Creating & Using Framer Components (Benefits, Best Practices, Libraries)

Learn how to create and use Framer components with tips on best practices, key benefits, and top libraries to boost your designs.

Creating & Using Framer Components (Benefits, Best Practices, Libraries)

Building a website can feel overwhelming, especially starting from scratch. Maybe you have a clear idea of your site’s design and layout. But once you open your web design tool of choice, you quickly realize you'll have to piece together many elements to achieve your vision. Framer components are one of the building blocks of Framer design that can help you create a stunning website—faster. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about components in Framer: creating and using Framer components, the benefits of using them, best practices, and libraries to kickstart your design.  

Framer web design is an excellent tool for achieving your website goals. In addition to its intuitive interface and design capabilities, it has a robust library of pre-made components to help you get started and detailed documentation to help you learn to create your own. 

What Are Framer Components?

woman on a laptop - Framer Components

Framer components are just one feature that makes Framer such a powerful web design tool. Components are pre-built UI elements that streamline the design process. Like a website comprising various sections and elements, Framer has a component-based structure. Within Framer, you can create and customize components to build your design and prototype. 

Framer has various ready-made components, such as: 

  • Buttons
  • Galleries
  • Forms
  • Menus

You can customize these to fit your project’s style and even add interactivity immediately. Using components in Framer helps you maintain consistency in your design. You can also build your components from scratch to create unique features for your project.

The Importance of Framer Components in Design

Designers are all about efficiency. The faster you can create a prototype, the quicker you can test your ideas and iterate on your designs. Framer’s component system allows for rapid prototyping and speed. Instead of designing every button and section of your website from scratch, you can use Framer’s UI components to jumpstart your project. This makes the design process more accessible and more intuitive. You can also get to the fun part of prototyping sooner.

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Benefits of Components in Framer

employees on a laptop - Framer Components

Efficiency and Speed: The Benefits of Using Components in Framer

Using components in Framer enhances the design and development process for creating interactive websites and applications. Components create reusable UI elements, significantly reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks. Once a component is designed, it can be used across multiple pages or projects, streamlining the workflow. 

When a component is updated, all instances automatically reflect the changes. This ensures consistency and saves time; you don’t have to update each instance individually.

Consistency Across Designs: The Benefits of Using Components in Framer

Using components, you maintain a consistent look and feel throughout your project. This uniformity is crucial for user experience, as it helps users navigate your site more intuitively. Framer supports creating design systems that help manage styles and components consistently across large projects.

Customization and Flexibility: The Benefits of Using Components in Framer

Components can have multiple variants (e.g., different states like hover or active), allowing extensive customization without duplicating code. This flexibility enables designers to create diverse styles within a single component. 

You can define dynamic properties for components, making them easily customizable through variables. This allows for quick adjustments without altering the core component structure.

Interactivity and Animation: The Benefits of Using Components in Framer

Components can include interactive elements such as: 

  • Buttons
  • Sliders
  • Forms that respond to user actions, enhancing overall engagement

Framer Motion provides powerful tools for adding animations to components, allowing designers to create smooth transitions and engaging effects with minimal effort.

Integration with React: The Benefits of Using Components in Framer

Framer utilizes React under the hood, meaning components are built following best practices in web development. This ensures that your components are visually appealing but also efficient and maintainable. Using React’s principles (like immutability) helps ensure that your components remain reliable and perform well over time.

Accessibility and SEO Optimization: The Benefits of Using Components in Framer

Framer provides tools to improve accessibility within components, such as semantic HTML support and ARIA labels, making it easier to create inclusive designs. Components can be structured to enhance search engine optimization, helping improve visibility in search results.

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Creating And Using Components In Framer

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Creating a component in Framer is as simple as hitting command K and bringing up the quick menu. For instance, you can create and modify a "button" component via the isolated component canvas, effortlessly navigating using the breadcrumb bar. Components are an excellent asset because they offer reusability across pages, with changes applied to all instances. Adding variants is straightforward, with options to add either new or temporary ones, such as hover or pressed states.

Enhancing Framer Components with Multiple Variants 

Framer components can include multiple variants, enabling you to create diverse styles within a single component. Add a hover variant, customize property transitions, use easing or spring options, and adjust properties like border-radius to establish unique hover states.

Variables in Framer for Greater Customization

Variables are another powerful tool Framer offers. They permit editable properties outside the component, creating more flexible design possibilities. For example, you can set the hover tint color as a variable, making it editable without modifying the component. Moreover, components with text automatically have text variables you can customize via the property panel.

Flexible Sizing Options in Framer Components

Framer allows the dynamic sizing of buttons set as frames, which is made possible with the "fit content" option. This feature turns the component into a stack, where you can adjust the gap and padding for added flexibility. You can even override the sizing options set in the element and customize the sizing for particular instances as required.

Inheritance within Framer Components

Inheritance within components in Framer plays a pivotal role, as primary variants impact others. Therefore, customizing primary components can have much broader effects.

Implementing Framer Concepts to Other Design Elements

You can implement these concepts across other design elements as you become more familiar with using Framer. 

  • Toggle Component: You can create a toggle component, add variants, and animate between them on tap, using variables for dynamic properties, such as active color.
  • Feature Block: For a feature block with unique content, you can create a component with various variants. Linking interactions to showcase specific content on click enhances user experience.
  • Accordion Component: Framer allows you to design an accordion component using stacks. Setting up interactions to collapse and expand, and toggling visibility and opacity, ensures smooth animation on click. 

By incorporating these principles, you can devise interactive components for diverse scenarios.

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7 Examples Of Pre-Built Framer Components Libraries

woman on a laptop - Framer Components

1. Flowbase: Unlocking Creativity with Component Libraries

Flowbase is a hub for buying Framer, Figma, and Webflow components. These platforms allow users, without coding knowledge to build: 

  • Sites
  • Applications
  • Prototypes 

Flowbase has over 40 components, with many more upcoming to help unleash creativity. Components can be searched by category, such as: 

  • Navigations
  • Headers
  • Features

One of Flowbase's products is Forest, a component library with over 300 cloneable components and a full-style guide system. Forest makes designing and launching Framer, Figma, and Webflow websites more accessible and faster. You can see the components and purchase the template on the Flowbase website.

2. Framestack: Free Framer Components for Dynamic Sites

Framestack is a free Framer component package for creating dynamic, creative websites. Framer is a tool for creating prototypes and animations for online and mobile apps. Framestack includes several components that enhance Framer's functionality, such as: 

  • Menus
  • Buttons
  • Sliders
  • Cards, etc. 

Framework, which provides a collection of UI components that adhere to semantic principles, is compatible with Framestack. With Semantic UI, you can design stunning, responsive websites with minimum code. You may utilize Semantic UI with Framestack to add more design options and features.

3. Framerthings: Create Custom Interfaces with Framer Components

Framer Framerthings has many components designers may utilize to create bespoke interfaces, such as:

  • Buttons
  • Inputs
  • Sliders, and more

Because of the extensive selection of Framer components, designers can quickly create high-fidelity prototypes that look and feel like genuine items. Framer templates are editable, allowing designers to tailor them to their design needs. With such a large selection of Framer templates, designers may choose the one that best matches their project, saving significant time in the creative process.

4. Supply: Save Time and Costs with Industry-Specific Components

SUPPLY Components are saved in a linked Workspace, providing your whole design team with a single source of up-to-date and standardized component data. These components are intimately connected with the real-world manufactured part and supply chain data available at design time, resulting in considerable cost and time savings when manufacturing the assembled product.

5. Designrmind: Quickly Build Responsive Sites with Framer Components

Designrmind is a component collection with over 600 pre-built Framer components. It enables designers to create stunning, fully responsive websites in minutes rather than days. You may simply edit components by copying and pasting them from the library. They also provide a free version of their components to test before purchasing. 

Get a copy of Designrmind's style guide to learn how to use their component collection. The Designrmind style guide contains all of the:

  • Text styles
  • Color styles
  • UI components

Desktop, tablet, and mobile responsive design breakpoints have already been established.

6. Framepad: A Resource Hub for Responsive Framer Components

Framepad is a Framer component library and resource site. It is designed for speed and consistency and has over 150+ responsive components. You can explore the components and copy and paste them into Framer to create a responsive site in minutes. 

Framepad is an exceptional component library and resource site specially designed for Framer, setting new standards in web development. It is an invaluable tool for developers and designers in creating responsive websites, delivering: 

  • Unparalleled speed
  • Consistency
  • Efficiency 

7. Godlike: Revolutionize Your UI Design with Framer Components

The Godlike Framer component library is designed to revolutionize how designers construct and test user interfaces. With its enormous library of pre-built components, this comprehensive collection includes a wide choice of components that cater to all your design needs, whether you are a seasoned expert or just starting in UI design. 

The Godlike, user-friendly interface can help you improve your design workflow. This collection streamlines the prototype process by allowing designers to drag and drop these components into their projects, which includes finely built elements like: 

  • Buttons
  • Sliders
  • Menus

The days of spending hours designing complicated interactions from scratch are over; now, you can concentrate on improving your design vision while saving crucial time.

4 Best Practices For Setting Up A Framer Component Library

woman on a laptop - Framer Components

1. Organizing Components with Naming Conventions

Use forward slashes in component names to categorize them into folders. This practice keeps your components organized and easy to locate within Framer. For instance, to create a folder named "Navigation" with a "Menu" component, name it Navigation/Menu. Framer only allows single-level nesting, so plan your component names accordingly. For clarity, name components to indicate their: 

  • Function
  • State
  • Theme
  • Usage variations

By including these attributes in the naming structure, team members can instantly identify how and where a component should be used. For example, a button used for primary navigation might be labeled as:

  • Buttons
  • Navigation
  • Primary Button

This approach minimizes confusion and enhances usability, especially in collaborative projects.

2. Centralizing Components in One Project

Storing all components within a single project: 

  • Simplifies updates
  • Scaling
  • Version control

Centralized component libraries make it easier to manage design changes, ensuring consistent updates across the entire project rather than hunting down components in multiple places. This setup is handy for scaling, as team members only need to reference and edit from one source, which helps maintain consistency.

3. Naming Component Variants for Responsive Design

Use standardized variant names like Desktop, Tablet, and Phone to seamlessly adapt your components for different screen sizes. When these names are used, Framer automatically selects the correct variant based on the screen size, making your components responsive by default. This way, you avoid manually adjusting components for different breakpoints, reducing setup time while ensuring your designs remain visually consistent across all devices.

4. Setting Constraints for Component Flexibility

Defining maximum and minimum width and height constraints allows components to behave predictably when resized. Proper constraints ensure that elements maintain their design integrity across various screen sizes and layouts, preventing unintended changes that could distort your components or disrupt the layout. Establish these constraints carefully, considering the potential screen variations and user interactions to create a stable and flexible component library.

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NUMI is a Framer web design agency that specializes in working with startups. We are backed by Y Combinator and powered by world-class Framer developers and product designers. Our talented team handles all your startup's design needs, including: 

  • Product design
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Schedule a call with us today to learn more about how we can help your startup succeed.

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