Carly Quellman is a movement artist, storyteller and disability advocate whose work challenges and strips perspective around the human experience. As an advocate for young women, artistic potential and the "anomaly" identity, Carly dedicates her time to spreading the power of expression. She resides in Los Angeles.
It seems like there isn't much artificial intelligence can't (attempt) to do for you. From detailing what takes place within your meetings to helping you get organized at work, there are endless new applications, programs and platforms that can help your workload feel a little bit lighter.
But what about AI for creative pursuits, or pitching your design work and ideas to a potential client? I recently wanted to update my resume's visual design, and wound up on Figma, an online tool for designing, prototyping and developing digital projects. Unsurprisingly, Figma has jumped into the AI game.
In June, Figma rolled out AI features that included Make Designs, Find Assets and Designs, Rename Layers and Make Prototypes, plus features like adding realistic text, translating language, adjusting copy tone, removing backgrounds and more. Most of these features are available in beta right now.
Make Designs was one of the features that launched at Config, Figma's annual design conference. It allows you to transform ideas into editable designs in a couple of minutes by using a text prompt.
According to Figma, "this helps you explore a wider range of design possibilities and iterations quickly, and reduces the amount of effort needed to manually create early explorations from scratch" -- and, in my case, design a resume. Right?
Unfortunately, when I actually tried to use it, it turned out that Make Designs is temporarily unavailable due to an issue caused by the underlying design system problem, and has been pulled from the site.
Figma said it's "holding off on reenabling Make Designs while we work through an improved QA process," but it's not clear when Make Designs will relaunch to the public. Thankfully, Figma has laid out a visual step-by-step breakdown of the tool on its website, so you can still check out the product and understand its initial intent. This includes how the tool works, how to customize a design once created and tips for making the most of its features.
While I turned to Figma AI solely for designing a resume, I can't deny that some of its other AI features are a great asset when designing something that contains infographics, images and text, like a resume.
In place of Make Designs, the following Figma features can be implemented into an existing resume design. Figma's AI features are all currently free for current Figma users while it's in beta, though there may be usage limits, and there may be an added cost once fully available.
Considering the detailed approach Figma supplied on its website to highlight Make Designs, it seems to be a great tool to make a resume or any professional portfolio. Or it could be, when you can access it.
Currently, you can't use Figma AI to make a design -- you can only input a design you already have. And with many AI platforms popping up solely focused on resume building like Rezi, Designs.ai and Teal, I can understand why someone may not turn to Figma AI when the time comes.
I'm eager to give it a chance since it's a product with ample design features that give you more creative freedom than resume builders focused on efficiency and pace rather than aesthetics. Fingers crossed it'll find its way back into Figma AI's platform before the end of the year.
