Figma Fundamentals: Mastering Components

UI Design • February 14th, 2024 • by Dan Olsavsky

This article is part of a series on Figma Fundamentals.

This lesson covers the creation and management of components in Figma, highlighting their role in maintaining consistency and efficiency in design workflows. It also emphasizes the use of variants within components for design flexibility and consistency across various design states.

Creating Reusable Design Elements

Figma’s components streamline design workflows by allowing the creation of reusable elements across projects.

Component Creation: Designers can create components from elements such as buttons, headers, or any design element by selecting the desired object and choosing “Create Component.” This action converts the element into a reusable component.
Reusability: Components enable consistent design application throughout a project. Editing a single instance of a component reflects changes across all instances, ensuring design coherence and efficiency.

Managing Component Instances

Efficient management of component instances is vital for maintaining design consistency and propagating changes.

Updating Components: Modifications made to a component propagate across all instances throughout the design, ensuring that design changes are unified and synchronized.
Propagating Changes: Changes made to a component instance are reflected in other instances across different pages or files where the component is used, allowing for easy design maintenance.

Using Variants within Components

Figma’s variants feature empowers designers to create design variations within components for increased flexibility.

Variant Creation: Variants within components allow for multiple design states or variations (e.g., different button states or header styles) without creating separate components. Designers can create and manage variants within a single component.
Design Consistency: Variants maintain design consistency by ensuring that various states or variations of a component adhere to predefined styles and attributes, promoting a unified design language.

Exercise: Creating Components

In our pursuit of hands-on learning, I’ve curated an engaging exercise for us to explore the principles discussed in this lessons. I encourage each of you to watch the provided video tutorial and concurrently follow along in Figma. This exercise aims to solidify your understanding of the concepts we’ve covered, offering a practical application that enhances your skills and proficiency in real-time.

Parting Words

As we conclude this week’s lesson on Figma Fundamentals, thank you for being part of the learning journey! Join me again next week for more as we continue to explore Figma. Want to continue the conversation? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. If you found today’s article helpful, please consider sharing it with your network. Until next time, keep practicing, experimenting, and refining your skills. Remember, design is a journey of continuous improvement!