How Linear made the most of a DDoS | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Linear’s website went down during a DDoS attack shortly after a major redesign launch. Rather than leave visitors at a login page, the team turned the crisis into an opportunity by publishing the redesign directly as a Figma file. The unexpected workaround generated significant attention and demonstrated the value of fast, creative incident response.

The Redesign and Its Complexity

• Linear’s team had spent months exploring ideas for the new website.
• The Figma file contained thousands of iterations, frames, large images, and design inspirations.
• The file became so large that Figma warned it was approaching the browser’s memory limits.
• Although the redesign took months to develop, the final work came together during the last 24 hours before launch.

The DDoS Attack

• On October 13, 2022, Linear’s homepage became unavailable.
• The team initially suspected that the new redesign had introduced a technical problem.
• Investigation revealed that the outage was caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack overwhelming the site with traffic.
• Their immediate priority was restoring access to the application, so visitors were redirected from site pages directly to the login page.

Turning the Outage into an Alternative Homepage

• The direct login redirect restored app access but made the public launch feel anticlimactic.
• As social media discussions about the redesign continued, Jori Lallo suggested publishing the Figma design file itself.
• Paco Coursey and Edgar Ambartsoumian were initially hesitant, but Jori encouraged them to proceed.
• The Figma file became an unconventional replacement for the unavailable homepage and attracted widespread attention online.

The incident shows how a team can respond constructively under pressure: stabilize critical functionality first, then use creativity to preserve the user-facing experience when the normal solution is unavailable.