks through naming conventions on styles and explores the pros and cons of more abstract and specific naming conventions.

Dan Hollick with a fascinating thread on an optimal x‑height size and a visual arc.

Such a fun thread by designer Jakub Świadek on how the FigJam team redesigned the sticky note curl. See also another thread by Noah Finer on how it was implemented with CSS and SVG animations.

Jon Moore is one of the creators who seized the opportunity provided by the paid resources on Figma Community and launched a collection of helpful design resources. Paying a few dollars for a high-quality asset to save a few hours of work is a no-brainer. Every Collection includes maps, calendars, social buttons, file types, slides, and charts.

Yes, please.

The first installment of ​“Fridays with Fons”, where Fons Mans shows how to create and generate fun, geometric illustrations in Figma in just a few easy steps.

Luis shares a few tips on structuring library files. He recommends optimizing variants for searching and usage rather than maintenance, and suggests this file structure: Page → Section → Variant. Also, check out his other thread on naming and splitting your library files.

Patrick Morgan with tips for tidying your Figma account with a file thumbnail component.

Nick Stamas is making a good point that Figma is uniquely positioned to create an AI assistant for designers, but instead of replacing them, it will be more like GitHub Copilot. ​“There’s one place where an enormous pile of UI data exists in a way that could be used to train a large neural network: Figma.”