If you’re tuned into developer discourse, you know there’s plenty of conversation online about open source. Less frequent, however, are conversations about why the movement is so important and what it means. The rift between designers and developers has been around for some time, but no legacy platforms have made substantial progress towards solving it. Open source design software has the capacity to change that through radical transparency and communication, putting an end to the silos that get in the way of creating our best work.

Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz and the team at ​Penpot​ have recently announced a new plugin feature that allows users to build new tools and functionalities on the platform. As an industry veteran, this is the kind of development that makes me most excited and optimistic about the future of design. Not only because it advances UX, but because it prioritizes and rewards originality. In the age of AI, a lot of output is starting to look the same. Being able to not only create your own unique work, but create your own unique tools to produce it? That’s the future.

Feeling curious? Find more information about plugins here.

​Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, co-founder and CEO of Penpot, speaks to this below with Blender Product Manager Dalai Felinto.

Pablo: After many years of working with designers and developers, I found so many product failures came down to lack of collaboration earlier in the process. So I created Penpot. Penpot is an open-source, free design software that eliminates the “hand-off” process at the heart of so many miscommunications.

In service of that mission, Penpot was built on a community of designers and developers that understand and value the importance of collaboration. Dalai, you have been one of those people for several years, so good to talk to you about it.

Dalai: I’ve been using Penpot for years and seen it undergo so many iterations, from beta to 2.0. but throughout, it's never lost the sense of community you mentioned, and never lost sight of its priorities: bringing together designers and developers to allow them - and us - to make our best work.

Pablo: Definitely. That is our goal, and it’s something we are continuously evaluating, making constant improvements and launching new features. I feel confident that these additions to Penpot will continue to be well received since, most of the time, they come directly from crowdsourced feedback from the people who use and love Penpot and want to make it the best it can be.

That is the spirit behind our newest introduction: plugins. The new plugin feature will enable users to customize and extend Penpot by adding new functionalities, integrating third-party services, or creating customer tools. It’s a really significant advancement for us, because it signifies a major milestone in our ongoing mission to make the design process as open and collaborative as possible.

Dalai, as a longtime Penpot user, can you talk about how that might affect users like you?

Dalai: It's definitely really exciting. Penpot is already so much more flexible than other platforms and the plugins just add to the sense of versatility. For now, we've used it to help us port our icons library into Penpot, but I have big plans for making use of plugins going forward. I’m currently working on making a plugin that takes one of our UI components and gives it a lo-fi effect, as our current components are too close to pixel perfect.

Ultimately, plugins are a development that underscores what I love most about Penpot- it’s for everyone. This isn’t a platform that prioritizes either designers or developers, but both! - it prioritizes excellent work and makes it easy to produce collaboratively. Plugins make it even easier to customize to your own needs and create outstanding original work.

Pablo: Thanks, Dalai. As always, I’m excited to see what you create. For anyone interested in learning more about plugins, check out our community post here, and see what you think!

Want to learn more about the creation story of Penpot?

Listen to our interview with Pablo on the podcast, and learn about how Penpot is enabling Designers and Developers to work in harmony, together.