Creating illustrations for blog posts, advertisements, or subscribe pages can be time-consuming. In the competitive world of design, every minute and mouse click counts. Designers are always on the lookout for tools that boost their efficiency, and illustration plugins for Figma fit the bill perfectly.
Figma plugins were introduced in 2019 and have since become an essential part of the design tool. At the start of 2023, there were over 1000 Figma plugins available. Illustration plugins are designed to help designers work more efficiently and create high-quality illustrations quickly and easily. Many offer a wide range of customizable design elements, including characters, icons, backgrounds, and more.
As a product agency, we've tested numerous Figma plugins for various tasks, such as removing backgrounds, drawing logos, spellchecking, and creating doodles. In this article, we'll provide a brief overview of our favorite time-saving Figma illustration plugins.
Streamline
Streamline, a Figma illustration plugin, was named the best graphic resource in 2022 by the Figma community. With over 12 years of experience, Streamline has built massive collections of icons, illustrations, emojis, and other elements. You can customize vector paths and resize elements to suit your needs.
Keep in mind that free sets of illustrations require attribution, while paid subscribers can use designs for personal and commercial projects without attribution or limitations.
Illustrations
Hexorial.studio's Illustrations plugin is another vast library of high-quality images, making it one of the best illustration plugins for Figma. With a range of versatile designs from 3D objects to character sets, you'll find elements for nearly any industry or product.
Illustrations are organized by project categories, allowing you to find the perfect fit for your background. You can then drag and drop elements onto your workspace and modify their structure, colors, and points. The plugin also lets you resize illustrations to fit your needs.
Hexorial Studio states that all illustrations can be used freely under a Creative Commons license, which means you can use them for commercial designs and personal purposes. However, we recommend checking the copyright manually in more critical cases.
Wireframe
Not long ago, wireframes were drawn by hand in notebooks before being scanned, uploaded to Photoshop, and imported into Figma. Now, the Wireframe plugin enables you to build beautiful basic structures and user flow prototypes directly within Figma, making it an excellent example of Figma plugins for illustration.
To create a wireframe for a login page, simply choose a library by category (web, tablet, mobile, or kids), select a pre-designed template, and drag and drop it into your file. You can add menus, headers, or other elements and construct an entire application by combining ready-made frames.
All templates are Figma-consistent SVG files, allowing for easy editing. You can then create animations and workflows to determine the best performance for your customers or clients.
Blush
Blush is the best illustration plugin for Figmawhen it comes to crafting characters. It offers a variety of character sets created by numerous artists, which can be used freely in your portfolio or projects.
The plugin's most attractive feature is its customization options. After selecting a character or composition, you can tweak every detail to your liking. Collaborating with renowned artists from around the world, Blush continually adds new collections with unique styles every week.
The forever-free plan offers plenty of choices, but if you need advanced control over color filters, layers, or print-level resolution, consider the paid version.
Storyset
Storyset is an innovative plugin that suggests illustrations based on search terms. With thousands of illustrated concepts to choose from, it's one of the best Figma illustration plugins available.
You can set a primary color that matches your brand identity, and the plugin will display search results in that palette. This feature saves time, as you won't need to adjust multiple primary colors and variations when incorporating an illustration into your project.
Another advantage is the ability to choose the type of background you want—either detailed or simple—saving time on manual modifications or element removal.
All illustrations are SVG files, allowing you to customize them to match your client's environment. With high-quality designs crafted by Freepik, Storyset is a top choice among Figma illustration plugins.
Illustration kit
Illustration Kit is a collection of customizable character and scene illustrations created by two prolific designers, Khushmeen and Dilpreet. They add premium illustrations weekly, and their growing popularity is evident.
Like other Figma illustration plugins, Illustration Kit operates under a common license, allowing you to freely use their designs in web pages, social media, emails, advertisements, and more.
Logo Creator
Here comes the last one of our Figma plugin examples—Logo Creator. As the name suggests, it's a collection of logos.
Although Figma already offers drawing tools for creating logos, the Logo Creator plugin provides access to an extensive library of logo designs. You can use it to find inspiration from popular apps and choose from over 300 prebuilt logo shapes as the basis for your design.
Other Figma Plugins to Pay Attention To
In addition to the plugins we mentioned, there are many other options for designers to explore. Some of the most popular ones include:
- Unsplash for accessing a vast library of free stock photos,
- Content Reel for generating placeholder text,
- Figmotion for creating complex animations.
There's also a wide range of accessibility-focused plugins, such as Stark and A11y.
Thus, designers have plenty of opportunities to customize their Figma experience to suit their specific needs and workflows.
Conclusion
Whether you're a freelancer, a small business owner, or part of a large design team, Figma has something to offer, from its powerful design tools to its extensive plugin library. By taking advantage of Figma's features, designers can save time and create more polished, professional designs. To explore your options, simply visit the Explore Community menu in your account and choose a plugin for your task.
The Arounda team is a huge fan of Figma plugins for illustration, using them frequently in UI/UX design and branding projects. Whether we're developing a digital product from scratch or redesigning an existing solution, we can't imagine working efficiently without these plugins. We hope you'll enjoy testing our top seven favorites.
If you need assistance in product design from a team passionate about perfection in UI/UX, just drop us a line.