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figma

Updates to AI Credits in Figma | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma is expanding access to AI while adding clearer controls over credit consumption. The company has introduced usage tracking for both administrators and individual users, and will soon offer subscription-based and pay-as-you-go options for additional credits. Seat credit limits will become enforceable beginning March 18, 2026. ## Tracking AI Credit Usage - Billing administrators can see: - Which team members use AI features - How many credits each person has consumed - Which users have run out of credits - How many days remain before credits reset - Individual users can view their remaining balance and reset date. - Most AI actions will display the number of credits they consume. ## Purchasing Additional Credits Beginning March 11, 2026, teams will have two ways to buy credits beyond their included allowances: - **AI credits subscription** - Provides a shared monthly credit pool. - Offers better rates for teams with regular AI usage. - Packages begin at 5,000 credits per month. - **Pay-as-you-go billing** - Charges teams only when additional credits are needed. - Can be used independently or alongside a subscription. - Supports a team-defined spending limit. - Expected to become available by Q2 2026. Example pricing includes: - 5,000 credits: $120 monthly subscription or $150 pay-as-you-go - 7,500 credits: $180 monthly subscription or $225 pay-as-you-go - 10,000 credits: $240 monthly subscription or $300 pay-as-you-go ## Included Credit Allowances and Enforcement Monthly seat allowances vary by plan: - Starter: 500 credits - Professional full seats: 3,000 credits - Organization full seats: 3,500 credits - Enterprise full seats: 4,250 credits - Other seats: generally 500 credits Figma will begin enforcing all seat credit limits on March 18, 2026. Teams should therefore monitor usage and choose either an add-on subscription or pay-as-you-go billing if their AI needs exceed the included amounts.

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figma

8 Tips for Designers Building Branded Templates in Figma Buzz | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma Buzz templates should be designed as flexible systems, not just finished compositions. The post argues that brand designers need to anticipate marketers’ editing needs by building in guardrails for content, spacing, scaling, and branding. Thoughtful template structure helps teams create accurate, on-brand assets at scale without requiring constant designer review. ## Design in Figma Design First - Begin by creating the asset in a Figma Design frame, where designers can use components and Figma Draw’s vector tools. - Once the design is ready, copy it into Figma Buzz for final adjustments and publication as a template. - This workflow combines expressive design capabilities with Buzz’s collaborative marketing features. ## Use Auto Layout for Flexible Templates - Auto layout keeps elements aligned and maintains consistent spacing as content changes. - It is especially useful for buttons, text boxes, and image containers. - Longer headlines or other variable content can expand without pushing surrounding elements out of alignment. - Auto layout provides the responsive foundation needed for templates used across different assets and formats. ## Separate Text Layers by Input - Create a separate text layer for every unique piece of content, particularly when inputs use different fonts, sizes, or styles. - Modular text layers are essential for Bulk create, which maps CSV or XLSX fields to individual design layers. - Combining multiple inputs or styles in one layer can cause formatting problems and make bulk updates difficult. - Separating layers keeps formatting consistent across campaigns and generated assets. ## Lock Image and Vector Aspect Ratios - Lock the aspect ratio of images and vector graphics using the square icon beside the width and height controls. - Templates often need to be adapted from one format—such as a 1080 × 1080 social post—to others, including Instagram Stories or web banners. - Aspect-ratio locking prevents logos, portraits, illustrations, and other graphics from becoming stretched or compressed. - This setting acts as a simple safeguard against accidental distortion during editing. ## Name Layers Clearly - Rename layers so teammates can understand what each editable field controls in Buzz’s Edit Content panel. - Text layers are initially named after their visible canvas text; use Command + R or edit the layer name directly to replace it. - Figma AI can help rename large numbers of layers. - Clear labels make template editing more intuitive, much like completing a form, especially when many layers are available for customization.

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figma

Figma Make Is Now Available to All Users | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma has moved Figma Make and other AI features out of beta and made them available to all users. Figma Make is positioned as a prompt-to-app tool that lets people create interactive, high-fidelity prototypes without extensive technical skills. The company argues that this speeds up exploration and alignment while enabling designers, engineers, researchers, and product managers to participate more directly in product development. ## Figma Make Becomes Generally Available - Users can create prototypes and web apps through natural-language prompts. - New capabilities include: - Importing an existing Figma library, including colors, typography, styling, and usage guidelines. - Connecting prototypes to backend data through a Supabase integration. - Figma’s other AI features, including Make and Edit Image and Boost Resolution, are also leaving beta. - Publishing Figma Make files remains in beta. ## Availability, Seats, and AI Credits - **Full seat users** receive the full Figma Make and AI experience, including private sharing and publishing capabilities. - **View, Collab, and Dev seat users** can create unlimited Make files in drafts and use the AI features available to their seats. - **Starter plan users** can create unlimited draft files and share up to three Make files with their team. - AI credits are included with all seats. - Full-seat monthly allocations are: - Professional: 3,000 credits, estimated at 50–70 Make prompts. - Organization: 3,500 credits, estimated at 60–80 prompts. - Enterprise: 4,250 credits, estimated at 80–100 prompts. - Figma plans to offer additional credits for purchase later. Full-seat limits will not initially be strictly enforced, while lower limits for Starter, View, Collab, and Dev users are enforced daily and monthly. ## Faster, More Collaborative Product Development - Figma says Make supports the broader development process, not just prototyping. - Designers can test complex interactions. - Engineers can produce high-fidelity design artifacts. - Product managers can build functional mockups to validate ideas. - The tool encourages teams to experiment, take risks, and discuss concrete artifacts rather than abstract descriptions. ## Making Prototyping More Accessible - Figma argues that language alone often fails to communicate how a product should look and feel. - Traditional prototypes can be time-consuming or inaccessible to people without design or development expertise. - Natural-language prompting allows more team members to turn ideas into realistic prototypes quickly. - Figma researcher Rie McGwier used Make to build a Survey Traffic Calculator for managing roughly 30 surveys across eight products. - The prototype modeled weekly active users, audience overlap, response rates, recontact windows, sampling requirements, and other constraints, producing a dashboard to help avoid oversampling. Figma’s recommendation is to use Make as a collaborative exploration tool: teams can rapidly turn ideas into working artifacts, test assumptions, and refine solutions before committing to full implementation.

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figma

Building a better First Draft for designers | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma reintroduced its AI design-generation feature as **First Draft**, repositioning it as a starting point rather than a finished product. After disabling the original Make Designs feature because its outputs too closely resembled existing apps, Figma rebuilt the system with improved design libraries and safeguards. First Draft was later folded into Figma’s more powerful design agent, which adds iterative prompting, bulk edits, and live feedback. ## The Purpose of First Draft - First Draft is designed to reduce the tedious work required to turn an idea into an initial design. - It helps designers: - Express an idea through a simple prompt - Start productive discussions - Explore multiple design directions - Move more quickly from concept to prototype - Figma presents it as an additional way to explore possibilities, not a replacement for design judgment or craft. ## How the AI Generates Designs - First Draft uses off-the-shelf AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Amazon Titan. - It combines three elements: - **Model:** The underlying AI system - **Context:** Figma’s proprietary mobile and desktop design systems, components, and assembly examples - **Prompt:** The user’s description of their design goal - The AI selects, arranges, and customizes components from the relevant design system to produce an initial design. ## Lessons from Make Designs - Figma originally introduced the feature as **Make Designs** during Config 2024. - The company disabled it after discovering that problems in the underlying design system caused generated mockups to resemble existing applications too closely. - Following analysis, testing, and iteration, Figma relaunched the feature under the name **First Draft**. - The new name emphasizes that the output is meant to be a flexible jumping-off point rather than a polished final design. ## Design Libraries and Future Customization - Users can choose among four libraries tailored to different needs: - Low-fidelity wireframes - More visually expressive, high-fidelity designs - Site-oriented patterns - App-oriented patterns - This contrasts with Visual Search, which helps users find exact existing files or components. - Figma’s longer-term goal is to let organizations use their own custom libraries and company-specific design languages. - The company is also exploring code-backed systems such as Google Material 3 to help designers and product teams iterate more closely with implementation. ## From First Draft to Figma’s Design Agent - First Draft is now incorporated into Figma’s purpose-built design agent. - The agent extends the original concept with: - Re-prompting and deeper iteration - Automated bulk edits - Live feedback on designs and user flows - Direct interaction through chat on the canvas Figma’s approach is to use AI to accelerate early exploration while keeping designers in control. The current recommendation is to use the design agent as an iterative partner for generating, refining, and evaluating ideas rather than treating AI output as a finished solution.

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figma

Config 2024 In Review | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma’s Config 2024 announcements focus on making design more exploratory, efficient, and connected to development. The company introduced Figma AI, a redesigned UI3 interface, Figma Slides, major Dev Mode improvements, and quality-of-life updates. Figma argues that as AI makes software creation easier, thoughtful design will become an even stronger differentiator. ## Figma AI: Faster exploration and production - **Visual Search** lets users find similar designs across accessible team files using a screenshot, selected frame, image, or sketch. - Improved **Asset Search** understands the context of queries, even when search terms do not match asset names. - New AI-powered efficiency features can: - Generate realistic images and copy - Rewrite, translate, or vary text - Automatically create prototype connections - Rename layers - **Make Designs**, available through the Actions panel, generates initial UI layouts and component options from text prompts. - Figma says these tools are built around practical user needs rather than AI hype, using large language models to reduce tedious work and help designers explore more possibilities. ## Other major Config announcements - **UI3** redesigns the Figma interface. - **Figma Slides** introduces a dedicated environment for building, collaborating on, and presenting presentations. - **Dev Mode updates** aim to move teams from designs being merely “design ready” to being fully “dev complete.” - Additional improvements target **Auto Layout, UI kits, and the prototype viewer**. ## Availability - Figma AI and UI3 were announced as limited betas with gradual rollout. - Users can join the waitlist through Figma’s help menu by selecting **“Join UI3 + AI waitlist.”** Figma’s overall direction is to support the full path from idea generation through design, presentation, and development, while using AI to automate routine tasks and expand creative exploration.

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figma

Meet Figma AI: Empowering Designers with Intelligent Tools | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma AI is a suite of tools designed to help designers overcome creative blocks, work faster, and explore ideas more easily. Rather than treating AI as hype, Figma presents it as a practical way to solve common workflow problems, including finding existing designs and components. The features are initially available in a limited beta and are free during 2024, though usage limits and future pricing may change. ## Figma’s Practical Approach to AI - Figma AI builds on the company’s earlier AI features for FigJam. - The tools target several stages of design work: - Finding inspiration and existing assets - Exploring different design directions - Automating repetitive tasks - Generating interfaces from text prompts - Figma emphasizes helping designers remain efficient and creative rather than replacing their judgment. ## Visual Search - Visual Search allows users to find similar designs by: - Uploading an image - Selecting part of a canvas - Entering a text query - Results are drawn from team files the user can access. - Relevant frames can be inserted directly into the current working file. - Figma plans to expand search to Community files, with attribution, links to source files, and access to creators’ other work. ## AI-Enhanced Asset Search - Asset Search now uses semantic understanding rather than relying only on exact keyword matches. - A search such as “primary button” can find a component named `btn_large`. - The system considers the meaning and typical use of design elements, making components in large or complex design systems easier to discover. - The goal is to make finding assets feel more natural and reduce time spent searching through files and libraries. ## Beta Availability and Pricing - Figma AI and UI3 are being rolled out through a limited beta. - Users can join through Figma’s help menu by selecting **“Join UI3 + AI waitlist.”** - Features are free during the beta period, which runs through 2024. - Figma may introduce beta usage limits as it evaluates demand and infrastructure costs. - Pricing for general availability will be announced later. Figma AI is positioned as an assistive layer within the existing design workflow: it helps users locate useful starting points and reduce friction while leaving creative decisions with the designer.

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