A Brand Audit of Figma: How the Designer Community's Favorite Tool Lost Its Own Community's Trust

A note first. This is a made up brand analysis, based only on public facts. Figma is not a TTGC client. The article shares how TTGC views the brand and marketing chances that anyone can see in public.

This Figma brand strategy analysis shows a classic trap. A brand can be built for the boardroom, and the community that made it gets left out. The 2023 visual rebrand drew fast, wide criticism from the design world. It did not come from casual fans. It came from designers who chose Figma over every other tool. They pushed for it at work. They made it the top design platform in a crowded market. When your most loyal fans reject a rebrand in public, that is not a PR problem. It is a brand strategy failure, with a clear cause and a clear fix.

Here is the plan TTGC would bring if Figma were our client.

What Figma Gets Right

Figma's lead in the market is real and well recorded. The 2022 State of Design Tools survey, put out each year by UX Tools, showed Figma with over 75% market share among professional UI/UX designers. That share came from a very good product. It ran in the browser, and it made team work easy in ways Sketch, Adobe XD, and InVision could not match. Figma grew because designers fought for it at work. It spread by word of mouth, not by ads.

That start from the ground up gave the brand a rare depth. Early Figma felt warm, playful, and clear. The bright logo, with all its colors, spoke of community and new ideas. The tone on the site, the docs, and social was friendly and sharp at once. It spoke to designers as peers, not as users. That felt true, since designers built Figma for designers. The crowd felt a real sense of ownership over the product. Most brands never build an asset like that.

Figma also built a real world around that community. Config, its yearly design conference, drew thousands of guests. It also led to lots of content from those speakers and guests. The Figma Community plugin library and template store gave designers a reason to stay. They also gave them a way to give back. These are not just marketing programs. They are core community assets, and rivals have not copied them well.

The business was on a strong path before the rebrand. Adobe tried to buy Figma for $20 billion, and regulators blocked the deal in 2023. That price showed where Figma stood in the market. It also showed the threat it posed to the old design software firms. That threat was real. Figma was not just taking share. It was making a new category.

The Gap That's Costing Them

The 2023 rebrand is the turning point on record. Design Week, It's Nice That, and The Verge all covered the backlash in detail, which is rare for a brand story. The criticism was not just about taste. It had weight. Designers said the new look, with its purple gradient and smoother, more corporate style, seemed made for enterprise buying teams. It no longer felt made for the creative crowd that built Figma up.

Posts on Dribbble, in Behance comments, and in the Figma Community showed how designers read it. Many felt the rebrand was a signal about what the company now cared about. The purple gradient drew its own criticism. It looked like the plain SaaS style that Figma had, until then, stood apart from. The crowd did not just dislike the new look. They read it as a statement of intent.

The timing made that signal louder. The rebrand came right after the failed Adobe deal. Designers were already unsure where Figma was headed, and whether it would stay its own. A move toward a more corporate look at that exact moment looked poor. The rebrand may or may not have been tied to the deal. Either way, the crowd read it as proof that Figma was turning into something other than the tool they had built their work around.

The knock on brand problem shows up in what people search. Queries like "Figma alternative," "Figma vs Penpot," and "Figma competitor" grew in 2023. Penpot, the open source design tool, got press as the choice the crowd liked. For a product built on word of mouth, that shift in search intent is an early warning worth watching. Users who fought for Figma at work do not stay quiet when they feel the brand has left them behind.

There is a second problem in enterprise messaging. Figma has real enterprise features. Its organization tier, SSO, and admin controls are real, and the pricing page lists them. But the enterprise message and the community message are not kept apart. They live in one brand. A startup designer and an enterprise IT buyer now land on much the same brand. A clear split would serve both far better.

What TTGC Would Do

A TTGC engagement for Figma would cover three priorities. First, audit the exact friction points in the rebrand. Second, rebuild the way content is made with the community. Third, split the enterprise message from the community message, while keeping one brand.

Priority 1: Brand audit focused on re-earning designer trust.

The fix is not another rebrand. That would only make the problem worse. It would show that the Figma look shifts with the business, not with any stable set of brand values. What Figma needs is a brand foundation, written down. It should say who Figma is for, what it stands for, and how those values show up on screen.

TTGC would start with a brand audit. It would map the exact friction between the current look and what the crowd said it did not like. The audit is not run in house. It uses public feedback from the design press, forum posts, and community talk. From that, we name the visual and tonal signals the crowd rejected. The output is not a redesign brief. It is a set of design rules, written in the crowd's own words. Those rules then guide how the current look grows, instead of tossing it out.

The warm, community first signals of early Figma can live in a grown up system. The logo with all its colors was not sacred. The real asset was what it said: many voices, new ideas, and belonging. A newer system can still say all of that, instead of erasing it.

Priority 2: Community content strategy that returns ownership to designers.

Figma's best content has always come from designers. Config talks, community tutorials, plugin showcases, and design system teardowns from members built more honest awareness than any campaign the Figma team ran. That flywheel slowed during the deal and the rebrand. The mood in the crowd had cooled.

TTGC would build a community content program with real structure. It would shift Figma's content spend toward designer voices instead of brand voices. The program runs on three channels. First, bring back the spotlight series on members building cool things with Figma. That means members, not Figma staff showing off features. Second, redesign the community showcase on the Figma site. Give it the same polish Figma gives its own marketing. Third, run Config with more talks from working designers and less product news. The goal is simple. Make the best designers in the world want to be tied to Figma again. That does more for growth than any campaign aimed at enterprise buyers.

Priority 3: Separate enterprise messaging from community messaging.

Figma's enterprise product is real. The features that matter to IT admins, buying teams, and security reviewers are all public, and they compete well. But those features and that group should not share a front door with the design crowd.

TTGC would build a clear enterprise content layer on the Figma domain. It would have its own nav path, case study format, and messaging plan. The enterprise layer speaks to business outcomes. Think design process efficiency, faster work across teams, and compliance and access control. It would not use the same look and tone as community content. A designer on the community page should feel it is a tool built for them. An IT buyer on the enterprise page should feel it is a platform built for their organization's needs. Both can sit under one brand at the top. Below that, they need a clean split.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Did Figma's rebrand receive documented negative feedback from professional designers?

A: Yes. Design Week, It's Nice That, and The Verge all covered the 2023 rebrand, and the coverage carried heavy criticism from the design crowd. Forum threads on design sites, and in the Figma Community, showed a wide letdown with the new look. Critics zeroed in on the purple gradient. They called it plain and corporate next to the old look.

Q: What is Figma's current market share among professional designers?

A: The UX Tools yearly design tools survey is public, and the design press cite it a lot. Its 2022 edition showed Figma with over 75% market share among professional UI/UX designers. Later surveys still show Figma as the top tool by a wide margin. The design press from 2023 on also notes rivals like Penpot gaining ground.

Q: Is separating enterprise and community messaging a risk to brand coherence?

A: No, when it is done well. Many software firms keep one brand at the top, then build a separate content path for each type of buyer. Atlassian is one example. It keeps a single brand while it serves both developers and enterprise IT buyers through different content. The real risk comes from using one message for both groups. That makes content that is fuzzy to both, and strong for neither.

Is your brand trying to speak to two audiences with one voice? A TTGC growth assessment shows just where the signal breaks down. It also shows what that costs you in trust and pipeline. Visit ttgcreatives.com/growth-assessment