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!

What is good spacing to use 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.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Hello. Let's make this, it is just a helper spacer guide  and it is an answer to a question I get a lot. Like, how far apart should things be? What spacing should they be, what size should they be? What's really common? It's these and what does this do?

It's nothing. It's just a visual cue. So when we're designing something,  we're like, how big should it be? You can look at this and go, it should be about  24 actually 32. How far apart should it be? Ah, let's use six, let's use 16 plus.

It'll give me a reason to show you a really cool plugin. Okay, that'll help do all this kind of documentation for us. It's good for this little spaces here,  but also when you get on further  and start making things like design specs for your developer  and maybe a design system. Alright, boxes and plugins. Spaces between boxes. Let's do it.

Alright, so let's make a grid. I'm gonna do it over here. A little spacing grid. I'm gonna use the R for the rectangle tool. Hold down my shift key on my keyboard  to get the heightened width the same. And I want, my first one's gonna be eight.

This is a good kind of like base level. Uh, if they are linked, they should both become eight. Okay, the width and the height. And I hit enter on my keyboard. Excellent. I'm gonna pick a really high contrast color  and what I would like to do is just have multiples  of eight as we go up, okay?

Zoom in a little bit and  what we can do is hold on the option key alt key on  a PC to duplicate. And I'm just gonna drag it out a size  and I'm gonna use my math over here  because I'm not good at math. And to say plus eight, here we go. 16, okay, I can do that math, but let's do another one. Let's go plus eight. And I'm just gonna keep going up  to a size that becomes too big.

Let's do that. I wanna do this in speed mode. Alright, that's probably enough. Um, in terms of spacing, okay  and things away from the edges of other stuff. I feel like that is a big enough. Once we get it to 48, it's pretty massive.

You can keep going up to you. I like to see the spacing between things as well. So this is good for like units of things. How big should your icon be? How big should that image box be? How far away from the edge it should be.

Another way is the spacing in  between can be quite visually helpful when you're making it. And there's some common sizes for that too. So I've got my first box. How far away is the smallest distance? The smallest is zero, so we don't need zero. We can all imagine zero.

Let's look at the first one is four. Okay, so four pixels across, how do I know it's four? Okay, it's if I zoom in, can you see the grid there? I can see it's four. You can also double check. So with this selected, hold on the option Ke mac,  alt Kiana pc and you can just kinda like hover over stuff  and you can see, look, I am four pixels away.

So four six is the next one. That's the next really common size, not divisible by eight. I know this, but it's a really common spacing between stuff. There you go. Six. The next one when we get  more pixels away.

Okay, so eight away from something is,  it's easier probably just to drag it next to it. So completely next to it to say X  and Y please move plus four pixels along the X. That's how you can get your spacing done. Okay, so there's some small ones. 4, 6, 8. And then basically we go in either whole  or half divisions of eight.

So I'm gonna go 12 for the next one. So 12, the next one's going to be  16, which is two eights. And my last one, I don't have a last one. I probably need a 20 in between them. So I'm gonna go, this one uh, is gonna be plus eight. Plus eight and I'm going to make it 20.

It's another spacing that I use. Now again, these aren't the rules, rules,  but often these are really good sizes for things  and these are really good spaces in between things. Now that's handy. Um, but it's hard to note. Well you can actually click on it  and say, oh yeah, that's 48. And then go off and do stuff and look at spacing  and go, okay, how far the way should  that be from the top about that?

Hold down your option. Ke mac, alt ke pieing. Okay, that's 12. And then go back over there. But it'd be nice if they're all  labeled, you could write them out. That is boring and tedious.

Let's look at our first, um, plugin for the course. So plugins can be found in this little  icon here under resources. Okay? And we're gonna go to plugins  and the one that we're gonna look at is design  doc for this case. Now there are lots of competitors to this particular app. Find the one you like and design doc might not be  working in a little while.

Basically when I make these courses, it's about the time  that whoever decided to make this plugin decides  to not update it anymore. So again, this is more of a for instance than an actual. Um, go and use this particular one. So I'm gonna find it by searching for design doc. One word, I'm gonna run it. This thing opens up.

It's pretty sweet. Watch this. If I click on this one, let's move it over here  and say I want, gimme the height above it. Look boom. This one here, I want the hide above it. Boom.

You can't see it, can you? There you go. And it just makes it nice and big  and easy so I can not have to go and measure this. Here we go. We can use this on future  projects once we've made it. What I also wanna do is click on this and this.

I'm holding shift to select two things  and actually I want show me the outer spacing. Ah, very well designed app, uh, plugin. Okay, I'm gonna do that for all of them. Be back in a sec. Alright, so that is a sweet app. Um, quick little shortcut, command option p Ctrl.

Alt P is to open up the last plugin if you're using it over  and over and some of them close down after you've used them. That's a good shortcut. I'll make sure  that's in the shortcut sheet. Okay, with this app here, it's great. It's made this, can you see, it's kind  of made an overlaying thing. I want them all mixed together  and I probably want them all in their  own frame at the moment.

They're in a group that's a little dotted line there. So I'm gonna select off, grab my f frame tool, draw a box  around it all and say you have a fill of this dark color  and I'm gonna have to play with a layer. Order it, grab a few of my rectangles  and some of the container. Not all of it. It's a container. You go above all of that.

I've got all my rectangles here. We'll do layer, madness, layer on,  uh, later on in the course. Okay. For the moment though, we'll go caveman style. Just drag them into the right place. That didn't quite work.

There we go. All right, this is gonna be my measurements. Awesome. So handy plugin, both for  what we're doing just here. And later on when you start doing specifications  for the developer, either a handover document  or maybe a design system. So this will be what we'll use as a visual guide  as we're going through this course.

Um, yeah, to help with our spacing  and knowing how big things should be. Alright, onto the next video.
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