Schema 2025: Design Systems For A New Era | Figma Blog

Figma’s Schema 2025 announcements present design systems as living infrastructure for an AI-driven product development process. They are evolving beyond static rules into a shared language connecting design, code, people, and AI. The updates focus on scaling across brands, enabling flexibility without sacrificing consistency, and improving the connection between design intent and implementation.

Design systems for the AI era

• As product, design, and engineering roles increasingly overlap, more people and AI tools contribute to product development.
• Design systems can provide the common language needed to maintain consistency across these contributors.
• Figma aims to help teams preserve quality and design intent while allowing ideas to evolve across products and platforms.
• The announced features emphasize:
  • Power balanced with flexibility
  • Better connections between design and code
  • Broader participation in the design process

Extended collections for multi-brand systems

• Traditional variables work well for straightforward theming but can be limiting for organizations with multiple products and distinct brands.
• Extended collections allow teams to create a white-labeled version of a core design system.
• Individual teams can add, publish, and reuse their own themes while remaining connected to the parent system.
• Extensions automatically inherit updates such as new variables or color changes.
• Explicitly overridden values remain customized, allowing local flexibility without losing synchronization.
• Extended collections are expected to become available in November.

Slots for flexible components

• Conventional Figma components restrict how designers can modify instances.
• For example, dropdown components traditionally required hidden list items or detaching the component to add new content.
• Slots will allow designers to insert their own layers inside component instances without breaking the connection to the design system.
• Component authors can specify which types of instances a slot accepts.
• This improves usability while preserving design-system compliance.
• Slots are available through an early-access program.

Check designs for better token usage

• Developers often need clarification about which exact design token corresponds to a raw value in a design.
• The Check designs linter identifies elements that should align with the design system, including variables.
• Figma’s custom model suggests the appropriate variable for each context.
• Designers can review suggestions before applying them and then hand off more reliable designs to development.
• Early access is available to organizations and Enterprise full-seat plans.

Figma’s direction is to make design systems more adaptable and intelligent: centralized enough to preserve consistency, but flexible enough for multiple brands, contributors, and use cases. Teams should look toward systems that can actively guide design and implementation rather than merely document standards.