Figma - Figma for Edu: Typography variables workshop
The workshop focuses on using typography variables and modes in Figma to enhance design consistency and streamline the developer handoff process. Typography variables allow designers to define and manage text properties like font size, weight, and line height centrally, ensuring uniformity across designs. This centralization helps in making global changes efficiently, similar to CSS in web development. The session also covers creating styles as composites of these variables, which can be reused across different projects. Modes are introduced as a way to manage different design themes, such as dark mode or responsive layouts, by altering variables like font size and color based on the context. The workshop emphasizes the importance of naming conventions and organization for effective collaboration with developers, who can easily access and understand these variables during the handoff process. Practical demonstrations include creating and applying typography variables, styles, and modes, and how these can be published and reused in other Figma files.
Key Points:
- Typography variables in Figma help maintain design consistency by centralizing text properties like font size and weight.
- Styles in Figma are composites of typography variables, allowing for reusable design elements.
- Modes in Figma enable designers to create different themes (e.g., dark mode) by altering variables based on context.
- Effective naming conventions and organization of variables facilitate better collaboration with developers.
- Figma's developer handoff feature surfaces these variables, making it easier for developers to implement consistent designs.
Details:
1. 🎉 Welcome to Figma for EDU Workshop
- The workshop introduces the use of typography variables and modes in Figma design, emphasizing their role in creating consistency across design files.
- It explains the importance of using these variables and styles for consistent design handoff to developers, ensuring clarity and uniformity.
- The session also highlights how developers can understand and seamlessly work with design files that utilize variables, promoting efficient collaboration.
- The workshop covers structuring designs not only for personal use but also for publishing as libraries, aiding in broader application and scalability.
2. 📝 Understanding Typography Variables in Figma
- Variables in Figma enhance consistency by allowing the creation of color, number, string, and Boolean variables.
- Typography variables are introduced using a step-by-step approach starting with a blank canvas to avoid overwhelming new users.
- Variables are controlled and maintained in the variables panel, allowing for easy updates and consistency across designs.
- Creating a string variable involves assigning a name and a plain text value, which can be applied across multiple text fields.
- Updating a variable value automatically updates all associated text fields, demonstrating the power of variables in maintaining design consistency.
- The concept of collections becomes valuable as more variables are created, facilitating organized variable management.
- Practical example: A text field labeled 'hello world' is associated with a string variable called 'first text variable', which is easily updated to change text across the design.
- Typography properties such as line height are among the first properties to be explored with variables.
- Understanding the use of color variables can further enhance design consistency by applying consistent color schemes across multiple design elements, which can be updated simultaneously.
- Number variables are particularly useful in maintaining consistent spacing and sizing across designs, and adjustments in these variables lead to design updates in real time.
- Organizing variables into collections helps manage larger projects by categorizing variables into themes or design systems, ensuring streamlined updates and coherence.
3. 🔤 Creating and Managing Typography Variables
3.1. Font Weights and Sizes
3.2. Line Height and Letter Spacing
3.3. Centralized Typography Management
4. 🎨 Utilizing Typography Variables for Consistency
4.1. Understanding Typography Variables
4.2. Applying Typography Variables in Design Tools
5. 👨💻 Developer Handoff with Figma Variables
- The use of variables within Figma supports developer handoff by surfacing design details in both code and properties modes, enhancing communication between designers and developers.
- Variables defined in Figma are passed through to developers, allowing them to see consistent values used throughout the design interface, thereby reducing guesswork and ensuring consistency.
- In code mode, variables are presented in CSS, enabling developers to easily understand and implement design specifications without random selection, improving workflow efficiency.
- In properties mode, variable names are clearly labeled, making them more understandable and common for developers, facilitating a smoother handoff process.
- The approach helps eliminate guesswork for developers, as they can view the same design specifications as the designer, streamlining the development process.
- By focusing on consistent naming and variable use, designers and developers can minimize the overburden of options and enhance design consistency across the system.
6. 🎨 Exploring Color Variables and Collections
- Color variables are crucial for design customization, as they can be set as either primitive variables or composite styles.
- Collections help organize variables, enabling the creation of cohesive color sets like 'brand colors', which are essential for maintaining consistent branding across projects.
- Variables can reference other variables, allowing a change in a base color to automatically update all related colors, ensuring design consistency with minimal effort.
- Aliasing colors to other variables creates a dynamic link that updates automatically with changes, similar to using tokens, enhancing efficiency and adaptability in design workflows.
- For instance, in a design project, a brand's primary color might be adjusted, and all associated elements—like button backgrounds and text—would update automatically if they are linked via variables or collections.
7. 🔗 Advanced Variable Management and Modes
- Figma's variable management is akin to tokens, offering flexible referencing and inheritance, such as cascading font names.
- Numbers are used instead of percentages as valid field options.
- Variables can be grouped and organized into collections, like default headline or typography, for better manageability.
- Dynamic font sizing through variables allows scalable text designs from larger to smaller sizes.
- Grouping and aliasing prevent repetitive input, supporting hierarchical text structures like header, title, and display.
- Global values within groups ensure consistent base fonts across text styles.
- A drag-and-drop interface facilitates easy rearrangement and management of group variables.
- Scoped variables ensure they appear only in relevant contexts, like specific font families.
- Forward slash syntax is used to create sub-groups, organizing variables efficiently.
8. 🔄 Applying Modes for Responsive Designs
- Modes are used to create alternate design versions for different devices like mobile and laptops, enabling responsive design.
- Variables such as font size, font weight, line height, and letter spacing can be adjusted for each mode, e.g., reducing font size from 56 to a smaller size for mobile.
- Color variables allow for theme changes, such as switching from light to dark mode with text color changing from black to white.
- Designers can create up to four modes to accommodate various devices and themes, enhancing flexibility in design.
- Modes can be applied in the appearance palette to automatically adjust design elements when switching between devices.
- Designs can be set to different modes and automatically adapt when content moves between frames, illustrating dynamic theme shifts.
- Developers can inspect these modes in dev mode, facilitating better understanding and implementation of responsive designs.
9. 📚 Publishing and Reusing Typography Variables
- Publishing typography variables in Figma ensures consistent design across files by allowing shared access to predefined styles.
- Designers can add the published typography library to new files, ensuring that text styles remain consistent and are based on the original variables.
- The publishing process promotes collaboration by maintaining design integrity, preventing unauthorized changes to base styles when multiple designers are working on the same project.
- Designers can update styles by revisiting the original style definition, ensuring scalability and adaptability across various projects.
- A detailed step-by-step process for publishing typography variables includes defining base styles, accessing the design system, and sharing the library across projects.
- An example scenario involves a design team using a published typography library to maintain brand consistency across multiple marketing campaigns, illustrating the strategic advantage of this approach.