Figma's Future

And why AI is determining the things to come

Jon Haines
February 13, 2025

This week’s edition:

Figma's Future: And why AI is determining the things to come
Design articles i found interesting
Design jobs I found interesting

Let me start by saying this is not an article about why Figma will be gone in X years. I’m not trained in fortune telling and I wouldn’t make any bets on that. This is, rather, a commentary on the first several weeks of 2025, and what the horizon looks like from here.

In the past week, Figma released Aspect Ratio Lock, a feature that was long-sought after, and combines the powers of Auto-Layout with scaling more easily. The sentiment from the design community was a resounding “it’s about time.”

So, that’s good right? Well, sort of. Figma is still ahead of any other design tool competitor out there, but as we all know, tools are not meant to last forever (RIP Sketch).

The tides have turned greatly since Adobe planned to purchase Figma back in late 2022. Since then, Figma has unveiled its UI3, a brand new way to view the product, which had also resulted in some snores. The lead is shrinking. Will Figma use this year’s Config to showcase something else that may get the design community excited about the product once again? It’s definitely possible. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I will be heading to San Fran for Config this year. My very first time at the conference! I’m excited, as I’m a huge Figma guy, despite the critiques from the previous lines.

Why the urgency?

127.7 million people watched Super Bowl LIX last Sunday. Many of those people don’t really care about American football. Many want to see ads. And brands like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and even Cirkul delivered ads that all centered around AI.

Yes, I apologize. This is another article that mentions AI. But the truth is, especially in tech, it’s hard to get away from it. It’s creeping, and the commercials were showing the race is live and underway. With DeepSeek making a splash earlier this year, the competition in AI is guaranteed to be full of more beef than Kendrick and Drake.

OpenAI seemed to be the runaway favorite, but it seems like other tech companies are not going away quietly. That sure sounds a lot like Figma’s situation in the design space.

Design Articles for the Week

How I Created A Popular WordPress Theme And Coined The Term “Hero Section” (Without Realizing It) — Smashing Magazine

In 2013, Marcel Moerkens was working on Brooklyn, his WordPress theme, and he needed a way to make it stand out from the pack of other WordPress themes. Little did he know that the intro section he called a “Hero” would become one of the most recognizable patterns in web design today. Here’s how the idea came to life and how it changed everything.

www.smashingmagazine.com/2025/02/popular-wordpress-theme-term-hero-section

Inside OpenAI’s $14 million Super Bowl debut

“This really is the dawn of a new era.”

www.theverge.com/openai/608476/openai-super-bowl-chatgpt-commercial

Apple brings heart rate monitoring to Powerbeats Pro 2 | TechCrunch

Apple Tuesday announced the long-awaited debut of Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds. The new headphones arrive nearly six years after the original Powerbeats hit

techcrunch.com/2025/02/11/apple-brings-heart-rate-monitoring-to-powerbeats-pro-2

Design Jobs for the Week

Senior User Experience Designer at Findem (remote in US)
Senior Product Designer at SonderMind (remote in US)
UX Writer - contract at Drop Fake (remote in NA)
UX/UI Designer at G-P (remote in UK)

Hi, I’m Jon, a UX and Product Designer from Brooklyn, New York. I write the Design Breadcrumbs newsletter to express my own thoughts on the design world, freelancing, and career advancement. Subscribe to get this news delivered to your inbox every week.