Hi Everybody,
I've told myself "I don't hate Figma, I really don't..." at the time I was lying. Just flat out lying to myself. It felt like using two left hands.
The truth is that Figma is a solid layout tool with the interactive advantage of being socially web-based.
That being said it is not a design/production tool, it is a layout tool similar to InDesign (or probably even more like Adobe XD). Can you design in it? Yes. However, the "design" is layout formatted so prototype/flowchart-based wireframes can be discussed/edited. It is not designed for storyboards. Let me be clear on this. Artboards are NOT storyboards. Artboards are a layout schema for reviewing creative. Storyboards (especially for complex animations) are compositions made in a stacked fashion like gels or a flipbook. That way when you go from frame to frame the elements are seamless and don't jitter or pixel shift.
Even in just using Photoshop alone without Figma with artboards, I've run into situations where it's really easy for the elements not to line up. In order to make sure all the details for low/mid/high funnel based 100-unit+ marketing intiatives going 100mph are pixel-perfect and aligned with the proper backgrounds (because two designers split the work at 'artboard' stage etc) it's in best interest for ad production to have them stacked on top in layer comps or folders.
This process of going from artboard-to-stacked layer comp is reminiscent of using tables for bulding web pages instead of DIV tags. Can you? Yeah, but's it's just plain backwards. For animating units, it's best to start with stacked elements and then present those elements in an artboard. Not start in InDesign/Figma laying things out and persistently drag Photoshop/Illustrator elements over and over that you can't create in layout.
With the advent of group protoyping this lengthy and inefficient standard for now building digital animations is not going to go away for probably 10 years until...something finally changes.
So in the meantime, what would be really awesome would be some kind of plugin in Photoshop where we could "Figma-tag" layers or something that we want to sync or import-export with Figma. Then the import-export process could be handled by a folder batch with some kind of manifest to tell Figma which folder it's in and file type it is so upon upload, the layers stay intact upon upload.
If Photoshop had some seamless harmony with Figma going forward since I have to go back and forth between the two (and sometimes even After Effects) "designing" in a split-application fashion that would be a thrill to see in terms of news. As this new 'layout-based' social process for design is here to stay, we really need something seamless the same way After Effects/Premiere work together in unison.
Thank you for reading.
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