✍️ Mapping Designer Tools

Designers and developers are willing to collaborate but are facing key challenges:

• Their tools are not connected (Figma for designers | Microsoft Visual Studio and Github for developers)


• They don’t speak the same language


• Design tools produce images that developers have to translate into code


• It’s impossible to preserve a brand identity across all its

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The first piece of the puzzle is democratizing creation itself. The best tools broaden the scope of who can be a creator: Figma and Canva for design; Kapwing and Veed for video; Descript and Splice for audio; Unity and Unreal Engine for gaming. Elegant, design-first tools unlock new levels of self-expression. They make being a creator more accessib... See more

If you look at every technological shift or platform shift so far, it’s resulted in more things to design. You got the printing press, and then you have to figure out what you put on a page. More recently, mobile. You would think, “Okay. Less pixels, less designers.” But no, that’s when we saw the biggest explosion of designers.

—Dylan Field, Figma

Tools that fit across categories can be especially powerful. For example, Modulz* is a visual component editor that empowers teams to design, develop, document and deploy a design system, without code. It looks and feels like a design software but gives designers the power of code

Introducing Figma for fashion design: Marvelous Designer, The Fabricant, and Clo 3D. These tools leverage 3D technology and allow brands to design, prototype, and ship their collections digitally. They eliminate waste (cost-savings) and enable design, pattern-making, merchandising, and styling teams to work more harmoniously. Emilio Pucci and Theor... See more

The core insight of Figma is that design is larger than just designers. Design is all of the conversations between designers and PMs about what to build. It is the mocks and prototypes and the feedback on them. It is the handoff of specs and assets to engineers and how easy it is for them to implement them. Building for this entire process doesn’t ... See more

Hubspot, for example, uses Canva to empower 300 team members to move quickly, create on-brand designs, and collaborate. Large global organizations such as Hubspot have trouble maintaining brand consistency and implementing design systems. Companies miss deadlines because design teams create bottlenecks due to too many projects and insufficient team... See more