✍️ The newsletter: Feedback for Conservators #4
A FREE digital tool for art conservators: Figma®
This newsletter project comes from the mentorship service Feedback for Conservators: a place to bring a little bit of professional feedback to help on subjects that I wish I knew more about, especially (but not only) at the start of my art conservator career. Topics discussed here are recurrent ones that I see over Zoom sessions! so I thought would be useful to address them in a short and more informal video format. In between, shorter posts with a digital free tool will be discussed. New publications will be out twice a month, for a year.
And just as a reminder: this is not a perfect newsletter and doesn’t intend to, but rather a space to offer some help. Read here past newsletters. And as aaaalways, some disclamers1
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This is the second edition of this newsletter’s section dedicated to showcasing “free digital tools discoveries” for art conservators. Today: Figma®.
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😎 Figma® in a nutshell
Figma® is a design program, but more focused on the design part (=visual format presentation). If you have a relative or a close friend in the graphic design field, this program is no news to you. Currently, I am a total convert. As always, this is not the only program I will showcase (in the past I discussed Concepts®, although for a different use), so stay tuned for more.
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Why It is cool for art conservators
This program2 has so much potential if you’re a professional graphic designer. But even if you’re not and you do not care about all the details that graphic design care about (and needs to care about), still it is a really good tool for many art conservators’ needs. I use it for anything that has a professional design-related element: for example, the design of the video format posts are made with this tool, as well as the thumbnails and quotes of each newsletter post. So think about anything that you need to support your business or professional digital presentation such as portfolios, logos, Social Media posts, even presentations to the public or creating a cool report design cover.
In many aspects, it is quite similar to Illustrator, but not exactly. Without getting too deep into it, I personally found it way more user-friendly than Illustrator once you get the basics of how it works. I was sold on their import/export part, soooo easy to use.
After signing in, download the desktop app (I prefer it). However, it is a cloud-based program, so you can happily work with it from any computer AND any computer system.
There is a paid and free version. Again, for any art conservator, I do believe the free version is more than enough (and also, even in this version you will not touch the full potential of it).
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Some thoughts
I use it only on a computer, not worth it in my opinion on a phone or tablet, and better with a graphic tablet (If you have not tried it, do. Hands down, one of the best tools that I have. When you get the hand of it, you can not go back).
I believe that is better if you have some sort of experience with Illustrator. Otherwise, it can feel a little overwhelming but is worth giving it a try and checking YouTube tutorials.
A big part of the program is the collaborative aspect of it: working with your colleagues + everyone seeing the changes in real-time. That being said, I am barely using this option, and I do not think that this is the main thing for art conservators and our daily work, but it is good to keep in mind that exists.
My advice is always the same: dedicate 1 hour to explore, check videos and play with it and then just stick to what you need. Most times we only need to focus on 3-4 things to make it work for you, so let’s not overcomplicate trying to understand aaaall the program. You must use it if it is saving you time on something, not making you lose it.
Enjoy!
P.S. If you have used it, you can always add your comments below. It is always interesting to hear other colleagues’ opinions about it: for example, check the comments of other art conservators given in this last post.
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That’s a warp for today. More in two weeks, see you then?
This is my opinion, which also means I could be wrong! You do you✨. Also, let’s be cool and not share extracts without my consent.
This is NOT a sponsored post, just my personal opinion of this program 😙.
Careful, there is Figma and Figjam. We stick here to Figma.