Design Thursday #78
A weekly recap of everything you need to know about tools, events, guidelines and design in general.
Figma Make as Layers
You can now use the new "Copy design" button in Figma, which will create editable layers from your Make prototype so you can continue exploration in Figma. A super helpful feature that makes it easier to first prototype with Make and iterate and improve later on.
Vector editing Cut tool
A new Cut tool has been added to Figma's vector editing tools to let you precisely divide vector shapes into separate objects with a simple click or drag to slice.
Stagger Effects in Framer
Framer gained a new Appear effect, Stagger. Great for gradually showing elements (in a Collection List for example).
Wireframer & Workshop updates
Components are now created with Claude 4.5 in Workshop. Also, Wireframer can now create multiple pages at once and generate Collections. So, it's now even faster to build a first draft of your website. You can find all of this in the October update.
More powerful GSAP animations in Webflow
Interactions created with GSAP now have support for breakpoints, reduced motion settings, and page scoping. This will let you adapt your animation based on screen size, create more subtle animations (or remove them) for people who prefer less motion, or make your website more performant by deciding which page interactions are loaded.
Learn more about GSAP improvements
Supernova 3.0
Supernova is releasing a big new update of their product, previously mostly used for design documentation and token syncing. They will now bring actual product building to Supernova. What is interesting is that they are focusing on teams and not just an individual designer who creates something. It's meant to be a space for both designers and PMs to write out docs and specs, and build your ideas. All of this context can then be brought to engineers with MCP, as React code or as a prompt for another tool.
Learn more about Supernova 3.0
Libraries in Rive
Previously an Early Access feature, but now available in Rive, Libraries. You can use it to make your animations reusable even with custom data.
Animate faster with LottieFiles
Lottie Creator was just publicly released but is already receiving some new features to make animating even faster. Here's a breakdown of each new feature:
- Keyframe Assistant: Select multiple keyframes and let them retime the animation or reverse it automatically, without having to make a single manual change.
- Smart Duplicate: Duplicates will now maintain the same offset as the last transformation. Great for evenly spaced elements and repeating patterns.
- Export as Code: Motion Presets now lets you copy an animation directly as CSS, Tailwind CSS, or Framer Motion.
Gradient Strokes in Jitter
You can now add and animate stroked gradients in Jitter, easy as that. Now you can recreate Apple's cursive "Hello" right in Jitter.
Read more about Gradient Strokes
Using Shaders to build AI interfaces
Dive Club has a new interview with Nelson Noa, Art Director and Co-Founder of Genie AI. They go behind the scenes of how the animations and interactions are created by combining physics, lighting, and metaphors.