04. Text - Figma 101

Let's explore the various ways to add, manipulate, and fine tune text in Figma. Text plays a vital role in interface design, acting as one of the primary communication tools between your design and its users. Therefore, understanding how to effectively use text is a crucial skill for any designer. So let's start with the basics of adding text. In the toolbar on the left, you'll find the text tool, which you can also access with the T shortcut.

With this tool, you can click anywhere on the canvas and start typing. Once you've added some text, you'll notice the text properties panel appear in the right sidebar. This panel is your control center for all things related to text. Let's break down what each section here does. In the text properties panel, you'll find settings for font type, font style, and for size.

Figma supports all the fonts installed on your computer, plus a wide selection of Google fonts. Underneath that, you'll find options for line height, letter spacing, and paragraph spacing. Line height controls the vertical space between the lines of text, which is a crucial factor in readability. Letter spacing, also known as kerning, adjusts the space between individual letters. Paragraph spacing determines the amount of space between separate paragraphs.

There are also options here for auto width, auto height, and fixed size. Each new text field added to the canvas with a click will default to auto width, where the text area will just keep expanding and expanding to accommodate the text you type, if you resize the width of that text field, it will automatically convert itself to auto height, and the text will grow in height using the width boundary you created as its left to right boundary. If you resize the height of that text field, it will automatically convert itself to fixed size, and the text bounding box will not grow to accommodate the input. Lastly, you can see the align options, align top, align middle, and align bottom. These options will affect how the text field grows if you change the content or the size of the type.

You can also adjust the alignment of your text here with options for left, center, and right. Below these options are also more type settings. This section provides all the same options from the default view, plus even more options that allow you to fine tune your text even further. In the basic settings, resizing has the same options available from the main view, but now with the additional option of truncate text that will automatically hide the content beyond the text frame and display an ellipsis. Alignment is also the same, but now adds the justify text option, which I don't think I've used once in the 20-year history of my design career.

The vertical trim can be changed from standard to cap height to baseline. This will affect the height of your text bounding box, and this can be useful in some interface design scenarios when aligning text and other objects is important. Decoration can be changed to underlined or strike through. List styles can be changed from unordered list with bullets to ordered lists with numbers. You can also create lists automatically by typing a hyphen and a space and then your text, and then each time you hit return, a new bullet will appear.

The same thing works if you type a number, a decimal, and then a space, then your text. Hitting return each time will give a subsequent number. Case will allow you to force format any text into uppercase, lowercase, title case, or small caps if the font that you have selected supports that style. The details section is where you can refine your text even further with hanging punctuation, hanging lists, paragraph indents, and a lot more options to provide even more control over how your text looks and feels. These settings can dramatically affect the readability and the overall aesthetic of your design, and these settings are largely based on whether or not your specific typeface has these features included.

So don't be afraid to experiment and find what works best for your specific project. Finally, if you're using a variable font, you'll see a variable section. Variable fonts are a newer type of font that allows for more customization. You can adjust aspects like the weight and the slant of a font along a continuous range instead of being limited to preset styles. This gives you a lot of flexibility and control over your typography.

And finally, a helpful tip when you're editing text in your designs. If you have any text objects selected, you can hit return to quickly edit the text instead of double clicking into it. Also, while you're in text edit mode, you can hover your cursor over any other text field and click once to edit the text. This is especially helpful when you're making lots of type changes all at once. Text holds immense power as a means of communication and interface design, and understanding how to utilize it effectively is a crucial skill for any designer.

So go forth, experiment, and let your typography shine in all its glory.