Welcome to Figma Thinkers (week 5!)
Hey folks,
It's me, Tom Critchlow (half of Tom and Nate, err you can probably guess which half). Welcome to the first email newsletter for Figma Thinkers!
This is week 5 of building the project in public, and we finally have a landing page and a newsletter up and running. Yipee!
Thanks for joining - every week on Monday I'll send a short note and on Thursday we're doing the live working sessions.
If you want to join the Thursday live-stream session this week (with calendar reminders and zoom links) sign up here.
Why "Figma for non-designers"?
I'm an independent strategy consultant, not a designer. And yet I find myself working in Figma every day - creating website concepts, diagrams for presentations, assets for blog posts and even designing org charts!
And there is a ton of work that is "design adjacent". If you're a product manager, or UX researcher or copywriter - chances are that a designer is going to share a Figma file with you. Learning to work inside Figma with confidence is important.
Beyond just "design adjacent" work though, being able to break out of rectangles and work on a canvas opens up the kind of work that is possible - working and thinking visually isn't only for designers!
And of course Figma is magic, because just like Google Docs it's free, in-browser and has real-time collaboration. Everything just works.
Why building in public?
Since it's our first email I thought I'd give a little peek into the origin of this project. Back in December I tweeted this:
I'm a self employed strategy consultant, not doing anything related to design work and I spend probably > 50% of my time in Figma.
— Tom Critchlow (@tomcritchlow) December 14, 2022
Wild.
If you're not getting comfortable working with a canvas you're missing out.
The thread escalated pretty quickly...!
Then Jonny, Paul, Khe and Sam chimed in...
And here we are!
So, what's next?
So far we've done 4 live-streams, covering:
- Week 1: Idea generation and discovery work
- Week 2: Naming, content and wireframes
- Week 3: Initial design & setting up dev environment
- Week 4: Course format & learning outcomes
I think this week on Thursday we'll do a deep dive into the syllabus and course format. If that sounds like fun come join us!
We're having fun, are you?
We're having a ton of fun building this new course, doing the live streams and getting real-time feedback from you folks. I hope you're having fun too!
Have strong opinions about how we should evolve / adapt / build the course? Get in touch!
Thanks,
Tom & Nate.