(whew) still catching my breath from last week’s
#Config2023
😅
I’m really, really proud of the
@figma
Brand Studio team. 😊 Months of hard work for two special days! Some quick notes on the brand…
Today’s the day!
I’m over-the-moon excited to share some of the
@figma
FigJam brand updates we’ve started to roll out. Plus, a little typographic side quest 🤓
Yes,
#designtwitter
this is a thread...
There are always two tweets that complete sOMe pERsoNAL nEWs announcements. First you let everyone know you're closing a professional chapter. Then in the 2nd tweet you tell everyone how excited you are to join
@figmadesign
as their new Creative Director!!!
Now that
@figma
#config2022
is a wrap, I wanted to briefly share how the branding came together. It was the 4th Config—my first—however I’m not a stranger to design conference branding (hello Schema and 7
@googledesign
SPAN events).
I’m so, so excited to share the work the team has been putting in to refresh and evolve the
@figma
brand! I’m honored to work alongside them and for a company not interested in chasing averages or afraid to take chances.
Never trust an Agency Designer / Director's portfolio. Especially if they fail to mention any of the following:
🚩 Their own individual contribution
🚩 The rest of the team
🚩 The illustrator(s) they hired
🚩 The smaller agency they hired to do the work
In what is now a tradition—we wanna give ya’ll a little peek behind what motivated the
#Config2024
visual identity and all of the work and thought the
@figma
Brand Studio poured into our annual user conference.
Early on we circled around visual language motifs. The primacy of pictograms emerged as this wonderfully universal and accessible idea to begin sketching. We flipped the typical purpose of pictograms from wayfinding or signposting to instead be the primary expression.
The new typeface is available to all FigJam users today! Accessible from the inline toolbar. Thanks to
@eymlin
@jenny_wen
@DangerWoods
and their team for working so closely with us on it. Team work something something dream work!
2/ I’m excited to introduce
#Schema2021
– Figma’s first design systems conference.
Design systems people– join us for a day of virtual sessions led by top design systems leaders from
@Atlassian
,
@lyftdesignteam
, and
@netflix
to name a few.
Apply to attend:
Five years after closing up shop, I think I'm finally ready to give running a business another shot. 🙃
Try 2. 😬 Hopefully ready to announce something before the end of the year.
Save the Date for
#Config2024
June 26-27
San Francisco
Very early bird tickets get you 75% off and first dibs to save your (guaranteed) seat.
Register at
Oh, and of course the goodies. Who needs another tote bag, I mean, really? IMO it’s the details like custom dying the totes that changes ~swag~ from stuff, to stuff you keep.
Motion has become a core element of Config. The mutable logo, the ambient animations, and with this year’s opener film, we were able to push it even further.
@Jeffersonch3ng
and
@chadcolby
worked together on this with
@jdashscott
. Sound design by
@SoundsLikeThese
Each of the 50+ pictos were constructed to fill as much of a square as possible, pushing the limits of legibility with interesting proportions, balancing the graphic, geometric shapes with organic curves.
This ephemeral quality of an event brand opens up the approach to be bold and opinionated. The challenge is in quickly establishing something that's recognizable across many surfaces that doesn’t create visual fatigue before the actual event.
Whenever someone drops a galaxy brained idea, there’s no limit to how many exclamation marks you’re allowed to smash—of course rendered slightly inconsistent as contextual alternates.
@OHnoTypeCo
delivered on the assignment with such thought and care as we went back and forth testing the typeface in our product environment and nascent brand system.
It's beyond upsetting seeing our 5 year old struggle with daily waves of sadness, panic attacks, and night terrors that have come on due to us responsibly isolating for months.
Lastly, there are certain signifiers, like the line-work of a marker or handwriting that help communicate when something is still ~ a wip ~ Call it skeuomorphic. Call it human. We called up
@OHnoTypeCo
...
Dear white parents,
It's absolutely your responsibility to discuss race with your children. Don't expect to burden a BIPOC to be their racial or ethnic dosen. They have enough on their plates, minds, and hearts.
Not sure if you heard... but Config is IRL this year! We're also livestreaming the whole dang thing, but it would be great to see your faces in SF (it's been awhile)
#Config2023
I've acquired some new working habits that have made me practically unemployable to work in an office: (1) I refuse to wear headphones (2) I now burn incense like a teen hippie (3) I have a mechanical keyboard
🎊 We’re giving a live look at our new
@figmadesign
plugin!
Don’t miss the demo taking place right now at the
#Schema2021
conference →
We’ll be releasing the plugin to the public soon at the
#AndroidDevSummit
!
After an intense 15 months of review, today Adobe and Figma have decided to end our pending merger, as we no longer see a path toward regulatory approval of the deal.
When Ben Hill and
@chadcolby
introduced motion into the system it became a key component in bringing it altogether. It allows us to express the non linearity of the process, and the way various voices build off of each other to bring an idea to life.
Last year we set out to develop a refreshed visual and verbal language for FigJam. Something that was both distinct yet in dialogue with the broader
@figma
brand.
Something that better reflected the collaborative spirit of the product experience.
Lots of Handwriting Scripts exist. However we needed a typeface dialed to the brand AND optimized for the product. Expressive, but legible. Opinionated, but universal. How might attributes like speed and confidence inform character construction?
¹ Express the shape of an idea
Great ideas rarely take shape in the same way. What does an ˗ˏˋ ah-hah ˎˊ˗ moment even look like? And if we believe OUR ideas are better than my ideas, how do we express that synergy visually?