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 swap parts or entire component & style library in Figma

This lesson is exclusive to members

Course contents

Questions

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.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Hi everyone, in this video we are going to completely swap a library... that a design file is linked to... it's a great way to try out new designs because this one is hideous... and instead of making it better let's swap out the library... and there we go, new library, swapped... so if you need more Brush Script or Comic Sans in your life continue watching...

or if you just want to figure out how to swap libraries... you have to keep watching too, let's get in there... okay, let me set the scene, tell the story. I have got this file here called Event App... it's using a bunch of components, and colors, and font styles... not in this document...

we moved it to this Main Styles and Components document, great... but now I want to go and try out different styles... so I want to swap the library, I'm not going to do it to this app... this one's too complex, there's things going on... I just want to build a version 2 of my styles... and see what they look like on all the components...

before we go and commit them to all the documents that it's connected to... it's a really good use case for swapping libraries. So here's my original, Main Styles and Components, I have made a version 2... just with a few of the elements, the Top Nav, the Lower Nav... I've updated the button and some of the text, vive la Brush Script... so what I'm going to do is, instead of just going to this file...

'Option 3', 'Alt 3' on a PC... and going and-- I can go into here... because it's connected to Main Styles, I could go into here and say... 'Swap Library', and update everything... what I'm going to do, so things don't go crazy... I've created this file here called Design Change Test, just a simple document...

it's still connected to Main Styles... I've thrown in a few of the components, and colors, and type... that I want to experiment with, and I'm going to change this one... just to keep it away from that working dock... so let's close that down, we're not using anymore. This original one is connected to this document...

let's switch it out to this new version where I've changed colors and fonts... just as, like a little test run, you get me? All right, let's give it a whirl... so for this to work you need both styles to be published... they both need to be in a Team Library if you want to use comp components... you need to be on a paid plan, at least for the components part...

surprise, jump cut, I've added two colored boxes... using my primary and secondary colors... just to help with the example... I want to swap this file's library, so 'Option 3', 'Alt 3' on a PC... so what I want to go to is, I want to find this, go to the little arrow here... and there's an option in the bottom that says 'Swap Library'...

and it's going to go from my Main Styles that I created first... to this new one here called Main Styles V2... it defaulted to that, because I chose it before, when I first recorded this video... and got lost, and restarted and re-recorded, anyway. So you'll have to pick yours from there... now the big trick here is to make sure...

that the styles in both the first one and the second one have the same name... can you see, H3, from my Text Style, is called H3 over here... my colors have the same folder structure, let's have a look... Color-Primary 500, same with this one here... Color-Primary, I got lazy, I only needed two colors... but as long as the names match up it'll work...

you'll notice in this V2, I don't have my accent color, again, because I'm lazy... and I'm going to pretend it's because-- look at this... anything that can't be found or matched will still retain the old style... this might just be a heads up for you to go... and actually make that color in the new style, I'm going to ignore it... down here the Upper Nav, it's called the Upper Nav, the two different styles...

the one thing here is it's missing this Primary button... let's actually do this now and then I'll go through and see why this one's broken... let's go to 'Swap Libraries'... 3, 2, 1, and swatch, cool, huh. So it goes through, it has updated the Top Nav, the Lower Nav... the colors, the font, hasn't done the button...

so let's go and connect those up... so it's a good way just to kind of be working on this kind of a... maybe an update version of your files without pushing it live to the team... because it's a big move... once you've done a few tests you might want to then go through... and get people to switch, the files that they're working on to the new style...

it might just be subtle changes, nothing big and Brush Script-ey, like this one... let's go figure out why this didn't connect. So in here, it's called Button Main... so that's what that main component is... let's double check it, go to 'Main Component'... it is called Button Main, what have I called it in Main Styles here?

I've called it Button-Main, so I need to go through and say, there you go... I need to publish this again, everything needs to be published... 'Option 3', 'Alt 3' - it's the last time I'm going to say it, I promise. - to open up the Libraries panel, let's publish it... now we can go over here and say, 'Update Library'... let's go to here, let's swap the library for this library here...

the only thing that's found is this one here, so we can go and swap... here we go, Comic Sans goodness. That is a big old library swap... if you just want to do an individual swap... oh, a shortcut, that maybe I haven't shared... 'Command Shift T', 'Ctrl Shift T' on a PC, opens up the last closed tab...

it's a shortcut I use all the time for both browser and on Figma... so you can go in here and say... actually, I don't want to do that whole library swap thing... I just want to go through and switch out just one little bit... I'm going to go to this, it's an instance of Upper Nav... I can go over to here, some components were moved since I last did this...

what were they? Yeah, why not, ignore that... I'm going to go, you, let's not switch the whole library... let's just switch this instance... so we can go over here, and up here where it says Nav Upper, click on this... I'm going to 'Swap Instance'...

it's connected to that other file here, my Main Style... I actually want to connect the library for my version 2... so I'm just going to activate it there... and do nothing, not going to swap it, I'm just going to go in here, turn it on... so that I can say, you can be swapped, 'Instance Swap', with that one there... and let's swap it with this top thing, cool, huh.

it's moved it across, preserved the color change that I have on this Top Nav... there was an override to it, so I can right click it and say, 'Reset All Changes'... so you can do bits individually, or you can swap out the whole library... just got to make sure you're using... the exact same names as your current library with your new library... there you go, that is swapping libraries in Figma.
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