Welcome back my Caffeinated Creatives!
Figma: It’s not just for pushing pixels and debating button shadows anymore. If you’ve been using it only for wireframing and prototyping, you’re leaving money on the table—metaphorically speaking, unless you’re actually billing per artboard (in which case, respect).
The truth is, Figma is the Swiss Army knife of the creative industry… Minus the risk of slicing your fingers. It’s collaborative, intuitive, and packed with features that can make your life easier in way more ways than just cranking out website mockups. So today, we’re breaking out of the UX bubble and exploring all the unexpected (but brilliant) ways you can use Figma to make your creative process faster, smarter, and dare I say… more fun?
So grab your overpriced oat milk latte and let’s talk about how to stretch Figma beyond UX—because if we’re paying for another subscription, we might as well squeeze every drop of value out of it.
Figma for Presentations: Ditch the PowerPoint Pain
Let’s be honest—PowerPoint has been around forever, and it still makes us feel like we’re designing on a typewriter. Default templates? Bland. Clip art? Please, no. The second you try to nudge text just a little bit, it jumps to another slide entirely. That’s where Figma comes in.
Instead of struggling with rigid software, Figma gives you full creative freedom to build stunning, on-brand presentations with drag-and-drop ease. Want slick animations? Custom layouts? A seamless way for your team to collaborate and leave feedback in real-time? You got it.
- Custom, non-generic layouts – Unlike PowerPoint’s limited templates, Figma allows you to craft unique, fully branded slides that stand out. You can use grids, typography, and your own brand colors to create a presentation that actually reflects your company’s identity. This means no more cookie-cutter slides that feel lifeless and uninspiring.
- Real-time collaboration – Your team can work on the presentation simultaneously, leaving comments and making edits without sending endless versions back and forth. Whether you’re working with a marketing team, sales reps, or executives, everyone can see changes happen live, ensuring alignment and speeding up approvals.
- Reusable components – Save time by setting up a library of reusable elements like buttons, headers, and icons so every presentation is consistent and polished, without redoing work for each new slide deck. This is especially useful for teams that regularly create decks for client pitches, webinars, or internal reports.
- Smooth exports – Export your slides as PDFs, images, or even create an interactive prototype so your audience can experience transitions and interactions before the final presentation. You can also link slides dynamically, allowing interactive navigation that makes your presentations feel more engaging and intuitive.
If Steve Jobs had used Figma, we’d still be talking about how smooth his keynote transitions were. Just saying.
Social Media & Ad Design: Because Canva is Not Always Enough
Social media teams juggle a lot—multiple platforms, daily content, endless approval cycles. While Canva is handy for quick posts, Figma offers a level of precision and scalability that social teams and designers can’t ignore. Whether you’re building a global campaign or just need one high-quality Instagram post, Figma gets the job done often times faster and better.
- Batch design with Variants – Say goodbye to manually resizing every single social media post. With Figma’s Variants and Auto Layout, you can create multiple sizes of an ad or post in one file, keeping everything aligned and consistent across different platforms. This means you can effortlessly produce content for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter without manually adjusting each file. You may need to tweak the batch resize slightly to your standards, but it gets you most of the way there.
- Team collaboration – Social media managers, designers, and copywriters can work in the same file, eliminating the back-and-forth chaos of email approvals. Comments can be left directly on the designs, ensuring feedback is clear and actionable. This means faster turnaround times and fewer miscommunications.
- Ad iterations made easy – Want to test different versions of an ad? Figma makes it seamless to tweak colors, fonts, or copy variations without recreating everything from scratch. This means faster A/B testing and more effective campaigns, leading to better conversion rates and optimized ad spend.
- Brand consistency on lock – By creating a Figma brand library, your social team can ensure that every ad or post maintains a unified look and feel, regardless of who is working on it. This is crucial for maintaining a strong brand identity across various social channels, reinforcing brand trust and recognition.
Figma doesn’t just help you design ads—it helps you scale ad creation, making campaign execution significantly more efficient.
Emails That Don’t Look Like They Were Made in 2004
You know those emails that look so bad you’re convinced they were designed in Windows XP? Yeah, Figma can help make sure your emails don’t end up like that.
- Responsive design planning – Use Figma’s Auto Layout to see how your email adapts across different screen sizes. This ensures your email looks just as good on mobile as it does on a desktop. With the increasing number of users checking emails on their phones, this step is critical to ensuring engagement.
- Clickable prototypes – Instead of sending a boring static design, create an interactive prototype where stakeholders can click through an email to experience the final flow before it’s built. This makes it easier for teams to visualize user interactions and catch usability issues before development.
- Modular design for email templates – Tired of re-creating the same email structure over and over? Design modular email components (headers, CTAs, footers) in Figma and assemble new emails like a puzzle. This ensures consistency across all email campaigns while significantly reducing the time spent creating each one.
- Seamless design-to-development handoff – Developers can grab exact font sizes, colors, and padding directly from the Figma file, reducing confusion and preventing those dreaded last-minute fixes after an email goes live. By streamlining the design-to-code process, teams can execute campaigns more efficiently and maintain higher quality standards.
Figma doesn’t send emails (yet), but it makes designing them way less painful.
15 Creative Ways to Use Figma (That You Probably Haven’t Tried Yet)
Figma is often seen as a UX design tool, but that’s just scratching the surface. If you take a closer look at its versatility, you’ll find that it can be used for anything from content planning to creating interactive dashboards. Whether you’re a designer, marketer, or even a product manager, Figma can transform the way you work.
The real beauty of Figma lies in its adaptability. It’s not just about designing interfaces, it’s about designing anything visual. The ability to collaborate in real time, use reusable components, and export designs in multiple formats makes it a powerhouse for creative professionals. It’s time to stop limiting it to one function and start leveraging it across different areas of work.
Below are 15 creative ways you can use Figma outside of traditional UX design. Each use case includes what it is, why it’s valuable, and how you can implement it in your workflow.
1. Storyboarding for Video Projects
Figma can be a powerful tool for video creators who need to plan their scenes before production. Why? Traditional storyboarding tools can be clunky, but Figma allows you to easily sketch scenes, add annotations, and move elements around with ease. How? Create individual frames for each scene, use vector elements for characters and props, and collaborate with your team in real time to make adjustments before filming.
2. Interactive Mood Boards
Mood boards don’t have to be static—Figma allows you to create a dynamic, interactive mood board that evolves with your project. Why? Instead of collecting images on a Pinterest board, you can organize and edit assets in one place, with the ability to experiment with colors, typography, and layouts. How? Drag and drop images, add annotations, create linked sections, and use overlays to simulate how different styles might look together.
3. Podcast Cover and Episode Art
Podcasters often struggle to create consistent branding for their shows. Why? With Figma, you can design and manage a collection of podcast covers and episode thumbnails with consistent styling. How? Create a master template, apply different colors and themes for each episode, and export high-resolution images directly from Figma.
4. Infographics for Blog Posts and Reports
Infographics are a great way to convey complex information visually. Why? Tools like Illustrator can be overwhelming, whereas Figma provides a much easier way to create shareable, well-designed infographics. How? Use grids, vector illustrations, and Figma’s text tools to craft engaging data visuals that can be exported in multiple formats.
5. Marketing Campaign Planning
Figma is an excellent tool for planning multi-channel marketing campaigns. Why? It provides a visual way to organize content calendars, creative assets, and messaging strategies. How? Use Figma’s infinite canvas to map out email sequences, ad creatives, and promotional materials, ensuring consistency across all platforms.
6. Interactive Business Reports
Traditional PDFs are static and boring—Figma can make reports more engaging. Why? With Figma’s prototyping tools, you can create clickable reports that allow stakeholders to interact with data and content dynamically. How? Design slide-based reports with hyperlinks, tooltips, and pop-ups for a more immersive experience.
7. Personal Budget and Expense Trackers
Yes, Figma can even help you track your finances. Why? If you love visualizing your spending, Figma allows you to build aesthetically pleasing budget sheets that are easy to update. How? Create a dashboard with color-coded expense categories, interactive charts, and an easy-to-update balance tracker.
8. Customizable Resume and Portfolio Designs
Your resume should stand out in a sea of basic Word documents. Why? Figma lets you design a completely custom, visually striking resume or portfolio that reflects your personal brand. How? Use templates, add interactive elements, and export as a high-quality PDF or PNG for applications.
9. Event Invitations and Digital Flyers
If you’re planning an event, why not make an eye-catching invitation? Why? Whether it’s a corporate event or a personal celebration, Figma gives you complete design control. How? Design an invitation with a unique layout, embed RSVP links, and export in multiple formats for both print and digital distribution.
10. Mobile App Icon and Branding Kits
Designers working on mobile apps can use Figma to build an entire branding system. Why? It helps maintain consistency across icons, typography, and app elements. How? Create scalable versions of app icons, UI components, and export assets for iOS and Android.
11. Custom Keyboard Shortcuts Guide
Every designer has their go-to shortcuts—why not make them visual? Why? A well-designed shortcut guide can help teams onboard new members quickly. How? Create an interactive guide with Figma’s prototyping features, including tooltips and hover effects for easy reference.
12. Animated UI Concepts for Stakeholder Buy-In
Instead of static mockups, impress stakeholders with interactive UI animations. Why? Seeing a concept in action is much more convincing than a flat image. How? Use Figma’s Smart Animate to create smooth transitions between screens and simulate real interactions.
13. Digital Book Covers and eBook Layouts
Authors and publishers can use Figma to design covers and eBook pages. Why? It provides a flexible, collaborative space to test different compositions and typography. How? Mock up different cover styles, experiment with layouts, and export print-ready files.
14. Gamification UI Design Concepts
Gamifying experiences? Design leaderboards, badges, and rewards in Figma. Why? A well-designed gamification system increases engagement. How? Create a UI system for points, achievements, and challenges to visualize how users will interact with rewards.
15. Web-Based Surveys and Polls
Tired of Google Forms? Design your own survey UI in Figma. Why? It allows for a more engaging, branded survey experience. How? Create a survey flow with interactive elements and export as an HTML prototype or static form.
The Caffeine Kick
78% of designers say Figma improves team collaboration
According to a survey by UX Tools, nearly 8 out of 10 designers believe Figma enhances teamwork. With real-time collaboration, designers, developers, and stakeholders can work in sync—no more clunky email chains or outdated files.
Figma cuts design review times by up to 50%
A study by Maze found that Figma significantly reduces the time spent on design feedback and iterations. With features like comment threads and shared prototypes, teams can finalize designs faster, getting products to market sooner.
Companies using Figma see a 20% increase in design consistency
According to DesignBetter, teams that implement Figma with a design system experience better brand and UI consistency. Components, styles, and shared libraries ensure that every button, font, and color stays on-brand across projects.
Figma is used by over 4 million designers worldwide
As reported by Figma, the platform has grown exponentially, making it one of the most widely adopted design tools. Its cloud-based nature, cross-platform compatibility, and robust plugin ecosystem make it a favorite for startups and Fortune 500 companies alike.
Final Sip: Figma is More Than Just a Tool for UX/UI
At this point, if you’re still using Figma only for website mockups, you’re doing it wrong. It’s one of the most versatile tools in the creative industry, and whether you’re making ads, emails, presentations, or mapping out wild ideas, Figma can likely help you do it better, faster, and with less frustration.
What are some creative ways you are using Figma other than for website design or prototyping? Refill your coffee and let’s chat in the comments!
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