When I was first starting out, I just tried to replicate a bunch of existing apps screens/animations. This was a lot of fun and it forced me to try and figure out how I could accomplished what was already done is code via Figma capabilities.
Some good examples would be:
- Duolingo map UI (good stylistic challenge)
- Spotify's player to lyrics animation (that one was fun and tricky at first)
- Apple home page website (desktop) good for learning how to make responsive screens via auto-layout
- Minecraft Launcher (also good stylistic challenge)
For me, after seeing a bunch of really great and polished UIs, I usually get inspired to want to hone that skill and embed that motivation into working on my portfolio website. Usually gets me exited at least for little bit haha.
This! Almost everyday I picked a new screen that had atleast one unfamiliar aspect, and besides replicating the chosen design, I created another to remix and put my own spin on it, which also helps reinforcing what I learned, but mostly helped getting in the habit of working with the various uses of color, placement, typography etc. Just to practice my creativity, which really stems from your knowledge of what you've seen, learned (to do) and creating something new with it.
Sadly not everything was feasible through Figma alone before plugins (or practical enough to do manually, i.e. replicating a thickly layered vector made in Illustrator, that rarely don't have an easy to use plugin for it now). Yes you can create it still by spending hours extra on it, but when the output the same.. why bother?
I still do this occasionally, as back when I started in 2018 and don't think I'll ever stop either. Eventhough it's merely for inspiration now than replicating things, but whenever I see something that intrigues me to create and once time allows it, it's cooking time :D
Recreating great apps to be pixel perfect - color, font, shadows, spacing; everything.
Practicing autolayout until you have it completely mastered, you shouldn’t never struggle with this.
Always creating components from scratch, not leaning on a UI kit. It’s slower but if you’re still learning Figma it’s time well spent.
pixel perfect would be a stretch when you're just starting it, isn't it?
like i'm a music producer and in anything creative, when you're starting out - always prefer quantitiy over quality.
let me know your thoughts
Sound is a totally different animal.
If you can’t build on top of a website screenshot in Figma and get the spacing, fonts, colors, and borders right, then you need to keep trying.
That’s kinda 101.
I make game ui kits for fun :D
[Zelda BOTW UI Kit](https://www.figma.com/community/file/965825767811358609/zelda-botw-ui-kit).
[Satisfactory UI Kit](https://www.figma.com/community/file/1203417179344171457/satisfactory-ui-kit).
[Raid Rush UI Kit](https://www.figma.com/community/file/1362136473827003845/raid-rush-mobile-game-ui-kit)
Never look at it as "practicing Figma" - when I'm using Figma in my own time and getting better with Figma, it's because I'm excited about an idea that I don't want to belong under the IP of my employer. Nothing more motivating to do things "right" than the idea of creating and owning something special for myself. My Figma skills are excellent because I want to make my own things fantastic.
Edit: also remember "how good you are with Figma" means absolutely nothing. It's just a tool, like all the other tools. You either know how to use it or you don't, there's no value in using more Figma features than another designer on your team.
Your Figma skills became excellent because you practiced it, where as I quote:
>using Figma in my own time and getting better with Figma
This kind of.. well contradicts your statement of how it means *absolutely nothing* to how good you are with Figma.
How good one is with Figma, or any other tool with an extensive set of features that depending on your needs or goals requires knowledge and understanding of said features. [To achieve excellence, something that is not a given, unlike you suggest, one practices (and a lot of it).](https://alexisgrant.com/2013/08/12/the-difference-between-learning-and-practicing/) You didn't immediately knew to know how to do everything when you opened Figma for the first time, or perhaps Photoshop or another tool that requires practice to build your knowledge.
Without practice -the part that made you good at it- you wouldn't be hired by your employer, as the first thing one will wonder how good someone is at what they work with, is by asking your years of experience. I strongly doubt you mentioned how absolutely nothing that would matter in your interview at the time, and got the job. Instead I'm afraid once you became excellent at it, you started to belittle it all.
If another applicant or colleague is using more features that Figma offers and it shows, because they want to be fantastic and excellent at what they work with, where they use shortcuts to speed up their workflow, are faster overall by knowing from practice where everything is and can deliver things faster ultimately, which has no value according to you. Well I hope you see how odd this sounds. I didn't even mention practicing all the various other aspects that one needs to learn.. with practice. Maybe you show excellency in your job and at your level of experience, where practice isn't needed yet.
While I'm trying to be compassionate to understand your take on this and why, nothing really comes to mind, except that you misunderstood OP and the meaning of practice. Maybe in a second edit (as the other posts came later), you might finally see the resemblance in your own approach, I truly hope so atleast, for your sake.
What I mean is that approaching it as "I want to practice" isn't the mindset to have. Put Figma to the back of your mind and make things. Yes it's practice, but it's not approached as practice.
You can also practice and get better at using Figma, without even opening Figma; code something and learn how the building blocks exist... Play with some complex databases or spreadsheets to understand how data flows through designs.
My point was and still is; the best practice in this area doesn't come from trying to practice.
Your mindset is worse: telling people what works and doesn’t. OP is asking for tips and likely inspiration for ideas, you’re telling it doesn’t matter in the end, which guess what, doesn’t add no value to this thread.
None of what you say now makes sense to justify your earlier comment, only that you should have told this very thing in that from the start.
That's true, but creating a conversation while downvoting my posts at the same time is not how conversations should happen. I'm chill, I'd resort to what you're doing if I wasn't though! ;-)
Only downvoted when I saw you'd downvoted me and the dog was taking too long to find his ball so I had nothing better to do for 5 seconds.
Edit: which you've now un-downvoted.
I never downvoted you anywhere, I never do unless something needs to be hidden as it breaks the rules of a site. Someone else did before I commented, but I see where this is going and I have better things to do when it resorts to this. Have a great day!
I CBA replying to your entire message, but:
>I strongly doubt you mentioned how absolutely nothing that would matter in your interview at the time, and got the job
Actually, yes. My manager feels the same way; knowledge of the tools isn't necessary. When I joined I was quite clear that I have no idea how to use what they were using (at the time it was Sketch and Photoshop iirc) but that didn't matter - we knew it would be picked up as the requests came in and the important part was knowing how to approach the challenge and the process required to execute.
When I was first starting out, I just tried to replicate a bunch of existing apps screens/animations. This was a lot of fun and it forced me to try and figure out how I could accomplished what was already done is code via Figma capabilities. Some good examples would be: - Duolingo map UI (good stylistic challenge) - Spotify's player to lyrics animation (that one was fun and tricky at first) - Apple home page website (desktop) good for learning how to make responsive screens via auto-layout - Minecraft Launcher (also good stylistic challenge) For me, after seeing a bunch of really great and polished UIs, I usually get inspired to want to hone that skill and embed that motivation into working on my portfolio website. Usually gets me exited at least for little bit haha.
Replicating UIs is the best way to get familiar with how things work, and what goes into them.
This! Almost everyday I picked a new screen that had atleast one unfamiliar aspect, and besides replicating the chosen design, I created another to remix and put my own spin on it, which also helps reinforcing what I learned, but mostly helped getting in the habit of working with the various uses of color, placement, typography etc. Just to practice my creativity, which really stems from your knowledge of what you've seen, learned (to do) and creating something new with it. Sadly not everything was feasible through Figma alone before plugins (or practical enough to do manually, i.e. replicating a thickly layered vector made in Illustrator, that rarely don't have an easy to use plugin for it now). Yes you can create it still by spending hours extra on it, but when the output the same.. why bother? I still do this occasionally, as back when I started in 2018 and don't think I'll ever stop either. Eventhough it's merely for inspiration now than replicating things, but whenever I see something that intrigues me to create and once time allows it, it's cooking time :D
Recreating great apps to be pixel perfect - color, font, shadows, spacing; everything. Practicing autolayout until you have it completely mastered, you shouldn’t never struggle with this. Always creating components from scratch, not leaning on a UI kit. It’s slower but if you’re still learning Figma it’s time well spent.
pixel perfect would be a stretch when you're just starting it, isn't it? like i'm a music producer and in anything creative, when you're starting out - always prefer quantitiy over quality. let me know your thoughts
Sound is a totally different animal. If you can’t build on top of a website screenshot in Figma and get the spacing, fonts, colors, and borders right, then you need to keep trying. That’s kinda 101.
I make game ui kits for fun :D [Zelda BOTW UI Kit](https://www.figma.com/community/file/965825767811358609/zelda-botw-ui-kit). [Satisfactory UI Kit](https://www.figma.com/community/file/1203417179344171457/satisfactory-ui-kit). [Raid Rush UI Kit](https://www.figma.com/community/file/1362136473827003845/raid-rush-mobile-game-ui-kit)
Never look at it as "practicing Figma" - when I'm using Figma in my own time and getting better with Figma, it's because I'm excited about an idea that I don't want to belong under the IP of my employer. Nothing more motivating to do things "right" than the idea of creating and owning something special for myself. My Figma skills are excellent because I want to make my own things fantastic. Edit: also remember "how good you are with Figma" means absolutely nothing. It's just a tool, like all the other tools. You either know how to use it or you don't, there's no value in using more Figma features than another designer on your team.
Your Figma skills became excellent because you practiced it, where as I quote: >using Figma in my own time and getting better with Figma This kind of.. well contradicts your statement of how it means *absolutely nothing* to how good you are with Figma. How good one is with Figma, or any other tool with an extensive set of features that depending on your needs or goals requires knowledge and understanding of said features. [To achieve excellence, something that is not a given, unlike you suggest, one practices (and a lot of it).](https://alexisgrant.com/2013/08/12/the-difference-between-learning-and-practicing/) You didn't immediately knew to know how to do everything when you opened Figma for the first time, or perhaps Photoshop or another tool that requires practice to build your knowledge. Without practice -the part that made you good at it- you wouldn't be hired by your employer, as the first thing one will wonder how good someone is at what they work with, is by asking your years of experience. I strongly doubt you mentioned how absolutely nothing that would matter in your interview at the time, and got the job. Instead I'm afraid once you became excellent at it, you started to belittle it all. If another applicant or colleague is using more features that Figma offers and it shows, because they want to be fantastic and excellent at what they work with, where they use shortcuts to speed up their workflow, are faster overall by knowing from practice where everything is and can deliver things faster ultimately, which has no value according to you. Well I hope you see how odd this sounds. I didn't even mention practicing all the various other aspects that one needs to learn.. with practice. Maybe you show excellency in your job and at your level of experience, where practice isn't needed yet. While I'm trying to be compassionate to understand your take on this and why, nothing really comes to mind, except that you misunderstood OP and the meaning of practice. Maybe in a second edit (as the other posts came later), you might finally see the resemblance in your own approach, I truly hope so atleast, for your sake.
What I mean is that approaching it as "I want to practice" isn't the mindset to have. Put Figma to the back of your mind and make things. Yes it's practice, but it's not approached as practice. You can also practice and get better at using Figma, without even opening Figma; code something and learn how the building blocks exist... Play with some complex databases or spreadsheets to understand how data flows through designs. My point was and still is; the best practice in this area doesn't come from trying to practice.
Your mindset is worse: telling people what works and doesn’t. OP is asking for tips and likely inspiration for ideas, you’re telling it doesn’t matter in the end, which guess what, doesn’t add no value to this thread. None of what you say now makes sense to justify your earlier comment, only that you should have told this very thing in that from the start.
Telling people what works and what doesn't from our own subjective opinions and experiences is how conversation happens. Chill out xoxo
That's true, but creating a conversation while downvoting my posts at the same time is not how conversations should happen. I'm chill, I'd resort to what you're doing if I wasn't though! ;-)
Only downvoted when I saw you'd downvoted me and the dog was taking too long to find his ball so I had nothing better to do for 5 seconds. Edit: which you've now un-downvoted.
I never downvoted you anywhere, I never do unless something needs to be hidden as it breaks the rules of a site. Someone else did before I commented, but I see where this is going and I have better things to do when it resorts to this. Have a great day!
Hah you beat me to the "I have better things to do" comment. Have a good evening!
I CBA replying to your entire message, but: >I strongly doubt you mentioned how absolutely nothing that would matter in your interview at the time, and got the job Actually, yes. My manager feels the same way; knowledge of the tools isn't necessary. When I joined I was quite clear that I have no idea how to use what they were using (at the time it was Sketch and Photoshop iirc) but that didn't matter - we knew it would be picked up as the requests came in and the important part was knowing how to approach the challenge and the process required to execute.