I can't draw a curved line in Figma

But I WILL draw that f***ing line

I can’t draw a line in Figma. That frustration flares into resistance. This is impossible.

It’s Day 2 of Approachable Design, Nate Kadlac’s workshop to help non-designers learn how to make better design decisions. We spent Day 1 creating color palettes based on images we sourced from Unsplash. My board filled with purples - I choose a deep violet (42394E) as my primary color and a dusty rose (D6B5A8) as my secondary color.

Purple is my neutral. I am confident. The dusty rose is a detour, but I’m trying not to make the same choices I always make.

More good news. I know more about Figma than I thought. I’ve been faking it for work for three years, so somewhere along the way I must have figured a few things out.

Then comes Day 2. I crash back to Earth. I have to choose a font. Nate says, “if you have a favorite color, you should have a favorite font.” When I scroll through the font options, I shut down.

I know I am supposed to have an opinion about serif vs sans serif. I know I am supposed to be horrified by Papyrus. I have “participated” in long, design-focused conference calls that involved heated font discussion. Clearly, I have not figured anything out about fonts.

I reluctantly choose two - Red Hat (sans serif) for the H1, H2, and H3, and Playfair (serif) for the text, but I have zero confidence. I only know that they seem good enough. That’s the whole point of the workshop.

But I hate good enough.

Nate makes magic then. He takes a photo of a coffee cup from someone else’s board and voila! By drawing a circle and a little handle, he makes what could easily be the first draft of a logo for a major brand in about three minutes. He probably could have done it in 60 seconds if he hadn’t had to explain everything to us.

I decide I will make something similar from a pair of binoculars in one of my images. I make two large circles to represent the lenses, two tiny overlapping ones for the reflection against the glass. I can do this. I am gleeful. All I need to do is connect these lenses with a curved line.

(Don’t be fooled. A sympathetic instructor drew that arch in the top image. I think Nate drew the image below while I was struggling. My attempts are the three sad lines to the right.)

But I can’t draw a line in Figma. This is impossible.

I try for the six minutes we have to create shapes based on the shapes in our board. One of Nate’s co-instructors tries to help me. It turns out she works mostly in Illustrator. She can’t make a curved line either.

In the end, we discover that I’m holding the trackpad down with my thumb and then trying to trace the curved line with my index finger at the same time. I should be clicking at the point of the curve and then drawing with my index finger. It takes a ridiculous amount of brain power to figure this out, a ridiculous amount of brain power to come back from frustration.

I know this feeling, I have overcome it many times and in many ways. Usually, I pause, do something, try again in the morning. Always the breakthrough comes in the morning.

I have paused. I did not try again this morning, but I will try again tomorrow morning. I will not give up. I will draw the fucking line.