Maker Week goes remote: Figma’s plan for connection over output
Twice a year, Figma pauses normal operations for Maker Week, a company-wide tradition where everyone—not just engineers and designers—spends five days on a project outside their daily role. The goal isn’t shipping; it’s removing the constraints of routine work, clearing non-essential meetings, and creating space to collaborate with colleagues you might never otherwise work with.
This year, the week landed during full remote work. Rather than cancel the tradition, the creative team used the shift as an opportunity to rethink what the event could be—and to acknowledge that its usual shape was going to change.
A theme with a purpose
Previous Maker Weeks were intentionally freeform, asking participants to make anything related to Figma. This time, organizers wanted a north star that preserved the spirit of the week while addressing the realities of the moment. The theme they landed on was “How to help one another.”
The emphasis was process, not product. The team was explicit that this Maker Week was never about delivering polished outcomes—and that was especially true now. The goal was to celebrate working together and give people an outlet for what they were feeling, rather than optimize for productivity.
Having a theme actually made the creative direction easier. Without one, the brand design team typically builds a visual system from scratch, which is the harder path. The theme provided constraints that allowed the design process to go deeper.
Designing for vulnerability
The creative team’s primary aim was to give Figmates a way to express whatever they were experiencing. Remote work made that both harder and, in some ways, more possible. Without hallway run-ins, the organizers wondered if people might share more openly—so they encouraged vulnerability directly.
The result was a graphic system built in Figma that everyone could play with. It invited participants to construct “mood characters” that gave a name and form to their current feelings, and then share them with coworkers. The characters were assembled from everyday objects found around designers’ desks: items people were surrounded by at home. That choice let the team explore how feelings could be shaped by the spaces we’re stuck in, while keeping the exercise light-hearted enough to reflect the mixed and conflicting moods of the moment.
The mood characters also served a practical purpose: they ensured everyone could walk away having made something, even if they lacked the energy for a full project. The build could be quick, and the act of sharing itself was the point.
New rituals for a remote event
Maker Week has historically centered on in-office moments: posters on walls, a kickoff breakfast, serendipitous conversations. With everyone remote, the team had to invent new points of connection, including custom Zoom backgrounds to inject some of that shared visual identity into the week.
Some projects did get finished and shared company-wide over the course of the week, from a plugin that turns URLs into cards to illustrations of the Figma office to “Figma in quarantine: the musical.” But many more explorations never reached a final form—and that was by design. The temporary efforts, the organizers noted, still allowed people to share and connect, which mattered more than any finished artifact.
