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Three Creator Fund projects to know and love | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

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The Figma Creator Fund supports creators building free plugins, widgets, templates, and educational resources for Figma Community. Since launching in March, it has awarded nearly $300,000 to 13 creators in nine countries, reaching almost a million users. The post highlights how these grants help creators solve difficult, practical problems while keeping their tools freely available.

The Creator Fund’s Purpose

  • The program funds resources that expand what creators can do in Figma.
  • Supported projects include:
    • Mandarin-language design systems tutorials
    • Developer-platform education tools
    • Design-to-code plugins
    • Free templates and widgets
  • Figma prioritizes projects that:
    • Address challenging problems
    • Save users time
    • Offer practical value
    • Can remain free for the wider community
  • Applicants are encouraged to present a clear vision, invest effort in their application, prepare visuals, and pursue ideas they genuinely care about.

Figma to Code by Bernardo Ferrari

  • Based in Curitiba, Brazil, Bernardo Ferrari created Figma to Code, a plugin that converts Figma designs into:
    • HTML
    • Tailwind CSS
    • Flutter
    • SwiftUI
  • The project began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Bernardo helped rebuild a state-level virus-tracking website.
  • Although he had not worked extensively with web development since 2015, he used Figma as a bridge between design and implementation.

Problems with Existing Design-to-Code Tools

Bernardo found that existing plugins were limited because they were:

  • Too slow
  • Dependent on too many steps
  • Paywalled for full functionality
  • Incomplete in their support for Figma’s API
  • Missing important capabilities such as auto layout
  • Restricted to a single programming language or framework
  • Weak at handling responsive design and accessibility

He spent two months building his own plugin, which launched in July 2020.

Using the Grant to Modernize the Plugin

  • Figma and web frameworks evolved significantly after the plugin’s release, but the plugin had fallen behind.
  • Earlier limitations included:
    • Only horizontal and vertical padding
    • Auto layout support limited to “min” and “fixed”
  • The Creator Fund gave Bernardo the resources to update the plugin without introducing a paid tier.
  • The grant also enabled him to add support for Figma’s Dev Mode.
  • He completed the major update in roughly a month and launched it during Config 2023.
  • Bernardo describes the fund committee as supportive and encouraging toward creators with ambitious ideas.

The post’s supplied excerpt ends during Bernardo’s account of launching the update at Config 2023, before the other Creator Fund projects are presented.