How Polaroid Is Building its Next Era of Innovation | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Polaroid is reinventing its iconic instant-photography business for the digital era while preserving its creative heritage. The company uses Figma to unify design across its website, camera products, and mobile apps, enabling faster collaboration and more consistent user experiences. A centralized design system and more capable prototypes help the team validate ideas early and reduce costly development changes.

Preserving Polaroid’s Creative Legacy

• Polaroid became culturally significant through Edwin Land’s instant-camera innovations and its use by artists such as Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams, and David Hockney.
• Digital photography threatened the company’s survival, leading to the closure of its last film factory in 2008.
• The Impossible Project acquired the factory, recreated Polaroid film chemistry, and eventually obtained the Polaroid brand.
• The modern company now combines instant cameras and film with photo printers, connected-camera apps, and other digital products.

Building a Single Source of Truth

• Before adopting Figma, designers worked in separate files and fragmented workflows.
• The lack of shared components and a centralized design system caused duplication, slowed iteration, and limited the team to designing primarily for iOS.
• Figma’s cloud-based collaboration gives designers and other departments shared visibility, supporting remote work and cross-functional discussion.
• Design tokens and variables allow Polaroid to:
  • Support light and dark modes.
  • Adapt designs across iOS and Android.
  • Change default fonts by platform.
  • Match an app’s theme to a camera’s colorway.
  • Show users only the camera model they own during device setup.
• Figma UI kits provide starting points, while plugins such as Autoflow help map user journeys.

Using Prototypes to Validate Ideas Earlier

• More powerful Figma prototypes let the team test realistic user flows before development.
• Users can navigate freely and change settings, producing more natural feedback than earlier prototype methods.
• User testing reveals actual behavior instead of relying on assumptions.
• Early validation improves product quality, saves time, and prevents expensive revisions later.

Polaroid’s experience suggests that a shared design system combined with realistic prototyping can help legacy brands modernize efficiently while maintaining a recognizable creative identity.