Everything New in Figma

…there was a lot announced at Config 2023!

New: Variables

To kick off this series of announcements, let’s talk about variables! Support for reusable values within Figma has finally arrived, and it’s been highly anticipated. For designers like myself, working in design systems and component libraries to support their teams and various product initiatives, variables help significantly increase efficiency and consistency throughout your components, designs, and prototypes. Variables are reusable values that can be applied across Figma, unlocking design tokens and easy theming. From representing color or type tokens to storing frame or screen sizes or allowing for easy localization, variables seem to do it all.

Types of variables

At the moment, a few variable types are available within Figma today: color, number, boolean, and string. Before sharing more about those types, I’d love to explain how to view them within your own files for your team to use. When inside a file, click on the canvas so that no objects or layers are selected, or press ESC. Within the right-hand sidebar is a new section called Local variables. Next…