A "welcome" is in order, and let's also set some expectations while we are at it!

An Introduction to Figma, Figmagic, and Design Systems

I hope you are excited! We'll be using some very nice tools and some skeletons I've pre-provided to fast-track our way to a design system!

The course project

Introduction

Let's take care of the essentials first, like setting up a development environment, Git and Node.

Prerequisites

Figma reshaped how millions of people and companies follow the design process. Now, we're going to form our process around it.

An Intro to Figma: Shortcuts, Frames, and Components

Get a spot in the world's biggest (probably!?) JavaScript community—NPM.

How to Set up NPM to Publish JavaScript Packages

Get hooked up with the premier place on the planet to share, build, and discuss code—open source or otherwise.

Setting up GitHub

Next stop is hosting, where we'll use Cloudflare Pages, one of the most exciting tech services around.

Setting up Cloudflare

Last but not least, we need to get our visual inspection platform and Storybook hosting working. For this, we will turn to Chromatic.

Setting up Chromatic

Preparation

Let me introduce you to my take on the concept of "continuous design."

An Intro to Continuous Design: DevOps for Design

Time to set the stage and see what we can do to be a top shop using continuous design principles and tooling.

Build a Continuous Design Workflow With a Design System

A diagram can be the difference between an organization of "petty kings" doing their own thing and having actionable plans built on a shared identity. What we need is some kind of governance.

Build Better Design and Change Governance With Flows

One magic, simple concept (design token) and a one-stop shop to contain our design equal one hell of a powerhouse.

Intro to Design Tokens: How to Communicate in Design Work

Going from static files, private work, and image-based output to a collaborative, real-time component-oriented tool changes everything about the design workflow.

Why Figma? The Pros of Collaborative Design

Figmagic is the last piece in our toolchain that acts as the glue needed to super-charge your productivity.

An Intro to Figmagic, the Figma CLI For Token Design

Enabling 'Continuous Design'

It's high time to get to know the Figma API, one of the real stars of our show.

How to Use the Figma API and Read Figma Documents

Time to get knee-deep in coding, which we will kick-start by using a bit of boilerplate that we're going to scaffold.

How to Scaffold a React Codebase With Degit

It's vital we have a solid grounding for our component workflow if we are to build an entire library of them. In this lesson, we will set up a smooth, component-driven development workflow from code to Storybook.

Build a Component Development Workflow With Storybook

That song with the "I like to move it-move it" lyrics must have been about pushing code to production...right?

Automatically Deploy React Code to GitHub and Cloudflare

While dogfooding does sound yucky, it's a word that connotes the practice of using one's own things, sometimes to build something new. That's what we will do now with the components we've built.

How to Publish a React Component Library to NPM

Putting in the last fixes for our tooling means getting our Continuous Integration operational.

Finishing the CI Setup

Setting up a pipeline for design and code

With all the other hard, boxy stuff behind us, the perspective now moves to the front-end components and Figma.

How to Set up Figmagic to Interact With Figma via CLI

Working effectively with Figmagic means understanding how and what it actually parses from a document.

How Figma Files Are Organized in Figmagic

Getting to know the configuration options is super important if you want to make the best use of Figmagic.

An Intro to Figmagic Command Line Configuration

Getting to know Figmagic

Let's find our way by analyzing our UX sketches before digging into the details and building anything.

UX Sketching and Double Diamonds: Build Atomic Design

Let's move on from basics to the intermediate level and actually make some designs.

How to Create Design Tokens and Styles in Figma

Let's put the Figma-first approach to the test by taking the step to turn a design into code.

How to Break up Designs Into Small, Atomic Components

Starting our design system

And now for some bells and whistles—graphics and icons!

How to Build Icons in Figma and Export Them With Figmagic

Galloping ever onwards, we'll wave our magic wand and summon our low-complexity components.

Flat vs Nested Elements in Figma and Figmagic

Now, we leave the easy flat components for the more detailed nested ones!

How to Create Nested Figma Elements in Figmagic

Code generation with Figmagic 4 will only take you so far. For our most important and complicated components, we will need to do some manual work, composing small bits into more advanced ones. Let's compose one from what we've made so far!

How to Compose Complex Components With Figmagic

Extra credit time—adding the components for the checkout view.

Finishing the Checkout Components (optional)

Building elements and components

Good documentation is vital and shows that you care about your design system and those who will use it. Lacking good documentation practices could spell doom for a design system.

How to Author Quality Design Documentation

The very first documentation step we will take is to describe what we have built so far.

Add Storybook Descriptions For Self-Documenting Designs

Storybook is a brilliant tool for documentation, and we'll make good use of it in several ways.

How to Structure Storybook for Documentation

Documentation and Storybook

We have talked about "continuity" a lot, so it's about time we address how to deal with change in practice.

How to Plan for Design and Component Life Cycles

Things need to be in order before we continue.

Export Components With GitHub Chromatic Actions

Time to fill up our UI platform with our work to date!

A Beginner's Guide to Using Chromatic With Storybook

Communicating and giving feedback on our work is the lifeblood of a design system.

Building a Feedback Loop For Your Design System

Let's automate the release of new components.

Publish New Design Components With GitHub Actions

Time to place the final cherry on the top. Cue up "I've got the power"!

How to Trigger GitHub Actions From a Figma Plugin

The design life cycle

Summary and thank you

Among developers and architects, "continuous integration and delivery/deployment" (CI/CD for short) has increasingly become the norm for almost two decades. And while frontend development has gone through the framework revolution, going from design to code with the speed expected of CI/CD is still a pain. But it doesn't need to be!

This 10-module course is taught by Mikael Vesavuori, an architect and developer who has helped companies like Polestar redefine their technology and design processes, tooling and ways of working.

In the course, we will create a full component-based React-driven application with Figmagic, underpinned by Storybook, good documentation, and with CI and automated testing.

We will bring the dev-designer collaboration to its current state-of-the-art with a DevOps-inspired life cycle, which could be called “continuous design” (after continuous integration/deployment or CI/CD).

While there is a pre-defined, specific toolset that we’ll use, the end goal of the course is to teach you a wider perspective of what it means to work end-to-end with design systems. Nearly all individual tools are exchangeable: we’re more interested in the capabilities enabling our desired way-of-working than the specific tools chosen to get there.

This course is a comprehensive guide to building a React component library based on a well-architectured design system. You’ll create a full component-based React-driven application with Figmagic, underpinned by Storybook, good documentation, and with CI and automated testing. Learn senior-level system architecture skills for frontend React code; skills you can apply broadly in working on any frontend application.

The newline Guide to React Component Design Systems with Figmagic

How to set up a continuous design pipeline from code to CI/CD, using some of the best services out there

What Figma, Figmagic, and design tokens are and how they enable you to be more productive

How design tokens can function as a contract between designers and developers, setting up powerful new ways of working

The history of design/code tooling and how to argue for process and tooling change

Understand the value of documentation, using Storybook and Figma to document your work

In this lesson, we will first get a Figma account and then move on to learn the very basics of the tool. Finally, we will look at a number of powerful features.

 website. Figma offers a generous free plan, but it does have certain limitations. We won't use any paid features, so you aren't missing out on anything if you want to keep your wallet tight.

Figma is a web-based application, which is actually pretty impressive, given how advanced it is. You run it either in your browser or, if you prefer, as a native application wrapping the web experience. You can download it when you are logged in by clicking your profile in the upper right corner then clicking 

. I will be using the desktop version; if nothing else, so I can keep some order in my browser tabs. You do you!

Let's get the show on the road, shall we? Create a new design file.

You'll see something like this when you start.

Hold space and then drag-click with the mouse to move around.

In the center, you'll see the work area. At the very top, you can set the file's name. Give it a meaningful name.

Also at the top is the toolbar, where you will find the small set of primary tools that Figma provides. I think it's pretty swell to open up a full-fledged design app and not be overwhelmed by tools. On the top right, you will see the profile button, zoom level, and a couple of icons that relate to sharing the file and starting the prototyping mode.

To the left is where you will find layers, assets, and pages. A layer is similar to a layer in Photoshop if you ever used that. An asset is a component or something else similar stored in Figma. There is a search here as well if you click 

. A page is just that: another page to organize your work.

 tabs. The first two tabs offer a selection of pre-sized 

 for either design or prototype modes. The 

 tab offers functionality to extract CSS from selected items. We'll, of course, get more powerful extraction abilities later, given that course is about Figmagic.

. You can think of the frame as a container to keep things in. Your exact metaphor may be different given your own context, but that's how I think of it. Press 

With the tool selected, drag out a roughly square frame into the middle work area. You'll see the pixel size as you drag. If you hold 

 while dragging, you can enforce angles and symmetry, like making a perfectly square box. Don't worry about that now, though—just put something out in the 500 x 500-pixel range.

 to choose the Rectangle tool. Place a box inside the frame. Click the box once, and start dragging it around inside the frame. You'll notice that it starts snapping to edges and corners. If you release it and go near the box with your cursor, it'll highlight distances to its respective edges.

Notice on the left that the layers panel is populating: it has a frame and a rectangle inside of it. You can use this to place things in relation to each other. To group many things into a distinct group, select them (either in the work area or in the layers panel) and press 

Make sure the rectangle is selected. In the right-side panel, you can see a representation of the coordinates of the rectangle and its size. Edit the 

 value to 75. You can also decide to constrain proportions by clicking the paperclip-looking button to the right. If you click it and try to update either the W or H values, you'll find that it automatically also updates the other value to keep the shape intact.

Speaking of constraints, let's look at those and use them for our rectangle. First, let's put the rectangle in the middle. Drag it until you get the red indicator lines and release it. Resize the frame a bit by pulling it in one of the corners. Use 

 to undo if you released too early. So what's the deal? Seems totally uninteresting? Correct. You saw that the frame can clip the contents, in other words, our rectangle. Let's use constraints to see our rectangle move according to the frame dimensions.

 for both horizontal and vertical options.

If you try to rescale the frame again, the rectangle will adjust according to the constraints you set. This can be a very powerful way to mock responsive layouts and similar dynamically-sized designs.

The next thing we will do is to start molding the ugly gray rectangle into a basic button.

With the rectangle selected, let's give it a fresh dab of paint. On the right, under 

, click the colored square and pick any color you like. The color picker is pretty flexible, so you can use any colorspace you want, like RGB, HSL, etc. There's also a set of color swatches and a selector that'll likely say 

. This will collect any unique colors in your current document. You can click it and see any shared color palettes as well if you have any. It's really to set these reusable colors up across files and projects.

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title: "An Intro to Figma: Shortcuts, Frames, and Components"
description: Figma reshaped how millions of people and companies follow the design process. Now, we're going to form our process around it.
#privateVideoUrl: https://fullstack.wistia.com/media/xxxxx
isPublicLesson: false
useMdx: true
---

In this lesson, we will first get a Figma account and then move on to learn the very basics of the tool. Finally, we will look at a number of powerful features.

## Getting the account

Go to the [Figma](https://www.figma.com/) website. Figma offers a generous free plan, but it does have certain limitations. We won't use any paid features, so you aren't missing out on anything if you want to keep your wallet tight.

![Figma](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/newline-guide-to-react-component-design-systems-with-figmagic/module_02/lesson_02.02/public/assets/figma-1.png)

Figma is a web-based application, which is actually pretty impressive, given how advanced it is. You run it either in your browser or, if you prefer, as a native application wrapping the web experience. You can download it when you are logged in by clicking your profile in the upper right corner then clicking **Get desktop app**. I will be using the desktop version; if nothing else, so I can keep some order in my browser tabs. You do you!

![Figma](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/newline-guide-to-react-component-design-systems-with-figmagic/module_02/lesson_02.02/public/assets/figma-2.png)

Let's get the show on the road, shall we? Create a new design file.

![Figma](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/newline-guide-to-react-component-design-systems-with-figmagic/module_02/lesson_02.02/public/assets/figma-3.png)

## Getting a feel for the basics

You'll see something like this when you start.

![Figma](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/newline-guide-to-react-component-design-systems-with-figmagic/module_02/lesson_02.02/public/assets/figma-new-file.png)

Hold space and then drag-click with the mouse to move around.

### Hotkeys

_Pinch-zoom_ or `CTRL + MOUSE SCROLL` to zoom

`F` for frame

`S` for slice

`R` for rectangle

`L` for line

`SHIFT + CMD + K` for image

`P` for pen, `SHIFT + P` for pencil

`T` for text

`V` for the move arrow

`K` to scale

`C` to comment

In the center, you'll see the work area. At the very top, you can set the file's name. Give it a meaningful name.

Also at the top is the toolbar, where you will find the small set of primary tools that Figma provides. I think it's pretty swell to open up a full-fledged design app and not be overwhelmed by tools. On the top right, you will see the profile button, zoom level, and a couple of icons that relate to sharing the file and starting the prototyping mode.

To the left is where you will find layers, assets, and pages. A layer is similar to a layer in Photoshop if you ever used that. An asset is a component or something else similar stored in Figma. There is a search here as well if you click **Assets**. A page is just that: another page to organize your work.

On the right-hand side, you have the **Design**, **Prototype**, and **Inspect** tabs. The first two tabs offer a selection of pre-sized _frames_ for either design or prototype modes. The **Inspect** tab offers functionality to extract CSS from selected items. We'll, of course, get more powerful extraction abilities later, given that course is about Figmagic.

![Figma](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/newline-guide-to-react-component-design-systems-with-figmagic/module_02/lesson_02.02/public/assets/figma-frame.png)

### Frames and things

One basic concept is the _frame_. You can think of the frame as a container to keep things in. Your exact metaphor may be different given your own context, but that's how I think of it. Press `F` to quick-select the Frame tool.

With the tool selected, drag out a roughly square frame into the middle work area. You'll see the pixel size as you drag. If you hold `SHIFT` while dragging, you can enforce angles and symmetry, like making a perfectly square box. Don't worry about that now, though—just put something out in the 500 x 500-pixel range.

Press `R` to choose the Rectangle tool. Place a box inside the frame. Click the box once, and start dragging it around inside the frame. You'll notice that it starts snapping to edges and corners. If you release it and go near the box with your cursor, it'll highlight distances to its respective edges.

Notice on the left that the layers panel is populating: it has a frame and a rectangle inside of it. You can use this to place things in relation to each other. To group many things into a distinct group, select them (either in the work area or in the layers panel) and press `CMD + G`.

Make sure the rectangle is selected. In the right-side panel, you can see a representation of the coordinates of the rectangle and its size. Edit the **W** (width) value to 150 and the **H** value to 75. You can also decide to constrain proportions by clicking the paperclip-looking button to the right. If you click it and try to update either the W or H values, you'll find that it automatically also updates the other value to keep the shape intact.

Speaking of constraints, let's look at those and use them for our rectangle. First, let's put the rectangle in the middle. Drag it until you get the red indicator lines and release it. Resize the frame a bit by pulling it in one of the corners. Use `CMD + Z` to undo if you released too early. So what's the deal? Seems totally uninteresting? Correct. You saw that the frame can clip the contents, in other words, our rectangle. Let's use constraints to see our rectangle move according to the frame dimensions.

With the rectangle selected, under the **Constraints** section, edit the settings to use **Center** for both horizontal and vertical options.

![Figma](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/newline-guide-to-react-component-design-systems-with-figmagic/module_02/lesson_02.02/public/assets/figma-constraints.png)

If you try to rescale the frame again, the rectangle will adjust according to the constraints you set. This can be a very powerful way to mock responsive layouts and similar dynamically-sized designs.

![Figma](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/newline-guide-to-react-component-design-systems-with-figmagic/module_02/lesson_02.02/public/assets/figma-rescaled-constrained.png)

### Color and form

The next thing we will do is to start molding the ugly gray rectangle into a basic button.

With the rectangle selected, let's give it a fresh dab of paint. On the right, under **Fill**, click the colored square and pick any color you like. The color picker is pretty flexible, so you can use any colorspace you want, like RGB, HSL, etc. There's also a set of color swatches and a selector that'll likely say **Document colors**. This will collect any unique colors in your current document. You can click it and see any shared color palettes as well if you have any. It's really to set these reusable colors up across files and projects.