Design Company's Figma today announced several features, including creating AI-powered sites and web apps, how marketers can create large quantities of assets, and new drawing tools. With the launch, the company is taking on other creative solutions such as Canva and Adobe, as well as AI-powered websites and prototypers for WordPress, Wix, Hostinger and Replit.
The company's website creation tool is called the Figma site. Startups said designers often prototype what a site looks like within Figma. New AI-powered tools also make it easy to create and publish your website. Once a site is generated, collaborators can easily modify elements of the site via the editor without prompting.
Users can also add transitions, animations and scroll effects while increasing the responsiveness of the site. Figma adds the ability to generate blog posts directly from the site. In other words, the site has a content management system (CMS). This is a future feature, allowing users to edit posts within blog designs and manage other assets such as thumbnails and slugs.
For interactive elements such as stock tickers, you can add custom code or use AI to generate the code.
Image credit: Figma
Figma Make, meanwhile, is a similar AI-powered tool, directed towards ideas and prototyping. Users can enter a prompt to create a web application. Prototype apps are collaborative and allow users to encourage their assistants to change or add specific elements. Additionally, if your team has developers, you can modify the code directly to make the necessary changes.
Users can also generate small interactive elements such as clocks and embed them later in published pages via the Figma site.
Yuhki Yamashita, Figma's Chief Product Officer, said both products share many features and underlying technology.
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“We want to enable fidelity prototyping in Figma, especially using Figma Make. We can add more data to it and see how viable the idea is when it comes to the final implementation. On the other hand, Figma sites are useful if you know exactly how the site has full control over it and exactly how to have full control over it.
Image credit: Figma
Several companies in different sectors are looking for ways to use AI to create interactive experiences. Website hosting providers such as Squarespace, Wix, WordPress and Hostinger have released tools that allow users to easily create websites via AI. Meanwhile, tools like Replit and Lovable push users to create apps and prototypes without coding knowledge. Last month, even Canva released a way to create interactive experiences within designs using Canva code.
However, this is not Figma's first foray into prototyping. Last year we released a Make Design feature that needs to be cited after users accused them of training their tools significantly on existing apps.
Additionally, Figma is releasing a new tool for marketers called Figma Buzz. These tools allow marketers to easily create new creatives using templates created by designers with brand-specific designs. You can also use the tools to insert generated images into AI and change the background of a particular asset. Marketers can also create large amounts of assets using data from sources such as spreadsheets.
The startup also launches a tool called Figma Draw for vector editing and illustrations. Yamashita said designers often have to export vector designs outside of Figma to do the editing. The company is currently adding features such as editing text on paths, pattern fills, brushes, and multi-vectors, adding noise and textures, and choosing lassos to its drawing products.
Image credit: Figma
Figma launched a slide tool last year to create presentations. With new asset creation and drawing tools, the company is in direct competition with creative suites such as Adobe and Canva. Yamashita denied that the company competed directly with these creative tools. He said Figma is in the business of building digital products, and one-third of the company's users are developers, thanks to tools such as Dev Mode.
The company is launching a new plan called content sheets starting at $8 a month. This allows users to access Figma Buzz, Slides, Figjam, and the site CMS.