TillyGen and Figma

What this is about

Figma is where design systems live — components, brand colors, shared files that several designers edit at once. When a production needs graphic assets, the designer works there anyway. The friction point is the brief: which lower thirds, which titles, which screen inserts, at what moment, with what copy. The TillyGen storyboard answers this as a by-product of planning — every frame that contains a designed element names it. Exported as PDF or shared by link, the storyboard becomes the design brief, and the finished Figma frames link back into the production's documents for the shoot and the edit.

An integration is good when nobody talks about it any more: the data is where it is needed and nobody exports anything.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• The storyboard export lists every designed element with its shot number — the design brief writes itself during planning
• Figma component libraries keep lower thirds consistent across a series of productions for the same client
• A shared Figma link in the production documents lets director and client comment on title designs before anything renders
• Text content for inserts comes from the plan, so name spellings and job titles are decided once, in one place

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. While storyboarding in TillyGen, name every designed element per frame — lower third here, title card there — with its copy text.
2. Export that storyboard as the design brief and hand it to the designer with the shot numbers intact.
3. Build the assets in Figma against the brand library and share the file link back into the production's document set.
4. Collect approval comments in Figma before the shoot where designs affect it — a monitor insert must exist on shooting day.
5. Deliver final assets to post in the resolutions the deliverables specify, named after the shot numbers they serve.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Design briefed by phone call: the lower third arrives styled beautifully with the wrong name spelling, discovered during delivery
• Screen inserts designed after the shoot for a monitor that was filmed dark — now a tracking job instead of a playback file

With TillyGen

The storyboard in TillyGen decides which designed elements exist, where and with what text; Figma decides how they look. Shot numbers carried through both tools keep every asset attached to its moment.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.