This week’s new tools, tutorials, and resources
Attio: A new, AI-native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level (Free tool).
The Rundown AI: Learn how to use AI in just 5 minutes a day (Free newsletter)*
1440 Media: Discover the trends shaping tomorrow — a free, daily newsletter on art, music, sports, entertainment, movies, and many other subjects.*
EasyEdit: Edit any image in seconds with a single text prompt (Free tool).
Poline: An esoteric color palette generation library (Free tool).
Kosmik 3: The infinite canvas for finding inspiration — search, organize, and share content in seconds (Free tool).
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TOP STORY
🎉 Figma is going “Public”
This week, Figma officially announced its plans to go public, moving closer to becoming a publicly traded company.
The design platform will be available for anyone to buy shares in, trading under the symbol "FIG."
This marks a major comeback story for the company, which saw its $20 billion acquisition by Adobe scrapped in December 2023 due to regulatory concerns.
Instead of being absorbed by its competitor, Figma is now positioned to become one of the year's most anticipated tech initial public offerings (IPO).
Why going public matters: IPOs (the process of becoming a public company) aren't just about raising money, they're life-changing events for employees.
Early Figma team members who received stock options could see significant payouts, similar to other successful tech IPOs. Public trading also creates ongoing liquidity, meaning employees can actually sell their shares instead of holding "paper wealth."
Evan Wallace (left) and Dylan Field (right), Co-founders of Figma
The story behind Figma is equally remarkable. Figma CEO, Dylan Field was just 20 years old when he co-founded the company in 2012 with Evan Wallace, dropping out of Brown University after receiving a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship.
What started as experiments with drone software and even a meme generator eventually evolved into a collaborative design platform after Field and Wallace recognized that design tools were still stuck in single-player, offline experiences while everything else was moving to the cloud.
That early bet on browser-based collaboration has paid off tremendously, with the company now showing impressive scale across every metric:
$749 million in revenue in 2024 (+48% vs. the year before).
13 million monthly active users (as of early 2025).
95% of Fortune 500 companies use Figma, with two-thirds of users not being professional designers.
1,031 customers contributing over $100,000 annually (up 47% year-over-year).
For the design community, Figma's IPO validates that dedicated design platforms can successfully compete with industry giants like Adobe.
CEO Dylan Field emphasized the desire for "our community sharing in the ownership of Figma" through public markets, while also indicating that the company will "take big swings" on AI investments and acquisitions as a public company.
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WEB DESIGN
🎓 Framer launches free plan for “Students”
This week, Framer announced that students can now access the platform completely free, offering the full Basic plan (worth $180 annually) at no cost for verified students.
Students can host their portfolio or personal site for free as long as they're students and get full access to Framer's Design Canvas, CMS, and more.
To apply for Framer’s free student plan, fill out the application (here) with your name, school, school email, expected graduation date, and upload a photo of your student ID showing your name and school logo.
With the free student plan, users get:
Complete toolkit access: Full design canvas, CMS, analytics, and hosting capabilities
Unlimited AI tools: Free access to Wireframer and Workshop AI unlimited and for free.
Template library: Access to thousands of free community templates to jumpstart projects.
Year-long validity: Students can reapply for a new Student discount every 11 months for as long as they’re a student.
The program is open to students enrolled in high schools, universities, colleges, online courses, boot camps, and design academies.
Applications are reviewed within 5 working days, though students can start building immediately with Framer's free tier while waiting for approval.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
🤖 Google brings "Veo 3" to YouTube Shorts
This week, Google announced that its advanced AI video generation tool "Veo 3" will be integrated into YouTube Shorts later this summer.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan revealed the integration during a keynote at the Cannes Lions Festival, stating that "the possibilities with AI are limitless."
This marks a significant upgrade from YouTube's existing "Dream Screen" feature, which currently uses the older Veo 2 model for AI-generated backgrounds.
Veo 3 is a game-changer because it can generate complete video clips with synchronized audio from simple text prompts, essentially creating full short-form videos from scratch.
Google Veo 3 realism just broke the Internet yesterday.
This is 100% AI
10 wild examples:
1. Street interview that never happened
— #Min Choi (#@minchoi)
3:04 AM • May 22, 2025
Veo 3 videos are already going viral. The platform has become flooded with interesting content that's capturing massive audiences (whether or not it’s good is another question):
ASMR glass fruit cutting videos: Clips showing transparent strawberries, glass bananas, and crystal-like fruits being sliced with satisfying sound effects.
Biblical "influencer" vlogs: AI-generated videos of Jesus, Moses, David, and other biblical figures styled as modern social media influencers.
Fake news reports and commercials: Realistic pharmaceutical ads, weather reports, and branded content that looks authentic.
Comedy sketches: Stand-up comedians telling jokes, Bigfoot vlogs, and absurd scenarios like "a horse walks into a bar."
What makes this particularly compelling for creators:
Complete video generation: Unlike Dream Screen's background-only approach, Veo 3 can create entire video clips with both visuals and realistic sound effects.
Free access: The tool will be free to use within YouTube Shorts, compared to Veo 3's current premium pricing of up to $249.99 per month through Gemini Ultra.
Creative democratization: Allows anyone to produce high-quality video content without expensive equipment or extensive production knowledge.
The trade-offs are real. While this could democratize video creation, it also introduces challenges around content authenticity and creator livelihood.
With YouTube Shorts averaging 200 billion daily views, the platform's decision to embrace AI generation will likely influence how other social platforms approach similar technology.
Whether this enhances creativity or floods feeds with synthetic content remains to be seen.
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OTHER STORIES
Everything else in creative news 🗞
Freepik released “Unlimited Image Generation,” allowing Premium+ and Pro users to edit images without losing credits.
Figma is now available in Español (España and latinoamérica) and Português (Brasil).
Higgsfield AI released “Soul Inpaint,” allowing users to inpaint any part of an image with a mask and a prompt.
Framer has added support for the Claude 4.0 AI model in Workshop.
Figma Make will now name your version history.
HeyGen released “Turbo Mode,” allowing users to render videos 3x faster.
Luma AI’s “Modify Video” feature is now available on the “Luma Dream Machine” iOS app.
Spline made it easier to control object states, object visibility, transitions, and more in the Spline Code API.
Spline added a new video export type for Spline’s 3D editor.
KREA AI added support for “Modify Video,” a new video-video model from Luma AI that lets you stylize videos while keeping motion consistent.
Play added 400 new SF symbols, a new “Draw On & Off” effect, gradient support, and a new value mode property in its new Beta.
Gamma released several new updates in June, including: a revamped "Paste in Text" interface and flow, hovering card previews over the progress bar when presenting, higher resolution images when exporting to PowerPoint, and more.
DaVinci Resolve released version 20.0.1, introducing: an improved drag and drop behavior of media pool clips, better beat marker detection when resizing music track lengths with AI Music Editor, and improved OpenColorIO consistency in the Fusion viewer.
Udio opened up its new “Sessions” feature to all users to try out for two weeks (no subscription required).
Udio has added the ability to select multiple sections of a song for replacement at the same time in Sessions — you can now replace up to three sections at once.
Framer added support for 4 more free fonts: Elstob, Mluvka, Cesare, and Néo Castel.
Bolt launched “Bolt Gallery,” a showcase of standout projects built with Bolt.
Magicpath has added version history for designs.
Magicpath now allows you to rearrange layers manually by dragging them around while in Edit mode.
Cap now supports GIF exporting.
Cap launched a new landing page.
Restream now allows you to display multiple media sources (guest screens, videos, and images), all in on Studio scene.
KREA AI has added support for Runway’s “Gen-4” AI model, allowing users to generate cinematic scenes in less than a minute.
HeyGen “Avatar IV” now has improved lip-syncing.
HeyGen “Avatar IV” now has more natural expression and micro-movements.
HeyGen “Avatar IV” now has more stable frames — no more jittery fingers or flickering scenes.
HeyGen “Avatar IV” now has more life-like backgrounds.
Recraft released “Prompt-based editing,” allowing users to add objects, adjust styles, and merge images, all with a prompt.
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