Components and Nesting

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Design powerful and reusable elements for your site

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Design System in Figma

10:14

Basic Layout and Techniques

19:49

Constraints and Adaptive Layout

15:13

Styles and Team Library

22:02

Components and Nesting

18:44

Booleans and Shapes

13:40

Icons and Vector Network

30:29

Export, Inspect and Code in Figma

26:03

Multiplayer and Commenting in Figma

8:36

Prototyping and Interaction

11:42

Creating a Component

Before creating a Component, you need at least 2 layers. You can decide to select multiple layers to create a Component, or you can select an existing Group and turn it into a Component.

Let’s duplicate another Design System frame for Buttons. Create a Rectangle at 260x60 with a corner radius of 30. Set a Fill Style to Purple Violet. Add an Effect Style to Button Shadow 1. Press T and write Primary Button. Set the Text Style to Heading 4 with a Fill Style to White, aligned center. Select both the Text and Rectangle and align center horizontally and vertically. Finally, with both layers still selected, do Command + Option + K to create a Component. DraggedImage

Master Component

The first time you create a Component, it becomes a Master Component. Unlike Sketch, it doesn’t reside in a separate Page. It’s directly available for edit right in the current document. You can edit on the fly just as you would edit any other elements.

The Master Component can be distinguished by an icon with 4 diamonds while copies of the Component will have a single diamond icon.

Any structural change, such as position and the actual composition of the layers will affect copies of that Component.

Property Overrides

Editing the contents of the copies won’t affect the Master Component. Overrides can affect text, images, colors, shadows, and even styles.

Let’s Option-Drag the Master Component to create a Copy. Edit the text to Primary Hover. You can even change the Effect Style to Button Shadow 2 and it won’t affect the Master Component. That’s powerful and so simple to use.

Duplicate to create a third button. Change text to Primary Disabled, the Fill to Light Blue and remove the Drop Shadow.

Nested Components

A Component can exist inside another Component. This is a powerful workflow because you want to be able to reduce the size fo your Component as much as you can. There are small Components, such as Buttons and Icons, and there are big components like Cards, Overlays, and Modals. For example, the Card Component can contain Button and Icon Components. This thinking is very much in line with how React works.

Let’s duplicate a Frame to create one for Cards. Create a Rectangle 300x225 with a corner radius of 20. Set the Effect Style to Card Shadow 1.

Add a text layer with a Style to Heading 3 (30) and color to white. Since the text can be spread over multiple lines, we should add a Fixed width of 175. Distance 20 from top and left. Add a new text layer with Caption text and Light Blue.

Select all the layers and create a Component. Name it Card.

Now, let’s create a Frame that’s 30x30. Put any number of layers in there, like the Figma logo in vector and center it. Rename the Frame to Logo / Figma and create a Component (Command + Option + K). Hide the white background.

You can’t put a Master Component inside another Component, so it’s best to create a copy first (Command + D). Move the Copy to be inside the Card Group, and 20 from the right and bottom.

Component Overrides

Changing the content of your Component is crucial to creating reusable elements. At the basic level, you can only change properties in the Inspectors. However, sometimes, you want to be able to change groups of elements, such as icons. The only way to do this is to create multiple duplicates of a Component.

For example, you’d have an icon inside a Frame. Then, you’d create multiple duplicates of that Frame. For each of them, you’d create a Component (Command + K). Make sure that these Frames have the exact same sizes.

The next time you use this Icon Component, you’ll be able to see a drop-down in the inspector which would allow you to switch between the numerous icons you’ve created.

Let’s duplicate the Logo / Figma Component 4 times. For all the copies, right-click to Detach Instance. Now, for each Frame, you can import a new logo and create a Component with their respective names.

Component Naming

Notice that we added a Slash to the name to group component overrides. This allows us to put similar Components together and easily find them in the drop-down menu.

Component Resizing

You can resize your Component by changing its width and height, but you can also use the Scale tool.

Let’s duplicate the Card component 50px to the right and press K to resize it to 340x255. Notice that every layer has also changed its size! This will be the Hover state for our Card. Let’s also change the Effect Style to Card Shadow 2.

Publish Changes

Every time you make changes to your Design System library, you will be asked to Publish so that other members in your team may get the same updates. Let’s Publish.

Organizing Projects

To create a new Project, go back to the main space in Figma and click on New Project. Name it Design+Code 3. Go back to Drafts and drag and drop the Design System and Design+Code 3 files to the new Project.

Team Library Components

In addition to sharing Styles, you can also share your Components, but this needs a Professional account.

Back to our Design+Code 3 design file, click on the Library icon in the top right and click on the Toggle to start using that Library.

Switch to Pro Account

In order to be able to share Components in the Library, I’ll switch to my Pro account.

Back to Design+Code 3

Let’s head back to the design file and start using the new Components.

Try for free Button

Let’s drag and drop a Button component and change the text to Try for free.

Caption

Create a text set to Caption Semibold.

Title

Set a title with Heading 2 using one of the gradients.

Cards

Drag and drop a card and duplicate to get 4 cards.

Publish Library

Whenever you make a change to your Library, you can publish the changes so that your team can get those updates.

Update Library

Once the changes have been pushed, your team must review them and make sure that they make sense.

BACK TO

Styles and Team Library

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Design System in Figma

Complete guide to designing a site using a collaborative and powerful design system

10:14

Basic Layout and Techniques

Start with the styles and design system foundation in Figma

19:49

Constraints and Adaptive Layout

Make your design adapt to any screen

15:13

Styles and Team Library

Rules for typography, colors and gradients in Figma

22:02

Components and Nesting

Design powerful and reusable elements for your site

18:44

Booleans and Shapes

Collaborate with your team with shared components

13:40

Icons and Vector Network

Create your own vector illustrations from scratch in Figma

30:29

Export, Inspect and Code in Figma

Communicating the design system to your developers

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Multiplayer and Commenting in Figma

Iterate designs and explore new ideas in a multiplayer environment

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Prototyping and Interaction

Quickly create an entire flow for your app design in Figma

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Meet the instructor

We all try to be consistent with our way of teaching step-by-step, providing source files and prioritizing design in our courses.

Meng To

I design, code and write

Meng To is the author of Design+Code. Meng started off his career as a self-taught designer from Montreal and eventually traveled around the world for 2 years as his US VISA was denied. During his travels, he wrote a book which now has 35,000 readers.

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