(We call them frames, other people call them artboards.) You can get started using just one of these tools, but the real power comes from combining them.Ĭonstraints give you a very basic framework for creating designs where elements stick to the edges of a frame or are centered in it, but we know most designs are a bit more complex than that. The toolset consists of a) constraints b) layout grids and c) the ability to nest a frame inside of another frame. Our approach is to create a set of tools built for flexible screen sizes that allow you to create very powerful layout systems when properly combined. When I started working at Figma, I thought this was a challenge our team could tackle. Less obvious is how a tool can allow you to design in a way that is flexible yet also allows for a fine degree of control. With new devices introduced every year, it is now obvious that the ‘page’ in digital design can take any size and shape. When the first iPad was introduced, many designers welcomed the return of the page and of edges - comforting boundaries that help anchor a design. Making sure that the design translates would either involve a lot of repetitive copy/pasting between artboards of different sizes or some sophisticated guesswork.
#Grid power optimal layout how to
A designer or an engineer then has to figure out how to translate a design based on the conventions of the past into the present reality of knowing very little about how the design will be displayed. Even for web design where browser sizes are fluid, designers are still working with tools created for fixed layouts.
Nowadays, we have better support for typography and better control over layouts, but the tools we are using have not yet adapted to designing for screens. ToolsĪs we started designing for screens, much traditional knowledge was thrown out due to the technical limitations of the new medium. We think grids are as foundational for our flexible canvases as they are for a fixed page. We at Figma believe this is less a problem of philosophical incompatibility, and more an issue of contemporary digital designers lacking the proper tools. Because of this, it can often feel incompatible within our current age of designing for a fluidity of device sizes and screen densities. Their work took for granted a few things, though: a fixed page size with precise control over type-size, line-height and margins. Grids are the invisible scaffolding that give a design coherence. Today their ideas are still foundational. Their work came to be known as grid design and a handful of pioneers like Joseph Müller-Brockmann and Karl Gerstner produced work that was as beautiful as it was rational. In the 1950s, a small group of Swiss designers started searching for a better way of systematizing how information was organized on the printed page.
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