Halftone Effect in Figma: Create Retro Background Designs

One viewer asked me in my previous video ( Halftone portraits ) about how to create halftone backgrounds in Figma, so here's the step-by-step 🎯

This technique adds that perfect retro-digital vibe to your designs.

🎁 Grab your starter file here and follow along!

Video Tutorial is linked below.

Fire up the Halftone Effect plugin and adjust dot size until you see distinct gradient layers.

💡 Tip #1: Keep your source images under 512px. Anything larger will freeze the software (learned this one the hard way 🥲 ).

Hit generate, and you'll get a dot pattern with transparent background.

🔑 Here's the key part: Add a white fill underneath the dots because gradient mapping needs a solid background to work properly.

Then copy the whole thing as an image (I know, it's tedious 🙄 ).

Open gradient mapper plugin, reduce stops to 2, and apply your color swatches.

💡 Pro tip: For backgrounds with content above, contrast matters. Add multiple dark stops to enhance contrast.

🤡 Small trick: Click between two dark stops to add more dark stops easily.

Final step: Copy the mapped fill, paste to your background frame.

There you have it! Achieving a retro vibe in your design is that straightforward. 👾

Thanks the viewer to make this tutorial happen, if you got something specific would like me to cover, just hit reply. I’ll be happy to help out.

Like and share the video.
Drop a comment if you got any questions!

This week is my birthday week, and I have a lot of social events, and it’s draining my energy both physically and mentally. Nevertheless, I am blessed to be surrounded by friends and families.

Google analytics is setting up temporarily, but it still require some time to let the data flow in in order to confirm my setup is meeting my business needs. After a month or two once everything is on track, I will consider sharing the setup progress if anyone is interested – please reply to this email and show your interest.

I am also taking a break from content creation, I feel I need a week or two to rest and sort out the business side of things, cause I want to run this channel and newsletter properly, get sponsorship so that I can keep producing quality content free for you all.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out other tutorials in the channel, those are evergreen, so practice while waiting for my return. 😉 Until then.