Press slash to focus this field, or Escape to return home.
How do you use Figma?
ToolsFigma is the design source of truth. I build straight from the file.
A spec document that describes a design is a second copy of it, and it starts going stale the moment the design moves. The file is the artifact. I read values off it and I build against it, which removes an entire class of disagreement about what was agreed.
What a file needs in order to be buildable is smaller than most people expect: type and spacing that come from a scale, components wherever the build will have components, and the states named. Margin annotations are optional, because I read those numbers off the file.
The first pass is always to look at the rendered frames before creating a single style. And when there is no designer at all, the design still happens somewhere, in a prototype or in the build.
The rules I hold
The file is the source
The handoff runs straight from it. One artifact, and it is the one that gets updated.
Look at the frames before creating a style
The rendered pages come first, then the token values.
Scales beat one-off values
If spacing and type come from a scale, the build inherits it. If they do not, the build invents one, and from that point the file and the site disagree.
Components in the file become components in the build
Where the design has none and the build needs them, the client and I agree where they go before I start.
States are part of the design
Hover, focus, active, empty, error, loading. Anything not in the file gets decided during the build, and by default that decision becomes mine.
The design has to answer for 480px
So I ask. Guessing produces a mobile layout nobody chose.