My dearest Figma,

By Milos Roganovic

It may be the quarantine talking but I find myself evaluating all of my past relationships and finding joy in my current ones. It’s strange to think that just a few short years ago I was strolling down the sidewalk hand in hand with Photoshop believing that this was the one and only. I remember feeling like I had everything I needed in one tool. Wow, was I wrong. Very quickly our relationship struggled as the gap between my needs and her abilities drifted apart. Often frustrations would boil over trying to manage multiple flows or mockups in a single file. Layer comps were nothing more than a band-aid on a massive wound that would fester and eventually kill our love. Reflecting back, it should have been clear that our problems were inevitable. We wanted different things. I wanted a comfortable way to do UI and UX, but regardless of my wants and needs she was always going to be a photo editing tool being forced into a UI/UX design way of thinking.

With some time I feel both Photoshop and myself have come to realize we are better apart than we are together. It was not for lack of trying. Even with all the workarounds, we both felt like we were working too hard and still not achieving our fullest potential. I take comfort in knowing that we have both moved onto better things and honestly I am happy for her as I know she is still surrounded by her close suite of friends.

With a tender heart I knew I had to focus my attention on something new to stop myself from spiraling. It was at this time that I heard about Sketch in the rumblings of other designers. They would report how cool they thought she was, some even called her the inDesign of web design. Well not long after those reports I was giddy with excitement. Like any new relationship I was filled with some fear, but mostly excitement at the idea of exploring everything she had to offer. At first we flirted with the idea of doing a project together. We started with low stakes product work, but pretty soon I found myself talking about her to all of my designer and developer friends. My fellow designers loved her because she made them think about a brighter future, while some developers found her a bit difficult to read, but that could be just because they were PC folks. Sketch was everything I wished Photoshop would be. I was hooked, and I devoted myself to Sketch. Our weekends were spent exploring various tools to spice up our workflow, or walking down the aisles selecting just the right plugin to bring our relationship to the next level.

Of course, history would repeat itself. Design systems crept in, and the cracks in our love began to show. Our love was strong, but not strong enough to face the challenges that design systems would introduce. I grew tired of how poorly executed her style management was, with a style being required for each and every combination of color, weight, alignment, and size. This often left me managing 600+ text styles. (One could argue, “do you really need all 600+ styles?,” but that would be missing the point — does it matter? are you against Art?!)

The struggles did not end there. How could she possibly expect me to apply overrides to symbols within the overrides menu when I was up to my elbow in nested atoms within more complex molecule and organism level components? Also, what good is a new feature release that renders all of our favorite plugins useless for unspecified amounts of time and without any warning.

I spent many months pretending it didn’t bother me. I told myself that it was OK, but I knew there had to be a better way. Sketch brought so much to the relationship that expecting more from her may have been unrealistic. But what was I supposed to do, settle?. It was around this time that I began hearing your name mentioned in the confessionals of designers on YouTube, and even some folks in our inner circle. At first I was a bit of a skeptic when it came to your glowing reviews and doing everything in the browser, but with time, you would prove me wrong as you quickly matured into an amazing partner.

If I am being honest, some of my hesitation was tied to a fear of switching tools again. I fondly remembered the mini UI projects that we would experiment with, as I fumbled around with your strange new approach to things. You were all like “it’s a component” and I was like” please it’s a symbol.” I never imagined that we could get to where we are today. You are consistently able to evolve and anticipate my needs as a designer without me even having to complain on a forum. You make me want to be a better designer. From your acceptance of my many projects that I had with Sketch, to your ecosystem of reliable plugins, I truly appreciate you. You have never tried to drive a wedge between me and my friends and their PC habits. We have had so many collaborative sessions with our closest project friends, some viewing and others editing. I know that they really enjoy our time together and often report to me how happy they are to see us together. Your approach to handling styles is total perfection.

I firmly believe that our relationship will strengthen through adversity and I think we both know that we have challenges that we will need to overcome. Making our shared space presentable to clients is at times a challenge, with artboards being scattered all over the place and, you know, as a designer I can’t discard even the rejected version of the work just in case they change their minds. If only there was a way to flag certain pieces as viewable? I don’t know — I don’t want to tell you how to live your life. I know you want to make the design process more inclusive but you should have known that as a designer our confidence is fragile and we need time to adjust to this more open approach.

This last year has opened my eyes. And even though we have had some struggles — like the day I woke up without the internet and I couldn’t do any work LOL –I am not giving up on us. If anything, I am leaning in. I am deeply committed to continuing this journey together, tackling one design challenge after another, building design systems and breaking them down to only build them back stronger and more versatile. There is no one else that I would want to take this journey with. I adore you Figma, and I hope that you never change, but instead evolve with non-breaking feature and bugfix releases every week that strengthen our relationship over time.

XOXO

P.S Have you heard about Framer? She seems cool…

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My dearest Figma, was originally published in HappyFunCorp Codex on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.