Design Thursday #36
A weekly recap of everything you need to know about tools, events, guidelines and design in general.
First Figma Slides updates
While Slides is still in beta, that didn't stop Figma to release 10 updates already, including: layer panel in grid mode, new keyboard shortcuts, text styles in design mode, saving grid styles, rulers, more language support for adjusting tones, more transition controls and the option to hide slides.
Fetch in Framer
Fetch is a new Framer feature that lets you acces dynamic API data without writing code. You can replace content of layers or components with API data.
Midjourney 6.1
Midjourney has released a new image model that makes more coherent images where body parts, plants and animals are more correct. Image quality has been improved, small image features (eyes, small faces, ...) are more detailed, upscaling results in better image quality and text accuracy is improved.
Maze Think Aloud educational clips
First time user research participants don't always know how to explain what they see and think aloud while doing a user test. To help this Maze is adding optional educational clips to help users think aloud.
Adobe Project Neo
Adobe is building a new 3D tool to make illustrations faster trying to make 3D accessible for designers who are already familiar with Photoshop or Illustrator. You can get to know Project Neo later today with a 3D room tutorial.
Webflow AVIF & Component groups
Previously you could only compress your images to .webp, but now Webflow added support for the AVIF file format as well. Which is even more compact and results in higher quality images than other compressed file formats. Another update is component groups, which means you can now clean up your clean up your libraries which is great for the new feature from last week.
AI for UI
Another interesting talk from Config about Figma's vision about AI. Jordan Singer, explains how they approach AI at Figma and how it can help you as a designer bring your imagination to reality.