Note: If you have a different UI than in the course, you can change it back by clicking the '?' in the bottom right corner of Figma and select 'Go back to previous UI'. Happy Figma'ing!

How to animate a mobile nav menu in Figma using a dip

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Course info

177 lessons / 16 hours 46 quiz questions 21 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hi there, aspiring Figma enthusiasts! Are you ready to embark on an exhilarating journey with me, Dan Scott, as we unlock the full potential of our Figma skills in the dazzling realm of UX/UI Design using Figma Advanced?

Try Figma for free by clicking here.

This course is tailor-made for those who have already mastered the fundamental principles of UI/UX Design using Figma. If you've triumphed over my Figma Essentials course or have a sneaking suspicion that there's a treasure trove of unexplored tools, tips, workflows, and updates awaiting your discovery, then look no further! This course is your golden ticket to taking your UI/UX prowess to the next level.

Together, we'll start by delving into the depths of multilevel nested autolayouts, and unravel the secrets used by UX professionals by learning:
- Workflow techniques, managing design assets, styles, components, grid and column layouts like true virtuosos.
- Learn how to use Variables and put them to work creating even more complete prototypes.
- Use variables to make Light & Dark Modes + Compact & Comfortable spacing versions of your components. 
- You’ll then take your new knowledge of variables to understand and create your own Design Tokens. 
  • - Unleashing the magic of advanced animation techniques, captivating users with animated background gradients and Houdini Text.
  • - Harness the power of Lottie animation files, breathing life into your designs.
  • - Crafting responsive elements that effortlessly adapt to any device, proving your design prowess knows no bounds.
  • - Unleashing the full potential of powerful images & video masking techniques, amplifying the visual impact of your creations.
  • - Mastering advanced typography features, transforming words into captivating works of art.
  • - Embracing the realm of AI, infusing your process with its genius to elevate your skills as a UX designer.
  • - Elevate your prototyping game, conducting user tests with finesse using advanced techniques.
  • - Unveiling sticky scroll buttons that stack, animated anchor points and booleans, and a host of other captivating effects.
  • - Creating enchanting dropdown menus, hover grow effects for images, and expanding search bars.
  • - Discovering the right accessibility tools & techniques, ensuring inclusivity and usability for all users.
  • - Becoming a variant boss, expertly taming unwieldy variants to just 1 or 2.
  • - Unveiling the secrets of seamless collaboration with designers, developers, and stakeholders.
  • - Mastering the art of exporting production-ready assets, bringing your designs to life beyond the realm of Figma.
  • - Unearthing professional workflow tricks & shortcuts, saving you precious time and skyrocketing your efficiency.
  • - Plus much more exciting advanced Figma goodness along the way!

As you journey through this course, you'll acquire the skills wielded by UX professionals, gaining a profound understanding of the UX Design industry. From concept to a highly polished finish, you'll confidently manage your own UX projects ideal for your portfolio.

Throughout the course, I'll assign assignments and projects that nurture your skills and empower you to create your very own unique UX design masterpiece for your portfolio. Don’t worry if this all seems overwhelmingly advanced right now, because the BYOL crew stands ready to support and guide you, ensuring your questions get answered.

It's time to embrace the call to upgrade yourself and transcend from being a good UX Designer to a bona fide Figma UX Superhero! Unlock your potential, save the day, and let your design prowess soar!

Requirements:

- A copy of Figma (a free plan is available on the Figma website).
  • - Basic knowledge of Figma is required. I recommend watching my Figma Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

  • - UX/UI adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Figma.
  • - Self-taught Figma enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
  • - Graduates of my Figma Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
  • - Visionaries who have developed their own unique Figma approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

  • - Diving deep into multi level nested autolayouts. 
  • - Robust components that are easy to update and hard to break. 
  • - Component properties. 
- Variables
- Design Tokens
- Advanced Prototyping using Variables
  • - Learn Workflow tips and tricks for managing your design assets, styles, components, grid and column layouts.
  • - Advanced animation techniques
  • - Animated Background gradients. 
  • - Houdini Text
  • - Animate along a path in Figma
  • - How to add Lottie animation files in Figma
  • - Build responsive elements ready for any device size.
  • - The best shortcuts & plugins to make you a more efficient UX designer.
  • - Absolute Positioning of Autolayouts. 
  • - Powerful images & video masking techniques. 
  • - Advanced typography features. 
  • - Learn to use AI in your process to make you a better UX designer. 
  • - Advanced prototyping techniques to level up your user tests. 
  • - Make prototypes better and faster using tricks & shortcuts. 
  • - Sticky scroll buttons that stack. 
  • - Video playback controls. 
  • - Animated anchor points and booleans.
  • - Create a Dropdown menu
  • - Create a hover grow effect for images.
  • - Create and expanding Search Bar 
  • - Learn the right accessibility tools & techniques  
  • - Become a variant boss. Cutting down those 100 variants to just 1 or 2. 
  • - Learn the best ways to work with other designers, developers and stakeholders. 
  • - Build a UX project from beginning to end ready for your portfolio.
  • - Export production ready assets.
  • - Learn professional workflow tricks & shortcuts.
  • - Forum support from me and the rest of the BYOL crew.
  • - All the techniques used by UX professionals
  • - 160 videos of detailed Figma Advanced Content.
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

How to earn your certificate

Work your way towards your certificate for this course by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz (Merit level courses only)
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project (Distinction level courses only) - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Request your certificate when you've completed the requirements for the certificate level you're working towards

Good luck!

Pass certificates

We’re awarding ‘Pass’ level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your ‘Pass’ certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Don’t forget to request your certificate when all your projects are complete

Good luck!

Merit certificates

We’re awarding ‘Merit’ level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your ‘Merit’ certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Don’t forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Distinction certificates

We're awarding 'Distinction' level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your 'Distinction' certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Don't forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Hey everyone, we're going to make this cool navigation thing... where it kind of moves around and bumps around, it's very cool... it was an online tutorial that one of my students brought to me... they were having some trouble, I was recreating it... I bumped into a few things as well... so I think it makes for a really good...

like learning exercise for us all to do together... it'll combine how to kind of animate paths... or at least the tricks to make it look like... we're animating that little dip in the bottom there... and some of the issues you might run into if you're trying to do it yourself... plus it looks really cool, oh, bouncy and dippy, look at that...

all right let's get started. So I saw this tutorial,very cool tutorial from Smelt Studios... what I want to do is break it down because I've had students come to me... trying to recreate it... they bump into a couple of issues... so what I'll do is, we'll do a really simple version of this...

and we'll make it more interesting as we go along. So let's just do it with a really simple Boolean to start with... so we're going to use the 'R' tool for the Rectangle tool, why not a frame?... because we can't do a Boolean with the frame... and we can't do like Pen tool anchor point stuff with a frame... you can only do it with a rectangle, so I'm going to draw a rectangle...

if you're like me you might have to turn your snap back on, get it to snap... and what I want to do is, I'm going to grab the 'Ellipse' tool... I'm going to hold 'Shift', drag out an Ellipse... I'm going to combine these two... using a Boolean, I'm going to use the subtract... and we know we can't move it along as an animation...

but what we can do is, we can say, inside of subtract is the two parts... Rectangle and Ellipse... the ellipse, I'm actually just going to make way longer than I need... I'm dragging out the side here of the rectangle... holding down my 'Option' key on a Mac, 'Alt' key on a PC... it kind of drags from both sides.

So I've got this like, got a little of extra area here, so I can move it around... can you see, it needs to be enough that I can get all the way to over here... so I need mine to be a bit bigger... not the whole thing, I just want the rectangle... so I'm going to hold 'Command' and click the rectangle... 'Ctrl' on a PC, to dive right into there...

hold down that 'Option' key, 'Alt' key on a PC, just drag it really big. Now the really big thing here before we move on... is that - just drag that out so we can see the whole thing. - is that this whole section needs to be in a frame... it needs to be inside of a frame so that we can move it inside of it... it needs to be the child of a frame...

so to do it I'm going to use the shortcut for framing something... wrapping something into a frame, so I've got everything selected... 'Command Option G', or 'Ctrl Alt G' to put everything inside of a frame... let's name it, 'Command R', call it 'Nav Alt 1'... what we're going to do is make it a component... let's have a variant, let's just have two for the moment...

I'm going to drag it back into my frame here, which is not going inside... you, go inside my phone... and this bottom one here, not the wrapper... the subtract on the inside needs to go all the way over here, oh, not out... hold 'space bar' if you need to, keep it inside the frame. So you don't want to move the variant itself, it's the whole thing...

because we can move variants anywhere we like... just like, more of an organizational thing, we want the things inside of it to move... so let's see if we can make them work now. So I'm going to switch to Prototype mode, 'Shift E'... I'm going to click on this first variant... and say, when you are clicked go here, so 'On Tap', go to 'Variant 2'...

I'm going to use 'Smart Animate', and I'm going to use 'Quick'... because that looks cool... same thing here, click and drag the bottom one up to here... it should get all the same defaults... let's drag out an instance of it by clicking the first one... kind of inside of the set, hold down 'Option' or 'Alt'...

I'm going to drag mine up here, this doesn't need to be there anymore. So let's give it a preview, so 'Command Option Enter', 'Ctrl Alt Enter'... let's get a preview going, let's give it a click, look at that... there we go, that's the basic mechanics of it... the trick is, is that we're actually just sliding this along... and that that needs to be inside of a parent frame...

and that you're not just moving the variant... you're moving the stuff inside of the variant, that's the important bit. Now that we know that let's make a slightly prettier version... I foresee it taking us a little while, so you, go away... I'm going to start with a nice dip rather than... actually, we'll start with the icons, so 'Shift I'...

let's type in "icon", and... I'm going to work with just these three for the moment... you can get any icons you like... I'll get you... and I will get the heart, so I'm just going to use three of them... select them all, remember our sweet shortcut...

you have to use the quick selection... how do we stack them all out? That's right, quick action, it's called "pack"... 'Pack Horizontal', there we go... I'm going to line them at the bottom. So I'm going to hold down 'Option' on a Mac, 'Alt' on a PC...

and hit 'S' for the bottom, or actually let's do 'H', nope... 'V', so they're all vertically aligned... there should be a smart selection, I'm still in Prototype mode... so I'm going to go to 'Shift E'... I'm going to drag these out, how far... that far...

I'm going to grab the Rectangle tool to build my part of this... I'm going to send it to the back using my square brackets... using the first one, kind of pushes it all the way to the bottom of my phone... that kind of looks all right... I'm going to go inside of this so I can use my sweet Pen tool skills... so I'm going to go to my 'V' key, double click to go inside...

go to my Pen tool, which is 'P'... I'm inside of it, because I'm in the Object Drawing mode... double click it to go inside of it... and I'm going to go, probably three, right? One, two, and three... go back to my 'V' key for my Selection tool...

drag this one down... and get them kind of lined up, does that look like a good V? I think so, something like that. Some of the shortcuts we learned before, I'm going to do for this one... is saying, No Mirroring, I'm going to have 'Mirror angle and length'... for this one down the bottom here I'm going to grab my Pen tool...

holding down the 'Command' key, which switches to that Bend tool... you can actually click on the icon itself... now at the moment it's a bit wonky so I can say... actually, 'Mirror angle and length'... go back to my Selection tool, and I can say... here we go, it's going to be the same length and width...

and I want to be something like this... maybe I'll round these off as well, I'm going to use the Bend tool... and just click on this, just drag it out a little bit, same with this one... yeah, that'll work. Okay, done, so I've got the bend, I've got all my shapes... what I want to do is make sure this is really wide...

so I'm going to zoom out, I'm going to go--  if I drag it it's going to smear my thing... so what I'm going to do is go back into Object Editing mode... click this first anchor point, hold 'Shift', grab the second one... and just make it really big... same with these two, hold 'Shift', click both of them, make it really big... bigger than you probably need it, because it doesn't matter, can get clipped off...

let's hit 'Esc' a couple of times to come out... and now what do we want to do... now's the big point where we need to make sure it's in a frame... select it all, 'Command Option G', 'Ctrl Alt G', or right click it and say... convert to our 'Frame Selection'... is that it?

I think so. Let's convert it into a component... let's make a variant, 'Command D', or 'Ctrl D' to make another one... and I'm going to do it actually on my frame here... because I want to be able to see them all... kind of within the clipping boundaries, I'll move it off in a sec.

So we're going to have-- let's just double check it works... so this first one, perfect, this one here... I want to not adjust the variant, want to adjust the rectangle in here, just go... and let's just do that bit, add your own sound effect... and I'm going to go to Prototype mode, go you... I'm going to go here...

Change To, Property, Variant, Smart Animate, Quick... let's see if that works, let's grab an instance of it... let's preview it... it freaks out, close it down, preview it again... click, there we go... kind of working, all right, let's just fill it in...

so what have we got? I went that whole thing, click down here... let's get rid of the noodle, click on it, delete... what I'd like to do is, do this bottom one... so this one here, the rectangle inside of it, goes down to here... so those are the three little jumps...

and what we'll do is we'll get it rigged up, so when this... when this, this, and this, I'm holding 'Shift'... so when this is clicked, goes nowhere... we're at the right spot, when this is clicked it goes to here, same with you... the heart, when the heart is clicked, go to the heart one... the Heart one here, go to the heart one, what else we got?

You're going the right one, ah, this one... so when the Ticketing goes back to the first Ticketing option... same with this one... just double check, are they still using Smart Animate and Quick? All right, so let's keep previewing it, let's test it... you, you, you, all right, they're all working...

let's get these guys just to get a little different inside... so this one here, I'm going to get to go up... holding my 'Shift' key down, using my up arrow, go up one, two, three, probably... I want consistency between these guys, one, two, three... one, two, three, they don't have to be... what I might do as well is, these, you, you, and you, no, what have I clicked?

So click on that one, hold 'Shift', double click that one, double click that one... and I'm going to say, all of you are going to be the... not that color, going to get it switched to the other 500, that one there... what I also might do is scale them up... now you might be tempted at the top here just to go... all right, I'm going to, you know...

you could just go +8 for, not, not in that one... for the width you could just go +8... and stretch both of that one, that is +8... that kind of works, but you see, it kind of went from the top left... that's where the Scale tool is a bit handier, so 'K' for the Scale tool... and you can see, I want to scale from the center, how much, like 1.25...

that didn't work... thinking on the fly, let's do it all separately, so you are going to be... a width of, let's do the height... because I think the heights are all the same, let's go +8... and it goes from the center, same for this one here, 'K' tool... height, +8...

'K' tool, +8... let's see if that works, let's go to here... it is nearly there, that doesn't quite sit in the center, which bugs me... you, you, you, let's have a look... you just need to be a little bit that way... and I kind of put them up all the same size...

but this one needs to come up a bit higher... because they don't all have the same heights, right? So there's going to be a little bit of back and forth... trying to figure out what looks best when they move to these... there you go, we can't animate the paths... and we can't animate Booleans at the moment...

but you can can kind of make it feel like it does... by actually just shifting that along, a nice bit of smart animate... I think the easing of this, that Quick, makes this all really cool, there you go. All right, that is going to be it... kind of a tricky one to get together... but a good tie in for some of those shortcuts that we're learning...

and is it weird that these haven't scaled, in my preview... can you see, the regular small size, we know they're scaled, in here... but they just haven't previewed here... let's hit 'R' for refresh, 'R' for refresh... doesn't help them at all... don't know why, one of those open Figma, close it back up again things, I think  frame, let's go back in there...

let's get it inside of my iPhone... let's have a look now, now they're the right size, here we go... all right, that is it now, I'll see you in the next video. Oh, I know there's going to be a problem, I'm thinking... fortuitousness, foresighting, I'm doing something... I reckon that if you do this in a different order...

which I know some of you will, can you see, I've got three variants... they're all the same size even though these poke out of the top... what you can do, if you do it a different way around... is these could be different sizes... you might make these first, then make a component set... I can see people doing that.

So if you find that, let's say this one, we'll do it to this one... the frame, all the way around the outside here... is the same height as this... so that when they transition they all line up... if they are not, if I click on this one... and I grab my 'Command' key, 'Ctrl' key on a PC...

I can actually adjust the frame separate from everything else... this wrapper, it is a frame even though it's called a variant... I can say, let's make this one bigger, that might happen... this thing ends up being a bit taller than this one... because this one's kind of clipped there... let's have a look at what happens to it now...

you, you, and then you, can you see, it moved... if you end up in that trap what you need to do is a couple of things... what you need to do is just make sure... this is snap to something that is the same size on all of them. So if I hold down my 'Command' key on a Mac, 'Ctrl' key on a PC... around the variant, so I selected the variant, I can make it the right size...

and that should work for you, let's give that a go now... well I know, because I broke it that way... but that is a problem you might run into, and hopefully that'll fix it for you... click on the variant, make sure it's the same height... I can kind of see it here, you can just type it in... you know, if it needs to be 50, I can type it in...

it won't work if you didn't put it in a frame first, if it's still not working... it needs to be inside of that first frame that we made earlier on... wrapping this all up... a nice little container for everything to kind of move inside of... separate from the actual elements, there you go... all right, that is now the end, definitely the end this time, bye.
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