Design Fundamentals with Figma Variables
episode
20 MINUTES by Noco - for B2B SaaS founders and CMOs that move fast
17 min
2 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 5 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is Leonardo’s background and why is structured design important for SaaS?
All right, we are live.
We are live, yeah.
Welcome to another episode episode of Twenty Minutes by Noco. Um today we're diving into design with the one and only Leonardo.
Hi. Hi
man.
Nice to meet everyone who's listening right now. Awesome.
Leo.
How's it going? How's it going, yeah?
Good man. How about you? How about you?
All good, all good. Little bit rainy here in Amsterdam today. Um yeah, I think it's typical Dutch weather, right?
Yeah, we're going into that season again. Um not my favourite one. But uh yeah, I mean uh it is what it is, right?
It is what it is. It's what it is. Different than uh
than Italy, right? That's a little bit of different uh
Yeah, kind of. Kind of. Uh I think that autumn is kinda like pretty much the same. Uh but uh yeah, summer is Definitely different.
Yeah.
A lot of sun, uh a lot of C and uh good season. Yeah,
man. All right. But
hey, love uh love Netherlands.
Yeah, right. It's a good country. It's a good country. Um yeah. Leo, give the people a little bit of an introduction. Uh tell them uh who you are, uh what is your background, what are you doing at NoCo.
Yeah, so I'm a designer at NOCO. Um I'm specialized in uh B2B SAS and product. uh digital products. Um yeah, I mainly focus on conducting UX research as well as uh building scalable design systems. Um to perform uh and to Um improve. um performances uh for our customers basically.
Yeah, and to make app epic designs, right?
Epic design. So really yeah, of course. So really, really happy to to be here right now.
Nice. Good to have you on the call.
This is my first time.
It's your first time and uh I'm really to happy happy that you are here. Um I know that you are a super talented designer um and you are really structured, so that's super interesting to talk about and uh also to talk about why it's important as a designer to work in a structured way, not only because it's good for yourself as a designer, uh, but also for the customer. It's way more scalable. Sure. Uh and that's something where we are going to zoom in today. Um we are going to talk about variables um and why are variables important, uh, why do you need them, and not only for design, but also for development. I know that we are going to zoom in into the design part of things, uh, but it's super important to also explain why uh
It is important for development, for scalability. Um Yeah. Yeah, I mean take us through the process and explain us uh how you work and why you work in that way.
Yeah, sure. So basically
Why do design systems need a single source of truth?
Why variables are important, right? Uh why do we have to focus on that part of uh of design? Well Um Think about this. Um, every time your brand color changes, do you really want that your team uh updates Hundreds and hundreds of components such as buttons, tags, labels. As well as even spacing, typography and everything that is related to um values uh in uh in your design. Well of course not that because that would be really A mess, right? Um so yeah, that's where basically variables in Figma comes in, right? So What is a variable? A variable is a essentially a value related to a name. So for example, uh it could be something like primary five hundred for colours, or it could be something like body weight bold for typography.
So basically this value Uh you connect it once. And uh Whenever you update that value, it automatically updates everywhere in your design file. So um By that I mean uh your marketing sites, your social media posts uh as well as of course all the components. So basically is one source of truth um consistent across all the all the touch points. Interesting. Yeah, it is. It is a really, really interesting and it's really handy for uh for our d um for us as a designer. Um So yeah. That's the that's pretty uh pretty much uh how our variable works.
Um Before we share the screen. I know that variables are important for us, right? Like our developers pretty much exactly copy what we create in Figma. Um, and that's for them, you know, basically the building blocks of how a website will look. Uh, I know that design is super can be super fancy, can look amazing, uh, but then again, it's super important that the the fundamentals are in place.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is Leonardo’s background and why is structured design important for SaaS?
0:00–3:03
2
Why do design systems need a single source of truth?
3:03–7:24
3
How do Figma variables work and what can you store in them?
7:24–10:57
4
What are the real‑world benefits of variables for developers and marketers?
10:57–17:51
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from 20 MINUTES by Noco - for B2B SaaS founders and CMOs that move fast
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