Learning Multiple Design Programs-A First Time with Figma

When beginning to break in to the design industry, it can be daunting to try to get a handle on all the different types of software available. By no means am I an expert, but after working with primarily Sketch and Adobe XD for a year, I’m finally taking the leap to learn Figma.

Upon trying to sign up when going to the home page, it told me my email was already in use. Could I have already attempted to use Figma before? Possibly, but my aging memory has assured that I don’t remember anything, so this will be a new experience regardless of whether or not that is actually true.

The good thing about design programs? The interfaces are largely the same. I feel like it is a good idea to try to use multiple programs as a designer so you can familiarize yourself with different kinds of interfaces and design decisions.

I got the hang of Sketch pretty quickly, so I’m feeling pretty good about Figma. So far, the interface is pretty similar, down to several of the keyboard shortcuts as well: ‘O’ for oval shape, ‘R’ for rectangle and so on. I do like that I don’t need a short cut to rotate a shape after I create it, the option immediately comes up.

In fact, using shortcuts and tricks I learned in Sketch, I quickly am able to make an owl shape and prototype several different logos within half an hour. I also really appreciate the vast library of fonts available in Figma. I suppose since it is an online program, they have access to the Google Fonts library. This could pose a challenge for me seeing as typography is not one of my strengths.

There is a chance that I have already written a blog detailing my first time exploring Figma, but this truly felt like the first time. I have seen many job postings where they primarily use Figma due to its collaboration features. I am currently in the middle of a project where I will explore these features further in the coming days.