figmaMay 6, 2025

24 Artifacts That Define Craft | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma’s “24 artifacts that define craft” presents objects chosen by designers and makers as examples of intentional making. The collection argues that craft is not limited to perfection or complexity; it comes from thoughtful decisions, practiced skill, meaningful constraints, and attention to both process and experience. Whether an artifact is durable, practical, playful, or fleeting, its quality reflects deliberate choices. ## Craft as Intentional Decision-Making - The artifacts come from *Practice*, a Figma book created by its Story Studio and Brand Studio teams and designed with Other Means and type designer Kia Tasbihgou. - Examples range from a vintage puzzle box and precision-mixed daiquiri to an AI poetry camera and a familiar spreadsheet. - Each object reveals its maker’s judgment: - What to refine or leave raw - When to continue experimenting or stop - How to balance durability, usefulness, and delight - The central idea is that great craft “doesn’t happen by accident.” ## Designing Experiences, Not Just Objects - Garden designer Piet Oudolf’s work demonstrates that craft can mean shaping an experience rather than producing a fixed visual artifact. - His freehand garden schematics use loose forms, color nodes, and plant abbreviations while reflecting deep knowledge of how plants interact. - Oudolf avoids renderings because they capture only one artificial moment, rather than the changing experience of being in the garden. - His work shows that expertise can support spontaneity and looseness instead of requiring rigid precision. ## Structure and Flexibility in Graphic Design - Ladislav Sutnar’s *Catalog Design Progress* revitalized industrial catalogs through a combination of strict typographic systems and adaptable layouts. - The catalog provided a consistent visual framework while allowing individual products to receive customized treatment. - Its design transformed an everyday commercial tool into both an organizational system and an example of visual art. - Craft emerges through the balance between standards and room for variation. ## Precision Under Limitation - A Russian Constructivist poster by the Stenberg Brothers illustrates how constraints can intensify craft. - Its sharp geometric stripes and repeated, photorealistic portraits create tension between contrasting visual languages. - Lithography required decisions to be made directly and intentionally, without endless digital-style revisions. - The poster suggests that simplicity is demanding because every compositional choice remains exposed. ## Doing More with Less - Playdate, the yellow handheld console by Panic with hardware by Teenage Engineering, embodies craft through limitation. - Its one-bit screen and small processor prevent technically elaborate graphics but encourage inventive game design. - Distinctive features—including the bright yellow body, limited “seasons” of games, and physical crank—make the constraints part of the product’s identity. - The console demonstrates that craft is about doing something exceptionally well, not adding more features. ## Making the Process Part of the Art - Wintergatan’s Marble Machine combines a music box with a Rube Goldberg-like mechanism. - Its elaborate, human-powered construction makes the act of producing music as engaging as the resulting sound. - The machine invites active participation from both performer and audience, contrasting with passive music consumption. - Its appeal comes from the visible relationship between mechanism, effort, and outcome. ## A Broad Definition of Craft - The selected artifacts span landscape design, publishing, posters, consumer electronics, and musical machines. - Together, they frame craft as a mindset rather than a particular medium or aesthetic. - Craft may appear as precision, improvisation, restraint, system-building, physical labor, or playful interaction. - The common thread is purposeful making: understanding materials and constraints well enough to create something with character and intent. The collection recommends looking beyond polished appearances and examining the decisions behind an artifact. Good craft comes from combining knowledge, discipline, and judgment with the courage to embrace limits and leave room for human experience.

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figmaMar 10, 2025

From Screen to Zine: Meet the Makers Using Figma for Digital DIY | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Figma is helping a new generation of creators revive zine culture by combining digital speed with the handmade spirit of print. The article highlights designers, musicians, and community organizers using Figma to document underground scenes, produce physical artifacts, and collaborate remotely. Its flexibility, plugins, and collaborative canvas make it especially useful for highly iterative, visually experimental work. ## Figma and the revival of zines - Zines have historically given fringe communities and subcultures a way to publish outside mainstream media. - The article profiles several creators using Figma for digital DIY projects: - Dance Data’s 97-page *Underground Fanzine*, created by Jesse Pimenta and Cheyce Batchelor. - Figma’s AAPI employee resource group, which created *AZINE*. - Dominique Saiegh, who designs cassette and CD packaging. - Sebastián Ortega, who creates assets for online radio station SutroFM. - Tara Ridgedell and Gonzalo Guerrero, who run remote risograph workshops through Secret Riso Club. - These projects use digital tools to build real-world connections and preserve ephemeral music and cultural communities. ## The history and spirit of zine culture - Modern zines began as science-fiction fan magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. - Their history continued through: - Beat-generation small presses in the 1950s and 1960s. - Punk music zines and copy-shop publishing in the 1970s and 1980s. - Riot Grrrl and broader zine culture in the 1990s. - E-zines, blogs, and websites in the 2000s. - A renewed interest in printed zines, festivals, and libraries from the 2010s onward. - Dance Data’s publication deliberately recreates the scrappy, Xerox-inspired aesthetic associated with punk-era zines. - Printing the zine gives readers a lasting physical record of an underground music scene whose parties and collectives are often temporary. ## Designing a 1990s-inspired publication in Figma - Pimenta and Batchelor produced the zine in approximately three months. - Figma’s canvas provided a broad overview of the publication, while Auto Layout helped organize and reorder content efficiently. - Figma’s speed supported an iterative process in which every interview spread could have a distinct visual identity. - Pimenta drew inspiration from rave flyers, computer newsletters, technology magazines, and Archive.org’s *The Magazine Rack*. - The desired aesthetic combined hacker culture, cyberpunk imagery, retro computer graphics, and old-school clip art. ## Plugins for a photocopied, experimental look - **Noise & Texture** added gritty, speckled effects resembling 1990s photocopies. - **Photopea** enabled image manipulation, including noise and threshold filters. - **Skew Skew** distorted typography into irregular shapes that suggested warped Xerox reproductions. - These tools, combined with retro rave references, helped the digital design resemble handmade print work. ## Preparing digital work for print - Pimenta had to export individual pages at four times their intended size, convert them into print-ready PDFs, and then resize the final document. - Exporting was slow because the publication contained thousands of small assets. - The project illustrates both Figma’s usefulness for complex editorial design and the practical challenges of converting a large digital file into a physical zine.

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