4 Figma tips I wish I had known earlier
Hello folks! This time I am writing about some of the tricks that work really well for me on Figma and help me speed up my work.
I know its always better to watch some video about such things, but I promise this article will be worth your while, so keep reading :)
Also, I have discovered these tricks, some while working on Figma, some while watching youtube tutorials and some from the Twitter design community :P
1. Absolute Position:
Once a designer starts using auto-layout on Figma, there is absolutely no going back! But even while using auto-layout, there are certain points where we faced issues until Figma’s recent update.
Now suppose you’re creating a card and you wish you add a tag to it which will overflow the container. The catch here with using auto-layout is that the tag always snaps back to the auto layout constraints.
To find an easy way out of such scenarios, Figma has recently introduced Absolute position
As demonstrated in the above video;
Let us try to understand the same step-by-step
1- Add the desired element to your auto-layout frame. You’ll notice that all the siblings shift to accommodate the tag into the flow
2- Now, all you need to do is to click on the absolute position icon on the Design panel. You’ll immediately notice how the siblings shift again. The tag is excluded from the auto-layout flow and ignored by the siblings.
3- Adjust the position of the tag as per your need.
Voila! We’ve successfully placed the tag in the auto-layout frame!
2. Copying connector from Figjam to your Figma file:
While handing off the final design flow to developers, we often use arrows to depict the screen flow on Figma. Or maybe while we’re creating User Flows on Figma.
A quick hack for speeding up your workflow here is to copy the connector from FigJam to Figma. Yes, you heard it right.
Trust me when I say this, it will make your life much easier.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
1- Select the connector icon button on FigJam.
2- Draw connector on Figjam canvas, customize as per your need.
3- Copy it and then paste it into the Figma file.
You’ll notice that it retains all its properties from FigJam and works exactly like the same. Refer to the video below.
3. Select nested layers quickly with this shortcut!
Mostly, we’re working with complex designs, using objects nested within groups or frames.
The nested objects are referred as “children” and the Frames or Groups that they nest within as “parents”.
When we click on an object that is part of the frame or group, Figma selects the parent by default.
To quickly select nested objects just select the object and press “enter”. Repeat this process until you select the correct child elements.
4. Copying properties of a container
Copy properties like shadow and corner radius from one object to another with this quick tip. ( Refer to Video)
You can also use the keyboard shortcut for copying property of an object by Opt + Command + C.
This was my first time, writing a tutorial kinda blog. I hope it could help you guys in some way. Not sure if it was a perfect blog, but an honest attempt at it:)
Will be writing more of these blogs in the coming days, stay tuned.Till then Happy learning!
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