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 replace instances and variants with shortcuts in Figma

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Course contents

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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

Hi everyone, we are going to dig in and show you... how to switch things out quickly and easily... either with instances, like this one here, look... switch it nicely, I'll show you how to do it when there's--  it's deep inside of a component, which is trickier to do... I'll show you how to switch out instances when they're in variables as well... so that crazy little target thing that appears sometimes is...

I'll show you how to detach and reset all instances as well... all right, let's jump in. First thing is, there are some icons that you can put into your document... so there's a folder now called Icons 2, bring in all four of these... add them to your document, make them components, we know how to do that... I'll do it at the end of this video just in case you do get lost...

but all you need is components, we're going to use this thing with Icon... so let's do the cool swapping. I'm on Page 1 now, I'm going to make a frame... just so that I can see what we're doing... I started recording it on the black, you couldn't really see what it was doing. So we need a couple of things, let's grab-- I'm going to start using this...

this Resources tab, it's 'Shift I', both Mac and PC... Shift I opens it up... if you keep typing it, start searching... I really like it because-- Shift I opens it... it's remembered components from the last thing I did... and now I can type in "Heart", I find that's really easy...

then using the Assets panel over here. So I'm going to drag this out, and I'm going to drag out two versions... two versions, why?, because I want to do one... I'll leave one untouched, and this one here... where the instance is being kind of like smushed... because I'll show you the difference...

let's find something else, let's use the Pencil, familiar? The Pencil by itself, it doesn't really do anything, it just drag it out... and it's very small... so what I can do though, if I hold down 'Option' key on a Mac, 'Alt' key on a PC... can you see, this little line appears around them... that little line says, "All right, I'm going to switch you out"...

and what it did was, is I made those icons really small... because it kind of demonstrates that... if I change nothing about that original heart instance... the thing I'm swapping it with uses its size... but if I've destroyed it, like this... hold down that same key, 'Alt' on a PC, 'Option' on a Mac...

can you see, if I've distorted it, goes, "Oh, I'll try and match it," handy, huh? Of course, there is the way of going in here and using this... and finding your way through the components, doing search... I find that option of just holding down 'Alt' on a PC, 'Option' on a Mac... and overriding it is super easy... sometimes it doesn't work, and I'll show you the trick for getting around it.

Let's say that we want to switch out this here, we've got these guys... if I just use that exact same trick, and I say, Pencil icon... I hold down 'Option', like Dan said, or 'Alt' on a PC... nothing appears, it kind of just threw it in there, in Auto layout... so just kind of like dumped it in there, didn't switch anything... what you can do is you can hold down the same key...

'Option' on a Mac, 'Alt' on the PC... but hold down 'Command' as well... so that's 'Option Command', Mac, 'Alt Ctrl' on a PC... and can you see, the line appears now... it's a way of like diving inside and deeper into something... and because I hadn't resized these it replaced it out with its new size...

if I want to go into this one, and I... just make this '31' and '31'... now holding those two keys down, 'Option Command' on a Mac, 'Alt Ctrl' on a PC... gets the new size, there you go, that's how you switch out components... or at least the shortcut for it. Another shortcut for kind of switching things out...

is when you're working with variants... so find something in your document, component set... you're looking for the variants... I'm going to use this text here... I'm going to hold 'Command' and click, that's 'Ctrl' click on a PC... just to kind of dive inside of my variants...

and some things will have a target next to it, some won't... and the little tool tip is, giving away what we're doing, can you see, it says... "Hey, would you like me to select all matching layers?"... you go, "Awesome," then you can go through and say... "Actually, I want to change the font size, or the color"... or say you want to switch it out.

Let's say this Early Bird here, so clicked on the outside of this... it recognizes that there's more than one, there it is, there... and I can say, actually, switch it from... Price to, I don't know, what else we got in there? The upper Nav, not appropriate... but it's a great way when you do end up...

with lots of variants inside of a component set... and it explains why sometimes there is a target and sometimes there isn't... why isn't there a target here, these all look very similar... they're too different, it's looking for stuff that looks quite similar... it gets to a point where, I'm not sure if you have this example or not... but you can see on my one, let's check this out...

if I 'Command' click this, it says, "Hey, there's more"... there you go, cool, save them for me... you're like, "Hey, why don't you pick that?"  One of the things it's looking for is... obviously it's text, and it's the right font and the size... it's looking for those things... but it's also looking for the structure of the layers...

so let's have a look, this one here didn't get picked, 'Command' clicked it... it's because these ones here, where's his buddy? There is an instance inside of... directly inside of it is the child of the text, whereas this one here... is, there's the instance, inside of it... is another wrapper or frame...

in our case, an auto layout, inside of that is the text... so it doesn't know how to jump deep into layers... or at least it doesn't at the moment, check yours... sometimes though, instead of replacing instances and changing variables... you just want to like break it all apart... so there is a cool newest feature where...

let's go 'Shift I' to open up our components... let's type in "Card" from the thing we made earlier... and I'm going to drag in this, this is quite complex... remember, over here, in my Layers panel... let's have a look, how do we open it at all? That's right, hold down 'Command' on a Mac, 'Ctrl' on a PC...

and it should spill it open, but you can see... I've got an instance, inside of that is an instance... there's an instance of the bottom part, which has an instance of Price, and just... everything is tied back, sometimes you're just like, "Leave it alone"... you're just, "I don't want everything to be instances"... I just want to smush it all apart to be frames...

and not connected to anything else... so to do it, with the card selected, instead of your quick actions... so 'Command /', or 'Ctrl /' and if you type in "detach"... instead of Detach Instance you want to 'Detach all Nested instances'... because at the moment Detach Instance kinda works... but all of these still stay in there, can you see...

whereas, if I undo that, open quick actions... use 'Detach All Instances'... you'll notice that, oh, look at this, 'Command' click... all of it is being broken apart. It might be that you're using somebody else's work... or you just want to kind of have a fresh start and kind of pull it all to pieces...

there's no real good place to go find it so just use quick actions... and just remember, you can detach all instances, hopefully. Let's close it all up, who remembers the shortcut? That's right, hold down 'Option' and hit 'L', or 'Alt L'... just all the layers collapse back down, thank you, very much. Last shortcut is, when you are working with instances...

and you don't want to delete them... don't want to smash them apart, you just want to reset them all... you can right click each one and go... 'Reset all changes', obviously, you can use your quick actions as well... but what you can do is, actually, you can select a lot of them... and do them all in one bit go...

to say, go back to the way you are meant to be, 'Reset all changes'... there you go, tiny pencils, so that's how to reset all your instances... and that is going to be it for like the shortcuts we're going to be learning. What I'll do now is, I promised at the beginning I'll show you kind of... the bits I skipped to get to where we started... if you're happy with making multiple icons and doing the renaming thing...

totally fine... if you need a little bit of an extra kind of look at it... I'm going to do that here now. So I've reset everything back to before we started the video... and I'm going to say, let's bring in some images, or some icons... I always.

nearly always. drag in from a Finder window... 'Icons 2', just drag him in... I use my mouse, zooming in, hold 'Command' and use my scroll wheel, in and out... and I'm going to make multiple components, great... now I'm going to rename them, 'Command R', 'Ctrl R' on a PC...

and I'm going to put them in that same... kind of like subcategory that I had before, 'Icon/'  why?, because I want them grouped with those other icons... so they're going to go into there, they're going to have current name... and I'm going to hit 'Rename', and they're going to kind of work. Let's jump to our 'Assets' panel, so 'Alt 2'... under my 'Components' now I have two, why do I have two of them?

It's because these ones that I just made... haven't gone in to the section that I made, let's have a look... so for some reason when I dragged in my images from my Finder... they didn't go inside that section there, they're all actually kind of separated... let's have a look at my Layers panel, 'Option 1'... these are the guys that I brought in...

they didn't end up in here for some reason... so that's all we're going to do, get in there... now when I look at my Assets panel... under 'Components', there's just one group of them. So that's how I got started with this course... drag them in, give them names, make sure in the right place, here we go...

all right, that is it, I will see you in the next video.
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