14 Advanced Tips to Design FASTER in Figma

hey beautiful people it's mizko here today i'm going to show you guys 14 advanced ways to design much faster in big mars so let's get right into it so if you take a look here i have gone through go ahead and redesigned amazon's terrible category page so here you can see this is amazon's extremely ugly uh but it makes them a lot of money category page so what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to walk you guys through 14 ways to improve your efficiency uh process in figma so 14 steps let's get right into it so the very first thing to design faster in figma is to have a design system so if i actually show you this is all responsive right it's all responsive or juicy this only took me around 10 minutes to do and the reason why is because i've got a design system so if i head into assets you can see i have attached and connected my own design system for this project and i have a design system that is scaled out for all projects that i work on so if you see here i've actually duplicated the design system and i've called it the youtube design system i've got colors typography spacing grids and my team have actually created this so we can use it for every single project and we haven't bloated it up with like a thousand or like 5 000 components it's everything that you need that's critical and core to every component so every project and you just build on top of it because every project is going to be different you don't need like a thousand like you don't need 10 000 components you just need the most important ones and they're actually well thought through so even for topography a lot of you guys have questions about topography we've got we've actually fleshed this out so we've got displays we've got subheadings now headings paragraphs it's all done so when i'm designing as you can see here look at the right panel over here paragraphs i've got everything you are pulling through from the design system everything is through the design system and also our color system as well nothing even the buttons everything is componentized so use a design system and if you're lazy or if you're new to ui design or if you're like a senior that's just like just needs a design system that's really efficient i've actually left a link in the description below it's not free because a lot of time and effort has been put into this design system if you want to buy the design system that i've created with my team then feel free to click on the link there is also a coupon code for your special youtube audience it expires on friday this is currently the pre-sale period so so if you put in your email now until friday you will get 10 off this design system and don't worry you won't get billed until friday as well when i actually launch the product so feel free to check it out so that's the very first tip to improve your design system and actually use it on all your design projects second one is plan ahead guys so many designers i know and i can see that go straight into figma to design when i task myself to redesign amazon's uh category page even though i've been in the industry for like nearly 15 years i still sketch terrible sketches on paper to get my ideas down on paper first so when i go into figma i know exactly what i need to design and i can get straight into it now also when you're planning ahead nowadays you also need to think about interactions with the prototype for scalability like responsiveness like what will scale so as you can see with amazon's website their search bar will scale so if you take a look at here um let me scale this out for you you notice that they keep their search bar centered and it's and that's the only thing that's centered uh sorry scalable now that's how i've maintained their system over here as well and this is really beneficial when you're thinking down on paper because i knew for a fact when i went into figma when i'm designing structuring my elements my components my auto layouts i knew exactly what i needed to do so i don't create messy files as well so always learn to plan and think on paper oh by the way guys if you find value only if you find value in these videos and it helps you become a better designer make sure to gently smash that like button alright guys back to the video uh the third really efficient tip is i know a lot of you guys are designing ui design and you will work with a lot of images now for example the general process is you design some sort of like component like this card and then once you've done that you'll just command d command d command d and you'll like duplicate it and then you'll you'll need to put some images inside so a great way to simplify this process is to simply click on your image hit command shift k on your keyboard or ctrl shift k if you're on pc and select the images that you want and hit open now there is a little trick here so what figma has done is that depending on which photo you select last that will actually be the first photo that they place so let me explain to you what i mean so four three two one because one is the last photo i just selected this will now become the first photo that will go down so one two three four whoops uh i think i went into the wrong actual folder but um anyways now if i wanted to illustrate that again for you guys if i went one two three sorry one two three four and i hit open bang bang bang bang then i'm giving you a reverse blow kiss and no one gives a reverse blow kiss so you want to make sure that you go from last to first now the fourth thing is frames over groups now i know you guys probably know about frames and groups but a lot of you guys probably also don't know about frames and groups so when we have a sort of a group of elements on a ui design page um i think it's really easy for us to fall into the trap of using groups because we resonate with that terminology i just want a group of items so i'm going to put into a group now to help you illustrate this analogy i'm gonna ask you guys do you know who this person is if you don't this is jeff bezos he is the founder and also former ceo of amazon now over on the right hand side i have actually done a extremely beautiful portrait of jeff bezos himself now to illustrate this analogy i've got the portrait inside a groove and then a portrait inside a frame so what's the difference here now the group is actually a will be created by the group of elements inside and on the frame the group of elements inside are independent of the actual frame itself so let me help you illustrate this now if i want to make this face smaller right and if i click on this group you can see that the group will automatically adjust based on the components the little the elements inside so there is a relationship between the two now if i made the face inside the frame smaller you'll notice that the frame stays as is and the components and the elements inside are independent of the actual bounding box or the frame so you're probably thinking i get that but how does that apply to ui design so let before i jump into that when you should use grooves and when you should use frames groups are great for if you're designing a very basic logo or simple illustration inside figma that's great just group those elements together jumble it all up and you're good to go but when you're doing ui design it gets quite complicated right because you need to think about responsiveness you need to think about scalability and if you take a look at my header over here which is a very standard component what you want to do is when you're designing you want to be a you want to be sure to think about how this will scale for larger desktops for smaller viewports you've got to think about all that and if you if this was if this header was inside a group because the group will scale accordingly to everything inside it won't allow you to create this responsiveness now let me explain it to you so if i made this frame a group whoops let me just make this a group as you can see here group two and i'm gonna move these elements inside the group and take it outside the frame and if i reduce this you'll notice that it breaks and i think that's all you really need to understand that groots just don't scale for ui elements and because that because figma just hasn't created groups for this purpose now figma realizes that with ui design we do need to think about scalability we need to think about how things will scale up and down and we need to create or allow this relationship to happen so if you put all the elements inside a frame then because the frame is independent of the elements inside if i scale this this will work perfectly because i can define how i want to position everything inside as well now i don't go too deep into this i have an entire video about auto layouts and constraints if you simply check that video above and you will learn a little bit more about it so the next thing is about frames and rectangles now i don't even remember when the last time i used the rectangle tool now i know a lot of people actually use the rectangle tool to potentially create a button so they might go here's a button i might put some text in here and then i might group this as well so these are like this is sinful this is like blasphemy i would never use i'd create a button like this um and i did at the start but the reason why you should use frames over rectangles is that frames pretty much have the exact same characteristics as a rectangle unless you're doing some sort of like logo design where you need a rectangle a frame is just going to do everything just it as it as a rectangle but even with less layers so if you take a look at this button i've created over here i've only got a frame and then an icon inside and i add a background color on this frame so you can see that the background color on the frame i don't need to if i was to create a button with a rectangle i will need to have a group and then i need to have it some text inside and then i need a rectangle for the background color so don't use rectangles avoid using rectangles you really don't need to use rectangles at all so use frames then we have this issue where you're working you're clicking around and you might realize that all your files and layers are like so disorganized everything's opened and closed what i like to do is simply hit option and you can collapse all the children folders frames everything inside and you can sort of tidy up all your layers so if i hit option close close close close close everything is closed if i hit option and open it will open everything as well so normally once i've gone through my designs and i've like destroyed the layers panel then i will just clean up with the option click now another quick way is when i'm actually going through and cleaning this up i might realize i need to have a duplicate over here sub navigation i might just hit command r or control r on a windows and i can quickly sort of uh rename that file so that's another quick tip to save you a couple of hours as well now the next tip is auto layout literally everything if you notice if you take a look at my layers panel count how many auto layouts i actually have everything is an order layout and you're probably thinking why do i need so many different auto layouts well if you take a look at the scalability of this design i can add as many navigation links as i want without dealing with any spacing issues i can also jump into the sidebar and i can add as many links as i want without any scaling issues i can also jump into here and add as many items without any scaling issues audit layout is the perfect way and i have another video guys about auto layout so just gently smash that link above for you to create scalable and well managed design files so make sure you use auto layouts now the next tip is to create invisible gaps inside your auto layout components sometimes you might realize when you're going to an auto layout component you can define the spacing of like 24 and it will add spacing consistently between all the different items inside so for example if i duplicate this it's always 24 inside but for some reason sometimes you want to create some additional space between some of the elements inside so what you can do is actually drag and draw a rectangle and you can actually turn off the the color you can make a white whatever you want and that is a quick hack to actually add additional spacing inside an auto layout component so if you want to do that that is a very quick win that you can do um and add to your designs now that is a lot of talking my throat is actually getting a little bit dry but let's push through the tenth tip to help you guys improve your process is that you now now you know how much i love working with frames if you notice if you start moving things out of a frame it tends to like get pushed out and you can see here it gets pushed out of the frame and your layers get disorganized so a very quick way and a very quick hack and shortcut is to you can click on the item that you want to move around hold down space bar and you can move it anywhere you want and it will always stay within the frame that is a very quick win and it will save you so much time and if you appreciate that gently smash that like button guys so hopefully that adds a little bit more efficiency to your process now the second last tip for you guys is calculating measurements now a lot of the times like if you guys ask me is this header divisible by four ms code well instead of having to open up the calculator and calculating it or actually doing the maps on paper or trying to figure it out in my head you can actually head over to your design panel and actually do maps in here so obviously 16 is a round number so it is divisible by four so sometimes i actually do my taxes inside this component in this feature right here and i calculate all my tax deductions for the year inside this figma feature because it is so useful so guys if you want to for example double the header uh height of this you can actually times it by two you can see it's actually times by two so feel free to use addition subtractions divisions and multiplications in that feature right there now the very last tip for you guys is something that you guys have been asking about componentizing designs do you do it at the start do you do it at the end do you do it in the middle do you do it when you're asleep do you do it when you're at the gym when do you do the componentization of your designs now with this it really is situational different teams have different processes with different disciplines and expectations like some devs are so botanic pedantic about design systems and consistency that you probably want to think about it fairly early on some companies don't even give a crap about design systems and consistency right so the best way for me and the best thing a process that i've worked with is to like i said before stagger your progress and stagger your thought process so you are managing and solving problems at the right time what do i mean by that for me to achieve this redesign i had to go through three different processes first think on paper document what i want to do first then i design and then i do the cleanup now obviously if you work more diligently this design file won't require too much cleaning up at the end right if you do the planning ahead your designs will probably be like 75 manageable and 25 cleaner now no trust me no designers actually have a 100 clean design file uh from while they're designing i am if you can find anyone i will give you 10 bucks so feel free to i challenge anyone uh that can find a design arm that has a perfectly designed file no need for cleanup at the end so generally designers will get to the end of the sprint and then they'll figure out okay does this sidebar is the sidebar being re you re-utilized in other parts of the design does this card get re-utilized in other parts of the design as well and then you start to clean up you might you might realize oh we have two different card designs maybe it's simpler to just reduce them to one so generally at the end of the design sprint i will clean everything up re-componentize just tidy up anything spacing annotations for the developers or if i need to actually go and develop it myself then that's when i'll actually think about okay what do i need to do what do i need to clean up so guys hopefully these 14 tips you really did enjoy and it will actually really speed up your design process and make sure if you want a piece of that design system before the price ticks up make sure to subscribe you won't get billed until friday until the product actually goes alive so if you want it make sure to jump onto it or the price will go up guys i will hopefully see you guys in another video and make sure if you did enjoy this video to gently you know what it is you smash that like button guys alright guys i'll see you guys in my video very soon [Music] you

Channel: Mizko

Views: 30,041

Keywords: figma, figma plugins, best figma plugins, figma plugins 2020, figma tutorial, ui design, figmotion, figma ui design, design plugins, ui design plugins, figma plugins best, ux design, figma update, figma plugins 2021, figma plugins manager, figma plugins api, build your own figma plugins, figma plugins 2019, figma launches plugins, figma plugins for designers, plugins in figma, figma for mac, figma design tool

Id: eARLkF2P6Y4

Length: 17min 47sec (1067 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 18 2021