I can only use Figma Slides now

Everyone, have you been writing project proposals lately? Presentation materials, research documents, orientation materials, or anything else. When creating such slide decks, the basic tool is usually PowerPoint, right? Or maybe Google Slides or Keynote. I've also heard rumors that Canva is quite popular.

Personally, I could never get used to the unique clunkiness of PowerPoint, so I have always used Apple's slide creation app, Keynote. It’s mysteriously cool, isn't it? When it comes to tools, the quality of the output changes significantly depending not just on ease of use, but on how cool the tool itself is. How you can raise your own excitement and sustain that passion matters. Using a good tool also leads to the quality of your own work.

I was such a Keynote fanatic, but during the New Year holidays, I happened to find a new slide creation tool.

Yes, from Figma, that design tool with abundant brainstorming features, the slide creation feature 'Figma Slides' had been launched as a beta version. I hadn't noticed at all...

Basically, I have a contrarian nature; I'm the type of person who uses Keynote over PowerPoint, Final Cut Pro over Premiere, and Obsidian over Notion. My contrarian spirit was tickled, and I immediately thought, 'I want to use Figma Slides,' so I spent the last two months using it for my regular work.

As a result, (and I'm quite serious) I might not be able to go back to Keynote anymore. Even if something is somewhat good, only a very few things truly fit one's needs, but I might not be able to live without Figma Slides anymore. I wanted to convey how wonderful Figma Slides is so much that I am writing on note for the first time.

It's light, no matter what

The performance is snappy (or so it feels). I'm using it on a 2022 Apple M2 MacBook Air, and I feel like it almost never runs slowly. It's also great that documents are automatically saved. The initial screen is clean, which makes me feel like,

'Well, I guess I'll get to work.'

The folder feature and starring feature are quite convenient. You can manage all your projects in Figma. I create folders for each client or project and put the materials for each case in there. With Keynote or PowerPoint, I have the impression that things get scattered unless you organize them properly in Dropbox or similar services. Moreover, when downloading and uploading, you can end up with version regression, and team work efficiency drops. By centralizing project proposals and presentation materials in Figma Slides, team members can access the latest versions at any time, and past materials can be viewed easily. Furthermore, since you can basically open materials in 'tab view,' if you have one Figma instance open, you can have all the proposals for your work open in that window. Naturally, you can also use other Figma design tools and FigJam. Somehow,


it has almost no flaws.

The collaborative editing feature is also found in other slide apps. It is naturally present in Figma Slides, but this is also more convenient than other applications. Approving external access is easy, so it might be quite good for those working on multiple projects with various members. Like in Figma, you can see other people's cursor positions and even use a spotlight, so you know who is doing what work. Even if you don't have a slide open, you can see who is opening which document on the home screen, which creates a
sense of everyone working hard together. You can also add comments to the materials.

Design-related features are substantial

It feels like typical Figma, but the design-related features are in a league of their own. Above all, the UI is cute overall, which boosts my motivation.

You can change the colors of copied SVG files, and fine-tuning layouts or colors is easy. I don't use them, but there are plenty of templates as well. It supports almost everything, including GIFs, though it can't read AVIF images.

The standard font for Figma Slides is 'Inter,' which is clean and nice. Japanese is automatically set to Noto Sans JP. Furthermore, you can use Google Fonts and fonts installed on your computer just like in Figma, which is convenient.

In Figma Slides, you can smoothly switch between the orange 'Slide mode' for normal use and the blue 'Design mode' for when you want to edit designs in more detail. In Design mode, you can do things like text kerning and image processing in great detail; it's very comprehensive. It's almost like Illustrator.

Personally, something I find surprisingly pleasing is the ability to freely scale multiple selected text or image elements. You can do this in Illustrator, but you can't in Keynote or PowerPoint. Also, if you press the "Template Slides" button, you can change the style freely. This is also fun, like rolling dice. It makes your materials look vibrant.

On the other hand, you can't drag and drop images into square or circular frames, and honestly, the process of inserting images via "Fill" is a bit tedious. Even though you can do it in Keynote.

The "Grid View" for getting an overview of the entire presentation is revolutionary.

When creating materials, there are times when the agenda gets messy slide by slide, or you want to get an overview and organize the whole thing, right?

Figma Slides is convenient not only for the "Slide View" where you normally edit slides, but also for the "Grid View" where you can see the big picture. You can group multiple slides to organize "slide sections," perform some edits even in Grid View, and see real-time updates of collaborative editing. Being able to edit while viewing the list, rather than just looking at it, is quite innovative.

The "AI features" might be on another level of convenience.

Figma Slides has a wealth of AI features that set it apart from other slide apps. It has a full lineup of thoughtful AI features like document translation (which might have been surprisingly missing), image generation, background removal, and text shortening, while the text rewriting is quite unique.

You can type your own prompts to have the text automatically polished, and with "Adjust Tone," you can move mysterious indicators like Professional or Executive to change the tone of the text in real time. What is this?

Also, although I don't usually use it, the feature that automatically writes "Presenter Notes" by reading the content of the materials shows how serious they are about AI.

While there are some features I don't have many opportunities to use right now, considering that similar features will likely increase in other apps in the future, it might be interesting to really dig into the AI in Figma Slides. I want it to make my materials for me someday...

The "Plugin feature" announced a few days ago looks crazy.

Just a few days ago, a new "Plugin feature" was added to Figma Slides. It's timely.

Watching the video, "presentation rehearsal," "searching for and inserting icon images immediately," "importing from PDF," "creating quite detailed gradients," "creating nice-looking rich animations"(Figma Slides' animation features are surprisingly lame, so this might be quite good) ", and it seems like various other niche features will be added. I feel like there weren't many slide apps with plugins other than Google Slides, so the fact that it's going to be super convenient is another reason I want to keep using Figma Slides.

"Live interaction" that I'm not sure is really necessary.

I just haven't used it myself, but it probably includes interaction features similar to FigJam's.

For example, having people listening to the presentation vote on the spot, or making prototypes from Figma Design usable directly on the slides. The number of people who use these features might be quite limited, but it would certainly be exciting to be able to interact with prototypes right there. I'd like to challenge myself to try these things out in the future.

The biggest weakness.

That is, the fact that the only file format you can export to is PDF.

There are many PowerPoint loyalists in this world, and I'm often asked, "Can you make that a .pptx file?" Converting from Keynote to .pptx often results in text formatting issues, but since it was barely possible to convert to .pptx, it was still useful in situations where I was asked for that. However, Figma Slides basically only allows exporting to PDF. (I do think the PDF export quality and speed are quite good. There are no misalignments.)

Also, the price is high, video support feels somewhat weak, you can't insert page numbers, etc., and there are actually some fatal flaws depending on the person...

(Update) PowerPoint export, importing, and page number insertion are now available!

↑ God-tier

In conclusion, let's all use Figma Slides.

The inability to export to PDF is ultimately because someone else is using a slide app other than Figma Slides, and if everyone uses Figma Slides, it will be solved. After all, even people who don't use Figma can easily operate it as long as they have an account, and from now on, everyone should just do their editing work here.

So,
let's all use Figma Slides!!!!!!