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Romina Mendez
Romina Mendez

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What’s New in Figma: Highlights from Config 2025

#product #design #webdev #programming

Yesterday I attended the Friends of Figma Barcelona 📆 meetup, where we watched the live broadcast of Config 2025 — Figma’s annual conference that brings together designers, developers, and teams from around the world to explore the future of design tooling.

To better understand the new features and how they might apply to real-world scenarios, I wrote this article 👭🏻 together with my sister, Miki Méndez, who is a designer. We wanted to share what we found most relevant from the updates presented yesterday — along with a few open questions that we’re still thinking through.

Image description

The cover illustration was inspired by the visuals shown during the Config 2025 keynote — especially the conceptual scenes used to present new features like Figma Sites and Make. We reimagined it with a nature theme to reflect the versatility and expressive potential these tools offer.

1. Figma Grid

Figma Grid helps you build more flexible, organized, and precise interfaces using a two-dimensional structure based on rows and columns.

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Source image: Figma Blog

What can you do with Figma Grid?

  • 📐 Full control over rows and columns with fixed or auto dimensions
  • ↔️ Responsive resizing in real time
  • 🧩 Easy placement and nesting of elements—or even grids inside grids
  • 🎨 Precise alignment and option for absolute positioning
  • 💻 Direct compatibility with CSS Grid in Dev Mode
  • 💡 Great for creating complex layouts without deeply nested Auto Layouts

Why use Grid?

  1. Design complex components, dashboards, calendars, or galleries
  2. Organize content precisely using both rows and columns
  3. Build responsive layouts without nesting Auto Layouts
  4. Create modular structures you can reuse easily
  5. Deliver designs mapped directly to CSS properties for developers

Watch Grid in action

Want to go deeper and see real examples? Check out the official demo from Config 2025:

👉 Watch the Grid demo

2. Figma Sites

Figma Sites is a new tool for building and publishing interactive websites—directly from Figma, without switching tools.

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Source image: Figma Blog

What can you do with Figma Sites?

  • 🎨 A visual editor with built-in breakpoints (desktop, tablet, mobile)
  • 🖱️ Ready-to-use interactions (hover, parallax, draggable, etc.)
  • 🧩 Direct integration with design systems and libraries
  • 🔎 Live responsive preview rendered in real HTML/CSS
  • 🚀 One-click publishing
  • 💡 Turn your static designs into real, functional websites—no extra tools or coding required

Why use Figma Sites?

  1. Build and publish portfolios, landing pages, campaigns, or event sites instantly
  2. Create realistic prototypes without leaving the Figma platform
  3. Design fully responsive sites for any screen size
  4. Add interactivity without writing code
  5. Speed up validation with clients, users, or content teams

Watch Figma Sites in action

Want to see how it all works in real time? Check out the official demo from Config 2025:

👉 Watch the Sites demo

3. Figma Make

Figma Make is a new environment inside Figma that helps you turn static designs into interactive prototypes using natural language—no coding required.

Image description

Source image: Figma Blog

What can you do with Figma Make?

  • 🧠 Natural language prompts to generate animations, interactions, or interface logic
  • 🎮 Support for advanced elements like shaders, 3D worlds, visual effects, or real-time data
  • 🎯 Tools like Point and Edit or Point and Prompt for precise and contextual changes
  • 💡 A faster way to go from idea to interactive experience—all inside Figma

Why use Figma Make?

  1. Build working prototypes without needing technical skills
  2. Validate ideas and user flows with real interaction
  3. Iterate on specific design parts without breaking visual systems
  4. Add logic, data, and dynamic behavior without leaving Figma
  5. Explore advanced creative possibilities, from basic UI to immersive 3D interactions

Watch Figma Make in action

Want to see it in action? Check out the official Config 2025 demo:

👉 Watch the Make demo

4. Figma Buzz

Figma Buzz is a new space inside Figma to create, edit, and scale branded assets—like campaigns, posts, event materials, and more—with full visual control and consistency.

Image description

Source image: Figma Blog

What can you do with Figma Buzz?

  • 🎨 A focused and user-friendly editor built for design and marketing teams
  • 📦 Custom templates to protect your brand identity
  • 📊 Bulk asset creation using spreadsheets (CSV files)
  • 🧩 Reuse of components from your Design System
  • 🖼️ AI-powered image generation with gpt-image-1
  • 📥 Export in multiple formats: PNG, JPG, or PDF

Why use Figma Buzz?

  1. Create social media content, campaigns, events, or internal assets
  2. Reduce design workload by using locked templates
  3. Let non-design teams edit content without breaking branding
  4. Scale production using spreadsheets and batch editing
  5. Collaborate across design and marketing in one visual space

Watch Figma Buzz in action

Curious how it all works? Check out the official demo from Config 2025:

👉 Watch the Buzz demo

5. Figma Draw

Figma Draw is the new creative space inside Figma Design that enhances expressive design with advanced illustration, vector editing, effects, and textures.

Image description

Source: Figma Blog

What can you do with Figma Draw?

  • ✍️ Optimized vector editing: improved booleans, multi-selection, lasso tool, shape builder
  • 🖌️ Expressive tools: brushes, patterns, textures, text on path, progressive blur
  • 🌀 Full control over shapes: radial and linear repeaters, editable rotation origin

Why use Figma Draw?

  1. Create illustrations, icons, headers, or other visual elements without leaving Figma
  2. Integrate with your design system using color variables, dark mode, and clean hierarchies
  3. Experiment freely with drawing tools—no plugins required

Watch Figma Draw in action

Want to see it live? Check out the official demo from Config 2025:

👉 Watch the Draw demo

🎯 Questions we’re still asking ourselves…

While exploring these new features, a few questions and ideas came up that we’re still thinking through:

How will site publishing work securely?

Figma Sites enables one-click publishing, which is powerful — but how can we keep a site private during early stages? We’d love to see options for restricted access, such as IP whitelisting, password protection, or staging environments.

Could Figma Sites integrate with code repositories?

Is there a way to connect a site to a GitHub repo (or similar) and push the generated code automatically? This could help teams with version control, automation, and documentation.

Will Figma Buzz integrate with social media platforms?

Buzz already supports bulk content creation via spreadsheets — but what if we could also schedule and publish posts directly to platforms like Instagram or LinkedIn?

How will the CMS and environment management work?

With a no-code CMS on the way, it’ll be interesting to see how we’ll manage staging vs. production content, draft approvals, or live publishing flows.

How do we ensure data accuracy at scale?

CSV uploads are great to avoid manual content entry, but how can we prevent formatting issues or sync problems in large-scale content workflows?

How will accessibility be supported in Sites?

Accessibility is a must-have. While custom HTML/CSS can be edited manually, it would be helpful if Sites provided built-in accessibility tools or guidance — like support for semantic tags, alt text, or ARIA attributes.

🎯 Final thoughts

We are truly impressed by where Figma is heading, These new features dont just support designers, because they create opportunities for whole teams: developers, product managers, content editors, stakeholders, and everyone involved in building digital products.

Figma continues to evolve into a true end-to-end platform, one that connects: ideation, collaboration, design, code, and now even publishing... all in the same place 🥰.

📚 References

  1. Figma. (2025, May 7). Config 2025: Product launch keynote by Dylan Field (CEO & Co-founder) [Video]. Retrieved May 8, 2025, from https://youtu.be/5q8YAUTYAyk
  2. Field, D. (2025, May 7). Config 2025 Recap: Pushing design further. Figma Blog. Retrieved May 8, 2025, from https://www.figma.com/blog/config-2025-recap/
  3. Lehman, A., Cowart, T., & Byrne, L. (2025, May 7). Introducing Figma Sites: Publish your designs on the web. Figma Blog. Retrieved May 8, 2025, from https://www.figma.com/blog/introducing-figma-sites/
  4. Ng, P., Chouhan, R., & Duncalf, T. (2025, May 7). Introducing Figma Make: A new way to test, edit, and prompt designs. Figma Blog. Retrieved May 8, 2025, from https://www.figma.com/blog/introducing-figma-make/
  5. Budorick, L., Miller, J., Van Damme, T., & King, R. (2025, May 7). Express yourself with Figma Draw. Figma Blog. Retrieved May 8, 2025, from https://www.figma.com/blog/introducing-figma-draw/
  6. Ran, A., Tenggoro, N., & Chambers, K. (2025, May 7). Figma Buzz: Where design and marketing teams co-create. Figma Blog. Retrieved May 8, 2025, from https://www.figma.com/blog/introducing-figma-buzz/

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