Brands over time

Figma
over time

Every year keeps its colour across every chart.│ ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022

222 of Figma's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 66 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 15 other software companies, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
222
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
66
Blog · press
181 · 41

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Figma's homepage from 2016 to 2026, closest to 1 July, from the Internet Archive. Pick a year or press play. Each headline is quoted from its capture and links to the archived copy.

2026figma.com30 Jun 2026
Figma homepage, 30 Jun 2026

Screenshot of Figma’s homepage (figma.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 30 Jun 2026. © Figma or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Figma.

Homepage

2026

“The intelligent canvas for infinite creativity”

Page title

Figma: The Collaborative Interface Design Tool

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2017Try Figma for free.
  2. 2019A better way to design.
  3. 2021Minds meeting minds is how great ideas meet the world
  4. 2022Nothing great is made alone
  5. 2024Think bigger. Build faster.
  6. 2026The intelligent canvas for infinite creativity

11 captures. Screenshots are rendered from the archive and can pull in images archived later than the page itself; dates come from the capture. Years without a capture are greyed out in the strip.

02 · Measures by year

How the writing moved

Every year’s pages, averaged. Pick a measure. Hatched bars rest on fewer than 10 pages: context, not a finding. The page count sits under each year.

Sentence lengthAverage words per sentence.
6
12
18
Software avg 13.3
12.1
10.8
12.3
13.4
14.0
15.2
14.5
15.1
14.8
13.2
13.7
13.5
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20151 pp
20161 pp
201711 pp
201821 pp
201910 pp
202021 pp
202119 pp
202222 pp
202314 pp
202411 pp
202512 pp
20268 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201512.11
201610.81
201712.311
201813.421
201914.010
202015.221
202114.519
202215.122
202314.814
202413.211
202513.712
202613.58

Years with pages: 2015 (1), 2016 (1), 2017 (11), 2018 (21), 2019 (10), 2020 (21), 2021 (19), 2022 (22), 2023 (14), 2024 (11), 2025 (12), 2026 (8). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Before and after

2019 to Nov 2022 against 2024 to 2026

The same measures on 71 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 31 pages from 2024 on. A change here is a change in style. It does not show how any page was written: people used every one of these words and shapes long before 2022, and SGR-011 found most of the shift across brands was a trend already under way.

Measure2019 to Nov 2022 · 71 pp2024 to 2026 · 31 ppChange
Sentence length
14.913.5−9%
Sentence rhythm
0.680.72+5%
Contractions
21.217.9−16%
"You"
35%36%+1 pts
"We"
52%54%+2 pts
Questions
2.72.5−9%
Exclamations
1.400.25−82%
Long words
24%26%+3 pts
Em dashes
4.174.69+12%
AI-associated words
1.121.86+67%
AI-era marketing words
1.011.53+51%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
0.971.60+65%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.230.40+75%
Page length
1,3241,713+29%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (71 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (31 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

Figma among software companies

Each dot is one brand’s mean across all its measured pages; the tick is the sector average. Only brands with 10 or more measured pages are shown or counted. Select a dot to open that brand.

  1. "We"

    51% more than its sector

    49% against a sector average of 32%; highest of 16.

  2. Em dashes

    40% more than its sector

    4.24 against a sector average of 3.04; 3rd highest of 16.

  3. "You"

    37% less than its sector

    39% against a sector average of 62%; lowest of 16.

Sentence length6th highest of 16
Figma 13.7
10.415.7
Contractions3rd highest of 16
Figma 18.7
8.519.6
"You"Lowest of 16
Figma 39%
39%78%
"We"Highest of 16
Figma 49%
12%49%
Questions3rd lowest of 16
Figma 2.3
1.65.1
Long words2nd lowest of 16
Figma 25%
23%34%
Em dashes3rd highest of 16
Figma 4.24
0.216.56
AI-associated words5th lowest of 16
Figma 1.55
1.033.27
ExclamationsMid-table, 8th of 16
Figma 1.04
0.155.13
Page lengthMid-table, 7th of 16
Figma 1,499
7403,377

Pages measured: FreeAgent 266 · GoCardless 217 · Xero 328 · Sage 229 · Intercom 204 · HubSpot 190 · Canva 203 · Figma 222 · ClickUp 203 · Miro 14 · Notion 30 · Slack 270 · Asana 223 · monday.com 266 · Airtable 299 · Mailchimp 258. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

05 · Vocabulary

Words Figma uses more than its peers

The words this brand reaches for more often than the rest of its sector. This is subject matter more than voice.

design174.9 vs 20.6
code45.8 vs 4.7
designers29.2 vs 1.4
components19.1 vs 1.5
canvas17.5 vs 1.1
designer18.8 vs 1.6
system39.8 vs 10.2
plugins16.3 vs 0.2
shapes11.1 vs 0.8
developers14.9 vs 2.3
prototyping9.6 vs 0.1
motion8.7 vs 0.6
FigmaSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 222 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

06 · In its own words

What it sounded like

Openings of real pages, quoted word for word, oldest first. Each links to the page, or to the Internet Archive’s copy when it has gone.

20153 Dec · Blog
“Today, after three years of silence and hard work, I finally get to announce the launch of Figma, a collaborative interface design tool.”
Design Meet the Internet
2018 · BlogArchived copy
“It’s November, which means Figma is 2-ish years old. In our now annual tradition, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on where we’ve come and where we’re headed. We launched to the public at the end of September in 2016, so that’s our official birthday 😉.”
Figma year in review: 2018
201914 Mar · BlogArchived copy
“Do you have trouble knowing when to use a frame or a group in Figma? They are both containers for housing objects, but they have their own unique properties and use cases. It's not always obvious how they differ from each other, so to help distinguish between them I wrote up this primer.”
When to use groups versus frames in Figma
2021Apr (archived by) · AnnouncementArchived copy
“Yesterday was April ~~Fool’s~~ Fun Day, and knowing that support for bulleted and numbered lists has long been a top feature request, we wanted to have some fun with it. We assigned every list in Figma a random theme—from fruit 🍎 to pastries 🥐 to planets 🌎 and smiles 🙂 —complete with corresponding emoji bullets.”
Launching (fun) lists in Figma

07 · Every page

All 227 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 222 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (5 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20268 pages
202512 pages
202411 pages
202314 pages
202222 pages
202119 pages
202021 pages
201910 pages
201821 pages
201711 pages
20161 page
20151 page
In the overall numbers, no year71 pages
Not measured5 pages
  • Press Start 2P Fontundated · press · 231 wordsMostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose
  • Global Changelogundated · announcement · 462 wordsMostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose
  • Working Well: How to Work Better Togetherundated · blog · 1,151 wordsMostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose
  • Tag: Design systemsundated · blog · 884 wordsMostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose
  • Tag: Figma Designundated · blog · 409 wordsMostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Figma's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, fetched from the live site in 2026 and from the Internet Archive for 2015 to November 2022. Homepages are shown as captures; product and help pages are not measured.

The measures

Code counts from ScriptGrain’s writing instruments: sentence length and rhythm, contractions, pronouns, punctuation, long words, and three published lists of AI-associated words. No AI model reads or judges any page.

What it cannot say

These measures describe style. They cannot tell who or what wrote a page, and nothing here says or implies that any brand used AI to write.

Sample sizes

Every number carries its page count. Years under 10 pages, and before-and-after comparisons with under 10 pages on a side, are shown as context only.

Sentence length
Average words per sentence.
Sentence rhythm
How much sentence length varies (standard deviation over mean). Higher reads less even.
Contractions
Contractions (we're, you'll, it's) per 1,000 words. A rough gauge of how conversational the writing is.
"You"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "you": how much the writing addresses the reader.
"We"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "we": how much the writing talks about the organisation.
Questions
Question marks per 1,000 words.
Exclamations
Exclamation marks per 1,000 words.
Long words
Share of words with seven or more letters.
Em dashes
Em dashes per 1,000 words.
AI-associated words
Words from SGR-007's three AI-associated lists, per 1,000 words. These are style markers that people used long before ChatGPT; a higher rate says nothing about who or what wrote the page.
AI-era marketing words
Marketing words that became more common in AI-era copy (seamless, elevate, unlock...), per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Quieter LLM-favoured words
Everyday words language models are known to over-use, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
AI-associated sentence shapes
Sentence patterns such as "not just X, but Y", found by ScriptGrain's cliche checker, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Page length
Average words per page.

Studies: SGR-009: Do brands in the same sector sound the same? · SGR-010: How UK brands write · SGR-011: Did brand writing change after ChatGPT?.