Designer's Coffee #07: Unhirable Designers, Figma's New Multi-Edit Tools, and Free Resources

Hey guys! 👋

Here is what’s on the menu this month:

• Trying out Figma’s new multi-edit tool.

• Why 90% of designers are unhirable.

• Design Tools Report 2023.

• Sexy Google fonts you should check out.

• Free resources: AI Stock Images & Minimal Icon Pack.

Design news

A powerful Figma update introduces bulk actions like multi-select matching layers across multiple frames and multi-edit text and components.

To multi-select matching objects - select a layer within a frame (from the canvas or the Layers panel) and click the new “Select matching layers” in the top-middle toolbar symbol that looks like a grid of 4 squares.

Once you’ve selected objects, you can edit them all at the same time. This includes rotating, grouping, masking, adding auto layout, and more. And it works not only for frames but for groups and sections.

🔡 Multi-edit text

A feature I was dreaming about for a long time. Especially after I had to manually update the text for 40 screens early in my career.

Now you can select multiple text fields (matching or not) and update them all at the same time. I’m crying! 😅

Again the new “Multi-edit text” tool is located in the top-middle toolbar and appears when text layers are selected.

📚 Multi-edit variants

A game-changer for updating a Design System. You can now bulk-edit selected variants in a component set. Once you select a frame in your variant, you can see the new “Multi-edit variants” symbol in the top-middle toolbar.

You can use this to add icons to buttons, drag another component inside your component set, change spacing in your auto-layouts, and more.

Important: you can’t isolate specific variants. So these bulk changes will apply to every variant in your component set.

Hopefully, Figma will fix it in the upcoming updates. I’m also curious how this feature could work with a future Figma AI assistant (if rumours are true 👀).

🤯 Multi-edit for component creation

This is another use case for the new multi-edit feature. If you select matching layers on all of your screens, and “create a new component” - the magic happens.

Your new component will be created above your first frame, and each of your selections will be replaced with an instance of the component.

To play around with these updates, check the community file. You can also check Figma’s Multi-edit Playlist on YouTube.

👯‍♀️ Bonus: Rename layers in bulk

It’s not a new feature, but since we’re talking about bulk actions I’ll remind you about the bulk layer renaming. To avoid hitting “Frame 999242932…”, you can rename your layers from time to time.

Select all layers you want to rename → Right-click on the layers panel and click “Rename” → Adjust names as needed in the pop-up (you can use “$NN” to add numbers at the end of the name) → Click “Rename”.

What to read

My favourite articles, case studies, books and posts this month.

Watch or listen

My favourite YouTube tutorials, movies, podcasts and reels this month.

Free Resources

And it comes together with the Figma plugin. 🤯

Social picks

1. Trevor Nielsen collected female designers to celebrate International Women’s Day (March, 8)

2. Checklist for better design handoff by @ozanoz

That’s all for today! If you found the newsletter interesting, don’t forget to share it with your friends 😉. And if you have any cool links to share - drop them my way. 📮 

See you next time!
Kristina

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