Figma’s new icon | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)
Figma’s 2017 icon redesign reflects the company’s growth and broader design philosophy. Rather than treating the icon as a standalone mark, Figma built it around three ideas: fundamental design elements, playful experimentation, and modular systems. The result is a bright, flexible icon made from simple shapes that represents both Figma’s product and its approach to design. ## Celebrating the Fundamentals of Design - All designs can be reduced to basic elements such as points, lines, and shapes. - Figma’s own tools follow this principle: a relatively small set of carefully integrated functions can produce complex results. - The icon celebrates these foundational building blocks, echoing traditions associated with Bauhaus and other design movements. - Its simple forms represent Figma’s goal of empowering designers to create sophisticated work from elemental components. ## Encouraging Play - The icon’s bright colors and block-like shapes were inspired by children’s building blocks. - Figma views experimentation and play as important ways to discover new solutions. - An open, playful design process can produce more creative and unexpected outcomes. - The icon is intended to communicate the same openness and enjoyment that Figma hopes to enable in its users’ workflows. ## Design as a System - Digital products must work across many screen sizes, devices, operating systems, and connection conditions. - Modular systems and reusable components are therefore more effective than one-off designs. - Figma favors rules-based, vector design because it can adapt to different environments more reliably than fixed pixels. - The new icon is constructed from three simple shapes arranged on a modular grid, reinforcing the idea of flexible, reusable design components. - This concept connects to Figma features such as team libraries, which help designers build and maintain systems. The new icon extends Figma’s identity while expressing its core beliefs: strong design starts with fundamentals, creativity benefits from play, and digital work is most powerful when built as an adaptable system.