Finding motion in the brand
In 2020, I joined Figma’s brand team as its first motion designer. The company had recently introduced a new visual identity—playful, expressive, and rooted in the raw materials of design. My role was to explore what that identity could become in motion.
The new identity already felt inherently kinetic. Primitive shapes, bounding boxes, and unfinished compositions gave the work a sense of being actively constructed—less like polished artifacts and more like ideas taking shape on a canvas.
Many of the compositions also had a physical quality: forms stacked, balanced, leaned against one another, or appeared just on the edge of instability. I used those ideas as the foundation for a motion language built around play, physics, tension, and resolution.
Shapes could teeter before finding balance. Elements could overshoot before settling into place. Spring and bounce added personality without becoming theatrical. The goal was to make the brand feel alive and playful while preserving the restraint and simplicity of the original design system.
Exploring and extending the system
Much of the work was intentionally experimental. I created motion studies and prototypes to explore how the brand could behave across different contexts, then translated those explorations into real applications.
That included social content and concepts, interactive motion for Figma’s About page, and motion graphics toolkits for the team producing Figma’s educational YouTube content. Those toolkits gave editors a reusable vocabulary of on-brand motion rather than requiring every video to invent its own visual treatment.
Across each application, the aim was the same: turn a static identity into a system of behaviors—one that felt distinctly Figma, but flexible enough to evolve with the brand.
Role
Motion Designer, Brand · Figma · 2020
Motion direction · Motion systems · Brand exploration · Social content · Interactive motion · Video toolkits
Credits
- Creative director: Tori Hinn
- Design: Peter Herbert Barnaba, Remilla Ty, Tim Gilligan