Paired: Figma plugin

Helping designers find font pairings faster

Overview

Paired shows how I used AI tools strategically to build and ship a functional plugin in just one week, moving from design concept to working software faster than traditional development.

Tools

Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor

Team

Solo project

Timeline

1 week

Status

Live plugin

Context

The font search time sink

Even a simple heading-to-body pairing can take hours. Existing sites like Fontjoy, Fontpair and other plugins focus on completeness, not speed. I wanted a tool that helped designers go from zero ideas to font pairings fast.

Fontjoy

Fontpair

Research

Confirming the need and gaps

I used Perplexity to explore designers’ pain points and current solutions. From there I dove deeper and discovered I wasn't alone, many designers waste time scrolling and second-guessing. There was a gap among comparable plugins. This validation shaped the plugin’s core goal, not to dwell on perfection, but to be good enough to get moving.

Crafting a new landing page for Atlassian Guard was essential as it replaced Access and Beacon. The legacy Access page no longer captured Guard’s expanded security capabilities. The main challenges were clarifying Guard’s value, differentiating it from Access, and driving trial sign-ups.

Perplexity sources

Planning

Roadmapping the plugin

Claude helped me think through the roadmap and reasoning. I used it to outline steps, ask “why” questions, and anticipate edge cases, like Figma’s font API limitations and pairing logic challenges.

Development

From concept to working plugin

I used Cursor as a coding partner to implement styling specs, optimize functions, and work through bugs. This helped me move quickly through blockers while keeping the plugin’s logic intact and making deliberate improvements.

Cursor file

Final Plugin

Fast font pairing in Figma

Paired combines exploration with recommended pairings, reducing friction and decision fatigue by adding fonts to files with a single click. It helps designers move from no ideas to options in seconds.

Reflection

Designing with AI as a partner

This project made plugin development more approachable than expected. Clear planning and technical context were essential for making good decisions and staying in control of the process.