shadcn/studio for Figma

What Are Global Variables?

In Figma, Global Variables refer to reusable design elements such as colors, typography, effects, and components that can be applied across multiple files or projects.

Key Benefits:

• Ensures consistency in design by using shared styles and components.
• When you update a global variable (like a color or text style) in one place, it automatically updates across all elements that use it throughout the design, saving time and reducing errors.

How Figma Utilizes Global Variables:

• Shared Styles (Colors, Text, Effects): When a color or typography style is defined as a shared style in Figma, it functions as a global variable. If you update it, the change applies throughout the entire design file or across linked projects.
• Components: Components like buttons, icons, and UI elements are also global variables. Once a component is created, it can be reused in multiple places within the design. If you update the master component, all instances of that component are updated automatically.
• Design Tokens: A more advanced use of global variables is through design tokens. These are variables shared across files that ensure consistency in color, typography, spacing, etc.

What Are Local Variables?

Local Variables are design elements or assets that are specific to a single Figma file and are not shared across multiple projects or files. These variables are more isolated and give you flexibility when working on specific or one-off designs.

Key Benefits:

• Local Styles: These are colors, typography, and effects created for a specific file, which can only be used within that file.
• Local Components: Components created within a design file that are not part of a shared library. These components cannot be reused in other files unless manually copied.
• Layer Properties: Local changes made to layers (e.g., colors, shadows) that are not linked to any global styles.

Key Differences Between Local and Global Variables:

• Scope: Global variables can be reused across multiple design files, whereas local variables are confined to a single file.
• Consistency: Global variables help maintain consistency across projects, while local variables offer flexibility but can lead to inconsistencies across different design files.
• Sharing: Global variables are easy to share and apply across files, whereas local variables need to be manually copied to another file if you want to reuse them.

For larger projects or design systems, global variables ensure scalability and consistency, while local variables are ideal for individual, isolated design tasks.

1. Design with Auto Layout

Auto Layout in Figma automatically adjusts the size and position of elements within a frame based on their content and layout direction. Whether you're working with buttons, cards, or forms, Auto Layout ensures that all components resize and align perfectly when content changes. This eliminates the need for manual adjustments, providing a quicker, more efficient way to manage responsive designs.

Key Benefits:

• Dynamic Resizing: Automatically resizes elements based on the content inside them (e.g., text length, images).
• Direction Control: Choose between horizontal or vertical layout directions for greater flexibility.
• Consistency: Automatically adjusts layouts and spacing to maintain consistent design, even when making frequent content changes.

Auto Layout simplifies the process of creating adaptable layouts, saving time and ensuring your designs are responsive across all screen sizes.

2. Effortless Resizing

With Auto Layout in Figma, resizing components is seamless and intuitive. Whether you need to expand or shrink a button, text box, or an entire section, the design will automatically adjust based on the new size. This feature makes it easy to create flexible, responsive designs that dynamically adapt to different screen sizes or content changes without breaking the layout.

Key Benefits:

• Responsive Design: Resizes elements automatically when you change their dimensions.
• Simple Adjustments: Quickly modify component sizes without breaking the layout or structure.
• Consistency: Keep spacing and alignment intact while resizing components.

This feature ensures that your designs remain responsive and adaptable, saving time during the design process.

3. Design & Development Consistency

The shadcn/studio UI Kit bridges the gap between design and development, making it easier for teams to stay aligned. By using components and design systems, both designers and developers can work from the same set of guidelines, ensuring that designs are implemented exactly as intended.

Key Benefits:

• Unified Design System: Work with shared components, styles, and guidelines for consistency across design and development.
• Faster Handoff: When both designers and developers use the same components, the handoff process becomes smoother and faster.
• Error Reduction: Reduces misunderstandings and design inconsistencies between teams.

By ensuring consistency between design and development, shadcn/studio UI Kit improves collaboration and reduces the risk of miscommunication.

4. Organized Components

shadcn/studio UI Kit components are organized with clear, consistent naming conventions, making it easy to locate and reuse design elements throughout your project. Whether it's a button, card, icon, or any other UI element, you can quickly find the right component and drop it into your design.

Key Benefits:

• Clear Naming Conventions: Components are clearly named, making it easy to locate the right elements.
• Reusability: Reuse components across different pages and projects without confusion.
• Consistency: Ensures that the same components are applied correctly across various parts of the design, maintaining uniformity.

5. Speed Up Your Workflow

With shadcn/studio's powerful tools and pre-designed components, you can complete projects faster than ever before. Auto Layout, reusable components, and style presets allow you to create high-quality designs quickly, eliminating the need to redesign elements repeatedly.

Key Benefits:

• Pre-Designed Components: Start your designs quickly with ready-to-use components that can be customized to fit your needs.
• Reusable Styles: Use predefined styles for colors, typography, and spacing to maintain consistency and save time.
• Rapid Iteration: Make design changes quickly without worrying about redoing the entire layout.

This feature ensures that you can iterate rapidly and focus on the creative aspects of your design, boosting your productivity.

6. Smart and Easy-to-Use

Figma's intuitive interface, combined with shadcn/studio, allows both beginners and experienced designers to start designing without a steep learning curve. The file structure is flexible and scalable, meaning you can easily organize and expand your projects as they grow.

Key Benefits:

• Intuitive Interface: A simple and user-friendly interface that anyone can learn quickly.
• Scalable File Structure: Organize your files and components in a way that grows with your project.
• Flexible Design Tools: Whether you're working on a prototype or a large design system, shadcn/studio adapts to your workflow.

This feature makes shadcn/studio accessible to designers at all skill levels, enabling them to work efficiently.

7. Fully Responsive for Web, Tablet, and Mobile

With shadcn/studio, you can design for multiple devices in a single file. Components and layouts automatically adjust to fit different screen sizes, whether you're working on a desktop site, a mobile app, or a tablet version of your product.

Key Benefits:

• Design Once, Use Everywhere: Create responsive designs without needing separate files for each device.
• Automatic Adaptation: Components automatically adjust to different screen sizes, ensuring your designs look great on every device.
• Seamless Experience: Design your product for web, tablet, and mobile, all within the same Figma file.

This ensures your designs are always responsive and consistent across all devices, without extra work.

8. Pre-built Themes with Limitless Customization

shadcn/studio offers a set of pre-built themes to kickstart your design. These themes come with pre-defined layouts, colors, and typography that can be easily customized to fit your brand and project needs.

Key Benefits:

• Quick Start: Use one of the 6 pre-built themes to get your design off the ground quickly.
• Fully Customizable: Tailor the themes to fit your brand by adjusting the colors, typography, and layouts.
• Strong Foundation: Start your design with a solid foundation that you can build on.

This feature helps you get started faster while giving you the flexibility to make the design truly your own.

9. Advanced Variables

Variables in shadcn/studio allow you to define reusable design values like colors, spacing, typography, and more. Once defined, these variables can be applied across your design, ensuring consistency. When you need to update a color or change a spacing value, you only need to adjust it once, and all elements using that variable will automatically update.

Key Benefits:

• Consistency Across Projects: Maintain consistent design values across your entire project.
• Efficiency: Update variables once, and all instances of the variable update automatically.
• Flexibility: Create a design system that's easy to adjust as your project evolves.

This feature ensures that your design system is easy to maintain and scale, even as your project grows.

10. 10x Faster Than Other UI Kits

The shadcn/studio UI Kit is optimized for speed, helping you work at lightning speed. With ready-to-use components, styles, and templates, you can quickly create high-quality designs without delays.

Key Benefits:

• Optimized Performance: The UI kit is designed to minimize delays and improve overall workflow.
• Rapid Design: Get designs completed faster with pre-designed components and styles.
• Efficient Iteration: Focus on the creative process while the tools handle the rest.

This ensures that your workflow is 10x faster, allowing you to spend more time on the creative aspects and less time on repetitive tasks.

🎨 Tailwind Color Variables

In shadcn/studio, you can use Tailwind Color Variables to apply Tailwind's utility-first color system directly in your Figma file. Tailwind's color palette is widely used in web development, making it easy to maintain consistency between your design and development processes.

Benefits of Using Tailwind Color Variables:

• Consistency Across Design and Development: Tailwind's utility-first approach allows you to maintain a consistent color scheme across both the design and development phases of your project.
• Quick Customization: You can modify color schemes easily and ensure those changes are reflected throughout your design files.
• Scalability: Tailwind's color system provides a flexible foundation for creating scalable color systems that can grow with your project.

By using Tailwind Color Variables, you ensure that the colors in your design align with Tailwind's utility classes, making the handoff to developers much smoother and reducing discrepancies between design and code.

🎨 shadcn/studio Color Variables

The shadcn/studio theming system allows you to define custom color schemes that can be applied throughout your project. You can create different color palettes for various elements like background colors, button colors, text colors, and more, ensuring that your design remains consistent and easily adjustable.

Key Features of shadcn/studio Color Variables:

• Customizable Color Schemes: Define your own colors or use the pre-configured color schemes that are part of the shadcn/studio UI Kit.
• Global Changes: Once a color variable is defined, you can apply it throughout your design, and changes made to the color variable will automatically update all instances where it's used.
• Brand Flexibility: Easily switch between different looks or adapt your design to new brand requirements by changing the color palette.

With shadcn/studio Color Variables, you have the flexibility to adjust your design to match your project's branding, while ensuring that the design remains consistent and scalable.

📱 Responsive Screen Size Variables

Designing for multiple screen sizes can be challenging, but shadcn/studio makes it easier with Responsive Screen Size Variables. These variables allow you to define how components should behave on various screen sizes, from desktop to mobile.

How It Works:

• Multiple Frames: Create frames for different screen sizes (e.g., desktop, tablet, mobile) and define how each component should behave on those screens.
• Layout Grids: Use layout grids to structure your design and adjust the position of elements based on the screen width.
• Dynamic Behavior: Define how components should resize, stack, or change their arrangement depending on the screen size.

Benefits:

• Adaptive Layouts: Easily create responsive designs that adjust automatically across various devices.
• Consistency Across Devices: Ensure that your design maintains a consistent look and feel on mobile, tablet, and desktop views.
• Efficient Workflow: Work with one file that adapts to different screen sizes, reducing the need for separate design files for each device.

Responsive screen size variables allow you to build flexible, device-friendly designs while maintaining a single source of truth for all screen sizes.

🔲 Border Radius Variables

Border-radius variables help you maintain consistent, adjustable corner radii across your design. While Figma doesn't have a dedicated feature like CSS variables, you can achieve the same effect using shared styles and consistent naming conventions.

How to Use Border Radius Variables:

• Define Corner Radii: Set global border radius variables for different corner styles (e.g., small, medium, large).
• Apply Across Components: Use these variables for all components that require rounded corners, ensuring consistency.
• Easily Adjust: If you want to change the corner radius for your entire design, you can adjust the variable, and it will automatically update across all components using that variable.

Key Benefits:

• Consistency: Ensures that your design has a uniform look with consistent corner radii across all components.
• Flexibility: You can easily adjust the border radius to fit your design style without having to modify each individual component.
• Scalability: Maintain the ability to scale your design system with consistent border radii that can be reused across different projects.

How Variables Enhance Your Workflow

The use of variables in shadcn/studio significantly enhances your workflow by making your design process more efficient and flexible. Here's how:

1. Consistency: Variables ensure that design elements like colors, typography, and spacing remain consistent across your design. Changes made to a variable will automatically update all instances where it's applied, reducing the risk of design discrepancies.
2. Efficiency: Instead of manually updating every element, you can change a variable in one place, and all instances of that element will be updated throughout the design. This speeds up your workflow and ensures that updates are easy to implement.
3. Scalability: Whether you're designing for a single screen or an entire design system, variables make it easy to manage and scale your design as your project grows. You can easily adjust the overall look and feel of your design by updating variables without manually modifying each individual element.
4. Flexibility: Variables allow for easy customization. With Tailwind Color Variables, shadcn/studio Color Variables, and other design values, you can adjust your design to fit your project's unique needs, ensuring flexibility across multiple design elements and projects.