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Within just a few short months, shifting our studio to Figma improved our workflows, strengthened collaboration, and frankly, made the work better.
It almost didn’t happen.
Like any business owner who's lived through the hype cycles of emerging software, I tend to be skeptical. I’ve seen agencies sink by overhauling their toolkits overnight. But when the conversation around Figma kept showing up in internal critiques, portfolio reviews, and even client meetings, it reminded me of something Nike drilled into us during my decade there: "Evolve immediately." That maxim didn’t just apply to product design—it was a mindset. It still is.
At Nike, when we moved from hand sketches to digital 3D renderings and rapid prototyping, it changed everything. Time to market improved. Communication between teams got sharper. Samples were more accurate, and storytelling got stronger. Resistance was natural. But once we embraced it, design matured.
The same thing is happening now with Figma.
Let’s cut through the marketing noise: Figma isn’t just a design tool. It’s a platform for shared thinking. And in our experience, it's quietly reshaping how strategy, UX, UI, and dev teams work together.
The benefits hit early:
More than anything, Figma helped us collapse the silos. When developers can inspect the work live, marketers can annotate content in real time, and strategists can link decisions directly to UX paths—you get momentum. And momentum, in our world, is everything.
We’re leaning into Figma’s growing AI integration, and not because it's trendy. Because it's practical. AI-assisted tools help speed up wireframes, clean up components, and even suggest better content hierarchy. It’s not doing our jobs for us—it’s letting us spend more time on the parts that matter: insight, craft, and storytelling.
Add plugins like Anima, FigJam, and GPT-integrated content tools, and the design process starts to resemble a real-time sandbox of ideas. Less friction, more flow.
If you think SEO is only about keywords and code, you're already behind. The best SEO starts at the wireframe. Content hierarchy, semantic structure, mobile responsiveness—these are design decisions. With Figma, we bring SEO strategy into the conversation at the design phase, not post-launch.
More projects are now prototyped with live copy, SEO annotations, and micro-interactions baked into the user journey. We don't "hand it off" to strategy. It's all connected.
We used to send designs into dev with crossed fingers. Now? We co-create. Figma lets us host stakeholder workshops where strategy, design, content, and engineering build a shared language from Day 1. Internally, it’s helped us think less about role silos and more about shared outcomes.
We prototyped a complex healthcare platform in three weeks flat, reviewed everything with the client in real-time, and launched a Phase 1 MVP within 90 days. That would’ve taken double the time two years ago.
Figma’s impact on our efficiency is measurable. We’re saving around 20–30% in project hours compared to our old Sketch and Illustrator flows. But what really matters: we’re delivering better thinking. Better presentations. Better buy-in. Fewer unnecessary rounds.
Clients see their brand come alive earlier. Writers shape content inside the prototype. Developers ask better questions sooner. And nobody misses the handoffs. Because they don’t really happen anymore.
Matt Watson is the Creative Director and Founder of Watson Creative in Portland, Oregon. Matt earned his stripes working for Lippincott, a global leader in brand design based in NYC, before moving back to Oregon. There, he spent over ten years at Nike as a designer in several key business categories. The last position he occupied was senior member of Nike’s creative team, where he helped evolve NIKEiD.
Matt’s work and writings have been featured in over 50 publications, seven documentary films, as well as at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Hugo & Marie is a multi-disciplinary creative studio and artist representation firm based in New York City.
Founded in 2008, the company has been built around a distinct visual language that interweaves the values of its founders and artists with the character of its commercial clients.
Hugo & Marie has collaborated with brands including Yves Saint Laurent, Nike, Apple, Stella McCartney, Hermès and Rihanna.
