Styles and Team Library

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Rules for typography, colors and gradients in Figma

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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

Create the Design System File

Let’s create a new Figma file and call it Design System. We’ll create super quick styles to help with the consistency in our main design.

Colors

Create a new MacBook Pro Frame. Rename it to Colors.

Grid Styles

The first thing to add to our Styles is the Grids. Let’s select the Colors frame and click on the Plus icon next to the Layout Grid. To save this as a new Style, click on the 4-dot icon and click on Create Style. Name it Grid 10pt. That’s it! We just created our first Style, which can be reused elsewhere.

Second Grid Style

Let’s do the same for an 8pt grid. First, remove the newly created Grid 10pt by clicking on the Minus icon. Click on the Plus icon, then the Grid icon to change the size to 8. Finally, create another Style and name it Grid 8pt.

Now you can switch between the two grids on the fly! Additionally, this can be reused on any other Frame.

Color Styles

Let’s create a bunch of Rectangles (280x200) and fill them with multiple colors to use for your project. Most designs will need 4 different types of colors: Background, Text, Buttons and Gradients.

Just like Grids, Colors and Gradients can be saved as styles. You first need to create a Fill of your choice and click on the 4-dot icon. In that window, click on the Plus sign to enter a name for your Color style. Please note that colors shown in the Fill menu are different from the Styles menu.

Background Colors

Good design needs good contrast to be legible and to command attention. To achieve this, you’d use two opposite colors, like black versus white, dark gray versus off-white, dark blue versus light blue. In our case, we used Dark Blue \#212C4F and Light Gray \#F0F3F5.

Text Colors

Text colors can be used to structure your typographic content. For the body text, you’d start with black on white, and white on black. For extra texts such as captions and titles, you’d need a couple of other colors. In this case, we’ll have Black, White, Dark Green \#205284 and Light Blue \#C6D0EB.

Button Colors

These colors need to draw attention. They’re used for actionable items, such as buttons, links and clickable areas. They can also be used to express your branding. The color that we use are: Purple \#7B42F6, Violet \#B01EFF, Pink \#E1467C, Blue \#3672F8

Gradient Styles

For those who are used to Sketch, you need to know that Figma has a different way to store Gradients. It’s not in the Fill menu but in the Styles menu. Unlike colors, there are no general presets. They’re Library-specific.

Gradients are used for buttons and backgrounds. You can even use them for text layers since Figma has this unique capability. To create a Gradient, go to Fill, and select the dropdown next to Solid. Move the endpoints from Top Left **to **Bottom Right. Make sure to set both ends to 100% opacity.

For our design system, we’ll use Purple Violet \#7B42F6 to \#B01EFF, Violet Pink \#B01EFF to \#E1467C, Blue Violet \#3672F8 to \#B01EFF, Blue Marine \#14F1D9 to \#3672F8.

Saving Color Styles

Now that we have all our colors, we can select each one and click on the Styles icon next to Fill to create a new Style. This will be added to your Local Styles. Do the same for Gradients. Figma will treat them the same.

Your Styles

If you have nothing selected, you’ll see your global settings, which includes your local styles. You’ll see that you have saved the Color Styles and Grid Styles. Nice!

Header

We can already start using our new Color styles on the Header! Create a Rectangle at 1440 x 240px. As a Fill, click on the 4-dot icon and select Purple.

Title

Make a Text layer with a font size of 80px, bold, white, 100px from left and centered vertically. We’ll use SF Pro Display and write Colors.

Typography

Let’s duplicate the Colors frame and change the Title to Typography. You can delete the color layers.

We’ll create roughly 13 different text layers divided into 2 types: Headings and Body Texts.

Headings

Headings are for large titles and will use SF Pro Display, which has the letter less spaced out. The font is bold and as a result, extremely easy to scan as you scroll the screen. As recommended by Apple, when the font size is more 20pt or more, SF Pro Display should be used. For the line-height, set to 120%.

Headings Text Styles

Create 4 text layers at 80px, 60px, 30px and 24px respectively. Set them all to Bold. For each, create a new Text Style based on their names.

Body Texts

Body texts are for reading a large amount of text content, typically for more than one line of text. We’ll have Large, Medium, Normal and Small. For each, we’ll need the Regular weight and Semibold. For Design+Code, we’ll have a special one called Caption set in Semibold.

Create the text layers at 24px, 20px, 18px, 16px and 12px. Line-height should be set to 130%. For each, except for Caption, duplicate to create the Semibold version.

Advanced Type

You can have access to more options for your text layers if you click on the triple dots icon. You can change the Resizing, Transform, and some advanced features. For the Caption, set it to Transform: Uppercase.

Body Text Styles

Again, for each text layer, create a Text Style.

Shadows

Duplicate the Typography frame to create the Shadows frame. Delete the content.

Effects

A feature unique to Figma is the ability to store Effects, like drop shadows, stroke, blur and even images as Styles. This is insanely useful for creating button shadows, blur settings and even preset content like avatars and backgrounds. You can store UI faces, images for others to use as long as they have this Library enabled.

Button Drop Shadow

Create a white Rectangle with 10px corner radius. Click on the + next to Effects. Set the drop shadows to 20px Blur, 10px Y, 15% black. Typically, I set the Blur to be 2x the Y position. The X position is almost always at 0. We’ll use this for the Button.

Drop Shadow State

We’ll create a drop shadow that seems to be floating away further from the ground. This will serve as the end state for our drop shadow animation from the first state. Duplicate the first Rectangle and set the drop shadow to 30px Blur, 15px Y.

Card Drop Shadow

Let’s duplicate the Rectangles to create one at 40px Blur, 20px Y and another one at 60px Blur, 30px Y.

Save Effects

Let’s save all 4 drop shadow effects.

Assets

Let’s duplicate again a Frame to rename to Assets. Divide the content into 2 sections: Avatar and Background. Create text layers for both titles. We can already use our Styles.

Set the Text Style to Heading 2 (60) and the Fill to Dark Green.

Avatars

Press O to create an Oval at 60x60. Change the image to any avatar provided in the assets. You can find more avatars on UINames.

Option-Drag to the right with a distance of 30px and press Command + D to do it multiple times. Make about 4. Then, change the images for the rest of the avatars.

Create a Style for each and simply title them by their full names. This will be useful when you design.

Backgrounds

Press R to create a Rectangle 380x225 with a corner radius of 20. Change the image to any of the backgrounds provided. More can be found on the downloads page. Option-Drag to duplicate to the right with a distance of 50px. Command + D to make another copy. Duplicate for a second row. Change to the other backgrounds provided.

Create a Style for each background and simply name them Background 1, Background 2, etc. Of course, you can decide to create more of these for your own Design System.

Team Library

Now that you have your Styles saved, you can Publish them for your team to use. Click on the Library icon in the top right and click on Publish. Voila! Anyone in your team can use turn on and off the Library and have access to all the styles you’ve just created!

Enabling a Library

You can enable the Design+Code icons library in order to use its Components. This will be useful for later.

BACK TO

Constraints and Adaptive Layout

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Source code for all sections

Video files, ePub and subtitles

Videos

ePub

Subtitles

Assets

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

26:03

Multiplayer and Commenting in Figma

Iterate designs and explore new ideas in a multiplayer environment

8:36

Prototyping and Interaction

Quickly create an entire flow for your app design in Figma

11:42

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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