Unlocking Figma's Rainbow Magic: How We Transformed Our Icon Design Process
In this episode of Podcast Awesome, we sit down for a little chat with Noah Jacobus and Jory Raphael and discuss the benefits of using Figma for collaborative design and icon design. They highlight Figma's unique features, such as its Boolean operations and non-destructive vector editing, and compare it to other design software like Adobe Illustrator.
We also touch on the recent acquisition of Figma by Adobe and the possibility of creating a Font Awesome plugin for Figma.
Episode Highlights:
Noah and Jory discuss the reasons behind the switch to Figma, including the benefits of Boolean operations, the flexibility of strokes, and the use of components and instances for efficient icon creation.
Noah and Jory highlight Figma's collaborative features, which allow real-time collaboration and commenting within design files, making it a central hub for Font Awesome's design work.
Jory and Noah dive into the Figma ecosystem, which includes a wide range of plugins created by developers to enhance functionality and streamline workflows.
Jory and Noah express their cautious optimism about Adobe's acquisition of Figma and how it might influence the software in the future.
What's Covered in This Video:
The transition from Adobe Illustrator to Figma for icon design.
Benefits of Boolean operations, flexible strokes, and components in Figma.
Collaborative features and real-time collaboration in Figma.
The Figma ecosystem and the use of plugins.
Adobe's acquisition of Figma and its potential impact.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:05:56 Tools don't always matter.
00:12:12 Adobe owns Figma now.
00:12:31 Adobe acquisitions can be good (and sometimes bad).
00:24:22 Linking Font Awesome Pro accounts.
00:27:09 Figma has rainbow magic.
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HIGHLIGHTS
"So Figma has rainbow magic." (00:26:57-00:27:19)"Figma is a central place where we can both work in the same file at the same time.
If I make a change, he sees it." (00:20:52-00:23:44)"Noah is entirely responsible for us moving to Figma." (00:00:00-00:03:29)
"And the ability to easily test things in the context of digital products is kind of where it found its place for me." (00:03:23-00:06:24)
"Being able to identify each of those, you know, every element of a stroke shape or path and make adjustments to it that way is pretty cool." (00:17:58-00:20:57)
"Boolean operations are one of the biggest ones... it's kind of a unique way of treating stroked objects like their actual shapes at the same time... that is something that it can't do. So it's a nice, more unique feature." (00:15:08-00:18:08)
"I think that Figma is enough of a powerhouse kind of on its own that that's not going to happen with the employees there and the community, especially as such a huge force with a lot of momentum behind it that helps support the product and keeps it moving." (00:11:51-00:15:16)
"There are just tons of things that are out there that if you run into an issue, someone else likely has run into it already and there's probably a plugin that exists to fix it or address it, which is awesome." (00:23:38-00:27:07)
"But what started to become really appealing to me about Figma was, as Noah said, some of the, well, number one, the simplicity of collaboration, which is now super important because we have multiple icon designers at Font Awesome, but also some of their unique takes on doing things with vectors." (00:06:17-00:09:04)
"We made a slight tactical mistake of announcing our new Sharp icons before they were completely done...I put the call out to some icon designers that I knew and admired to see if they could help us with the project of getting the sharp icons out the door...And he shared a Figma file...I took them and I looked at them and it was so fun to be able to manipulate them...I was able to trick Noah into spending some more time on the sharp icons...I had been starting work on a personal project for myself that was sharp icon based...And so I was already kind of very much ingrained in sharp, chunky icon world." (00:08:59-00:11:56)
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NOTES
The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin
Audio mastering by Chris Enns and Lemon Productions
10 Reasons We Switched to Figma for Icon Design
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