10 months ago, Figma announced that they were no longer getting acquired by Adobe. Figma has spent 2024 making big changes to its brand and products, many of which have only recently been rolled out. They announced their branding refresh as well as their new interface design, UI3, over the summer at Config, their annual design conference, and have faced a bit of backlash ever since.
UI3 was made available for everyone just last week and there is a lot to unpack. Digging into Figma’s redesign and rebrand, this was much more of a strategic move than what first meets the eye. These changes are a big step in a new direction for Figma as they solidify themselves as a large and independent player in the design space.
To be quite honest, I was initially so confused by the big fuss that Figma made surrounding their rebrand — after all, why does a design platform need a new font and color scheme of its own? While I still question the necessity of such a change, it's clear they’re leveraging this rebrand as a strategic move toward becoming a suite of products rather than just a standalone product. Figma’s rebrand creates cohesion across their different products like FigJam, Dev Mode, and Slides. They’re not only solidifying a unified brand identity but also laying the groundwork for future expansions to fit right in as they continue to grow.
Visually, Figma’s branding has turned from graphics made up of very primitive shapes and cursors to more colors and free-flowing shapes. This branding change is also representative of their new audience. Figma’s user base is no longer just designers. Actually, the Figma audience breaks down as a third designers, a third developers, and a third management and support. By expanding their design patterns, they seem to be looking to make a bigger splash to embrace the newer Figma users.
Figma’s biggest changes recently have nothing to do with branding, their design interface underwent huge changes with UI3. Over two years were spent on this redesign to “keep designers in the flow by minimizing distractions and placing their work center stage.” UI3 has been controversial so far but a tool like Figma is an incredibly hard design problem, and one that we can learn a ton from. Dylan Field, one of Figma’s’ founders, put it well at Figma: “I can’t tell you how scary it is designing a new UI for Figma for designers.”
A full design upheaval of something like Figma is deeply different from something like Instagram. This is a tool people use for work day in and day out; small changes are intensely noticeable and will be scrutinized by other designers themselves. In any design, but especially one like this, it is incredibly important to balance what you believe to be correct with what your users believe. A great design is only great if it gets used, and Figma has demonstrated really well that they understand this.
One of the changes that Figma made was to change their side panels from being fixed on the left and right edges of the screen to floating and adjustable. This is just one example of different surfaces that Figma redid with the intent of making sure their design decisions were made correctly, not just for consistency with what we are already used to. This is hard to do and they deserve a ton of respect for this.
In the case of the floating UI, this feature got a ton of negative feedback: it cramped the canvas, especially on smaller screens, and slowed people down. The team was willing to listen, and the side panels are now back fixed to the sides of the screen. While this is a pretty small change, it shows that Figma was willing to back off on something that they had spent time and resources on — a skill every designer needs to have.
Figma's decision to include the option to turn off UI3 demonstrates a deep understanding of user needs, especially in a tool where even small changes can have a huge impact. As Rhyan Hassan, a Product Designer at Figma, explains, “If you get UI3 on a Wednesday, but have a work deadline for Friday, you can still go back to the old version and get things done.”
This flexibility empowers users to transition at their own pace, allowing them to maintain productivity without feeling rushed into adopting new features. Figma showed an intense understanding of their audience here and likely set themselves up for a much cleaner transition to UI3.
If you’ve found yourself missing the old UI, hit the ? button to switch back, but make sure to give UI3 another shot after your deadlines have passed.