How to Use Figma? Complete 2025 Usage Guide and Practical Tips

Figma: The Revolutionary Tool in Design

Figma is a multifunctional application and a powerful web-based tool.

It not only works offline but also enables online collaborative work, emphasizing user interface and user experience design.

Some use XD for layout, others use PS for graphics, but this plugin-capable tool is software you simply cannot miss!

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Figma's Origin and Development History

Ambition to Challenge Adobe

You may or may not be familiar with Figma, but if you’ve only heard of it without hands-on experience, this article hopes to help you better understand Figma.

Figma’s rise caused a sensation in the web design industry. With so many website design tools available, why could Figma alone achieve over 66% usage rate in 2020, and its applications extend beyond web design?

I’m sure everyone has heard about Adobe’s $20 billion acquisition of Figma, but did you know? Figma was developed to challenge the difficult user experience of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Fireworks.

Founders’ Vision

Dylan Field and co-founder Evan Wallace drew inspiration from Google Docs’ online team execution, with two main development objectives:

1. Create a shared design environment
2. Build lightweight design tools in browsers

Therefore, they decided to create a cloud-based design tool using WebGL in browsers, and Figma was born…

Market Positioning and Pricing Strategy

Since it was completely free during the initial founding period, it later expanded user market reach through different enterprise pricing standards, allowing teams to choose upgrade versions based on usage purposes and convenience needs.

Figma Feature Introduction

Dual Platform Support

Figma currently offers two usage versions:

• Desktop Application: Complete feature experience
• Web Browser Version: Access anytime, anywhere

Intuitive User Experience

The user interface is actually simple and very user-friendly. Dylan Field aimed to reduce the learning curve for design tools and minimize frustration for design novices, allowing users to easily operate the interface during creation and quickly produce desired content.

Diverse Application Range

Beyond web UI/UX design, animation, UML, framework diagrams, and flowcharts, you can apply them to any range through:

• Your own creations
• Internal components
• Templates shared by others
• Design themes

Powerful Plugin Ecosystem

The most attractive feature is that Figma also has powerful plugins, just like VSCode. Through plugins, you can reduce design time, improve efficiency, and achieve better results in your work!

Six Major Advantages of Figma

1. Real-time Collaborative Development

After sharing file links with your partners in Figma, you can see other partners’ mouse cursors like in Google Docs, as if everyone is painting together on the same canvas at the same time. Perfect for real-time discussions and team collaborative content editing.

2. Online Editing and Presentation

With Figma’s sharing advantages, designers, project managers, and clients can all communicate on the same screen, providing good interactive interfaces and annotation features, reducing time spent on file conversion and document writing, making project execution more efficient.

3. Cloud Auto-save

Design’s biggest fear is files not saving when pages crash, but with auto-save, this problem disappears. No worries about forgetting to save or sudden disconnections - work becomes much more secure!

4. CSS Inspection Tool

While Photoshop can now export CSS, Figma allows you to easily click to view compiled CSS style content. Could you bear to miss such a tool?

5. Theme Color Management

Every website or design has theme colors and color ratios. Through color management, you can quickly control these color items. When you need to quickly change colors, you don’t need to manually correct them one by one.

6. Component Reuse Properties

Design reusable items as components - these components share common properties. In project design, there will always be repeated style patterns. Through component settings, you can modify all reused items at once.

Complete Figma Plugin Recommendations

Like the VSCode plugins introduced previously, Figma also supports many community expert plugins. Let me introduce good tools to help you soar!

📸 Image Editing Category

Professional image processing and visual effects plugins:

🎨 Pattern and Texture Category

Tools for creating rich visual effects with patterns and textures:

🎯 Icon Library Category

Rich icon resource libraries to meet all design needs:

⚡ Advanced Features Category

Professional tools to boost work efficiency:

Explore More Plugins

More plugins can be searched here:

Figma Community Collections - Add a little magic to your files

We’ll continue updating with the latest and most practical plugin recommendations!

Plugin Development

If you have programming background, you can also consider developing your own Figma plugins:

• Plugin API Documentation - Official development guides
• TypeScript Support - Type-safe development experience
• Rich API - Can manipulate almost all Figma features

Regularly Check Plugin Updates

Recommend periodic checking for:

• Whether plugins have new versions
• New features and bug fixes
• New plugins recommended by community
• Official curated plugin lists

Start your Figma journey now and make design work more efficient and enjoyable!