It's time for the Laun Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour, brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A presentation of the Laun Jean Wittner Watch Company, maker of Laun Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Laun Jean. Good evening, this is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Laun Jean Chronoscope? Mr. William Bradford Huey, editor of the American Mercury, and Colonel Ansel Talbert, an editor of the New York Herald Tribune. Our distinguished guest for this evening is Mr. Ty E. Woods, director of the Office of Rent Stabilization. The opinions expressed are necessarily those of the speakers. Mr. Woods, I'm sure that all of our listeners, who are either property owners or who rent property, will be delighted to have your views tonight. Now, recently, sir, Senator Dirksen was on this program, and he told our audience something about some proposed changes in the rent control law. Now, what are your views on the so-called Dirksen Amendment, sir? Well, Mr. Huey, I'm worried about the Dirksen Amendment because Mr. Senator Dirksen has said he will introduce it or propose it on the floor of the Senate when this bill comes up for consideration, because it's an amendment that does a lot more than it sounds like. Briefly, it's this. The Dirksen Amendment proposes to decontrol everything except a critical area. Now, this Dirksen Amendment is something that you expect. You expect a Senate fight on it about the second week in June. That's right, yes.  That's right. If I may explain, under the Defense Production Act, as passed by Congress last August, Congress put in a very rather rigid, a rather narrow definition of a critical area. Very briefly, a critical area is one in which there has been defense activity or military activity since Korea. There must be an immigration of labor or military into that area. There has to be a housing shortage and rents in that area either have risen excessively or are threatening to rise excessively. Well, now, can you tell our audience just by way of explanation, what are critical areas under this definition? Well, you take an area like all some of the ones that were hit the papers about a year ago this time. Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, Camp Rocker, Alabama. Those are areas where we suddenly had a vast reactivation of military activity with very little housing. This amendment doesn't recommend the suspension of all controls, does it? No, no, but here's what's dangerous about it. Although those critical areas are very important, the major cities of the United States such as Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, St. Louis, almost all of your big cities have rent control because they have defense activity and they have a housing shortage, but they couldn't qualify under this very technical definition of a substantial in-migration of labor. So if this amendment should become law, those cities would suddenly find themselves without any rent control. Now, the Ducson amendment, Senator Ducson proposes to simply end controls except in all areas which are defined as critical. Which are designated as critical. And now you're opposing it for one reason because of this definition of a critical area. That's right, because of the one technicality that there has not in these major cities been a substantial in-migration of labor. How about New York? Has New York got a substantial in-migration of labor? No, but New York is a little different, Colonel. New York has its own rent control. It's under a state act. But there are some lawyers in Washington today who are constitutional law experts and this seems to be a time in Washington for a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking on what is constitutional and what isn't. Let's say that possibly New York could be affected because if cities like Chicago and Philadelphia went out, some people could say that, well, New York doesn't have a substantial in-migration of labor, therefore the New York law is unconstitutional. Now, as a spokesman for rent control, as the man who is charged with the responsibility for rent control, you're telling our audience that you think it's important that the Dirksen proposed Dirksen amendment be defeated. Very definitely. Now, Mr. Huey, if this was a vote on shall we or shall we not have federal rent control, that would be one thing. My fear in the case of this amendment is that it may not be understood that normally the confusion over the word critical to the normal person under hearing the word critical, they would assume that any city that had rent control because there was a housing shortage would be critical. But because of that very narrow definition, I don't like the wording of the amendment. Do you think our congressmen understand this subtle distinction, Mr. Wood? I hope they do. I certainly pray that they do because I think if they do, then they will make up their minds either they feel we should still have rent control as part of the stabilization effort or we shouldn't have. Now, sir, moving on to another subject, many of our listeners are, of course, apartment dwellers. Now, what is the general situation in apartment rents today? Are more apartments being built? Is there an easing of the apartment situation across the country? No, there isn't. Although we've had a tremendous amount of building in the last four years or the last almost five years now, most of it has been in homes for sale. I don't think in any one of those years did we exceed 15% of our residential construction for apartments for rent. Now, why have the builders stayed away, preferred to build homes rather than apartments? Well, when a builder builds a house for sale, he builds the house, the purchaser gets a mortgage, the builder gets his money, and he's out, then he can start on another one. Whereas in the construction of apartments, well, there are not so many buyers for big apartment builders, so those builders usually have to, their capital is tied up maybe for many, many years. So there hadn't been as many apartments constructed, definitely as many as we need. If an apartment dweller feels he's not getting the right deal on rent, just what does he do about it, Mr. Woods? Well, he has, if it's under federal rent control, as every city is except Washington and New York, he should go to his local rent office. There are certain rules and regulations. For example, he's supposed to only pay the legal ceiling rent. He's entitled to the essential services that go with that rent. If he's not getting the services, or if he's asked for more rent, he should go to his local rent office and complain. That's what it's there for. How has, how in general, so you've been in this business of controlling rents now for ten years, I believe, what is your general appraisal of the program? Has it saved people a great deal of money? Has it been fair? Yes, it's been fair. We've made mistakes. We've, as time has gone on, we've progressed. I would say that the rent control of today is great, is a lot different than the rent control of 1945-1946. We've made mistakes, and I won't say that every landlord hasn't had some hardship at one time or another, in that he's gotten, hasn't always gotten a good deal from the rent office. But the people who work for us are human. They make mistakes. The only thing we can do is when we find them, we try to correct them. Now, coming back to this apartment business, you say that one of the real needs in this country is more apartment construction. Very, very definitely, Bill, and particularly in the middle-income brackets. Now, we've had plenty of apartment construction in New York or Chicago in the high brackets. Today, in the city that I know best, because I grew up there and I was in the real estate business there, Chicago, well, if you can pay $200 a month rent, you can have a choice. But if you're one of those people who has to worry about a ceiling and what he can pay for rent of around $60 or $70, you have a tough job. That's the field that we haven't touched. Do you think that rent control is going to be with us for some time? I think, Colonel, I think it will be with us as long as this present mobilization effort is being carried on. Rent control today is tied up very definitely with a stabilization effort. And as long as we're in a mobilization program, we'll have rent control. Now, if you want to pin me down on a date on that, I'd say, well, others in that program have said it's got to go on until about the middle of 1954. I'd say rent control will go on at least that long. Do you think that housing construction will catch up with the country by that time? I don't know, I hope, because rent control isn't going to build any housing, and I'm the first to admit it. It's only a stop gap until we do get some housing.  That's right. Well, now, can you tell us the size of your particular bureau? How many people do you employ? We have about 2800 people throughout the country. And how many dollars does it cost the taxpayers to operate your bureau? Around $13 million a year. And do you think that the taxpayers are getting their money's worth? Very definitely. Yes, I think they do. I think they have gotten their money's worth. And I don't think that landlords have too much to complain about either, because this may startle you, but I think that the real estate industry today is undergoing the greatest boom in its history. There are about 8 million rental property owners, aren't there, in the United States? That's considered a fair figure yet. Do you think that there's any incentive now to become a rental property owner in this country? Very definitely, because I think the returns on residential real estate because of the terrific demand, the shortage, makes it a very profitable business to be in spite of us bureaucrats. Well, thank you, Mr. Woods, very much for being with us. The editorial board for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope was Mr. William Bradford Huey and Colonel Ansel Talbert. Our distinguished guest was Mr. Ty E. Woods, Director of the Office of Rents Stabilization. These glorious spring days are days of great events in many homes, as your favorite son or daughter prepares for graduation just ahead, or as preparations go forward for an important wedding, or as in many homes, plans are being made for the celebration of an anniversary. Now, to mark these happy events, many thousands are planning the purchase of a fine watch. If you are one of these, why not the world's most honored watch, Lawn Jean? The Lawn Jean watch offers much more than the little more it costs, for Lawn Jean, you should remember, is the only watch in history to win 10 World's Fair Grand Prizes and 28 Gold Medal Awards and highest honors for accuracy from the leading government observatories of the world. Yet you may buy and proudly give a Lawn Jean watch for as little as $71.50. For beauty, greater accuracy, a long and useful life, Lawn Jean watches are universally esteemed. For graduation, a wedding, an anniversary, for father on father's day, for any important gift occasion, truly no other name on a watch means so much as Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, premier product of the Lawn Jean Witner Watch Company since 1866, maker of watches of the highest character. We invite you to join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening at this same time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important dishes of the hour, broadcast on behalf of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Witner, distinguished companion to the world's honored Lawn Jean. This is Frank Knife reminding you that Lawn Jean and Witner watches are sold and serviced from coast to coast by more than 4,000 leading jewelers who proudly display this emblem, agency for Lawn Jean Witner watches. This is the CBS television network.


The other question is, I don't have the answer to mine. My guess is that I've been at work for the fairly long time. First of all, before I ask, it's wonderful to see all over 100% of the council, very friendly, very nice, you know, debated very well. So I appreciate you doing your work for this council. The two questions I have is, we are recently involved in construction and having all these things going on in our campus. And personally, I'm also involved in some of the construction. But you've already seen the city is so terrible. You know, just getting there, so only the poor can take one in a year or two years, getting this water permits, electricity permit, it just stays forever. So I would like to tell you what you can do to improve for builders and developers to keep the city growing. The second question I have is, I live right on my 10th, I live in a 20-year-old, and there's terrible construction going on for more than three years now. And you understand, it's just over the water gate, which was built in three years. So I would like to know when the construction gets started, what can you do in case of, you know, the completion of the project so we won't get affected in the future. Let's start with Tommy, he said two minutes. When it comes to cutting through the red tape, I think that's where my job experience will help with that. One of the things I do is I work as a project manager, and a lot of what I do is come up with the documented systems of procedures and looking for how to identify those so we can identify risks and opportunity to streamline it and it eliminates all the points of failure. So I think I can bring that skill set into City Hall for review. How is our current zoning process working? And we'll work with our city managers and their staff to identify points and then you'll have to report to them what kind of process you're making on the streamline. I know one of the other issues we have is sometimes construction happens, it is a nightmare, but we also have to be careful because certain parts of the road, like if it's eye-climbing construction, that's going to be your state and federal that's in charge of that. Sometimes when there's construction around my plunso, that's going to be the accounting that takes care of that. So when it comes to city level streets, that's what the city is involved and that's what we do for everything in town. So once again, I think I'll bring my skill set to bear what can we do to help streamline this little bit and in the process, hopefully achieve some foster connections because maybe we won't be spending our meals as much. I'm very fortunate to be talking to a lady that you presented to state and she explained to me that all this village that I was going to be resuscitated for people so that we could be in good terms. I purchased the building right on the side of the road and I understand your pain because I have a great physical pain which is getting in the way. We have about seven months or five, we're hearing our own ones and that's something being a lot of attention because I hear physical complaints that we're ready to start construction which is to purchase that building from the land and that building and they suck it because we don't know if it's going to work or not. So I've been through the process three times with that and I know what happens and I've been talking to the people that presented these things and they're working there and so I have a feeling I think we need to update the process so I'm going to talk about I think for your... I just don't compare and see that it's happening everywhere I will immediately by getting I think I will get to work on not only that one I don't know if I cannot say this though but they have been permanent construction for several years or months so that's something that we need to add to it and I think we need to so one of the things I'll call the manager one of the big companies is an answer to be an issue experience and tell me how that would provide a solution and what a potential solution would be so I'll come back to you so let's again I'll call the manager go ahead I would ask the city to change the way the contracts are set up to replicate the new construction a third, a third, and a third you don't get any money in front after a third of the project is completed then you get a third when you complete two thirds of the project you get two thirds if you complete a project under the designated time and under budget you get a bonus if you go over then you get people so that's right they're doing construction and this is construction thank you well anytime you start talking about development and construction projects it definitely can become a challenge sometimes I think the key for me is I will always have my door open for anyone who's having problems legitimate problems or at least they believe in legitimate problems and try to work through them and in my position on the council I would try to use my influence if I need to see a situation where things are coming down to property to try to develop a right track I think it's also the case that we may need more staff as well to review projects and figure out how to make them happen so that's something I'm looking into as well and then regarding the issues that I can in particular that is always a challenge to work with the state other accountants and so on but again as I'm aware of the issues I would certainly be involved in and try to come up with solutions I had said that regarding the situation there I can nearly always frame I don't know at this point I would be happy to look into it but this is the final one thank you the first question about how painful it is I'm going to give you a sad answer at the beginning but I think there's a solution I get my clients in schools and homeowner's associations and other people who have small businesses and because I'm just showing up I'm able to do it much more quickly and if you went on your own I shouldn't be able to feed my children by making the system go through so what I would do is I do know that one of the reasons it's so slow is that they are understaffed over development so they're very understaffed so they have to be confused between projects to them on priorities so they do need to increase that as far as the process itself there is this thing called the code based zoning and we put code based zoning in a place on some parcels on the south side very large parcels and when we designed that it worked and it's just a color by numbers way of knowing exactly what we can put, what we can put and how we can take but make those changes we figured it out in small courses in the city as far as traffic goes Cindy is absolutely right we don't what we should do is do achievement incentives where if you finish it way early those projects get very early what do you want to know yes I have to mention that this is something from my city building I think you might have doubted people they like to say this and that's what they need to feel a little bit longer I've had to change the process and I have to say that I think I was made up for that to be and they take care of me with the process but I've been through the process and I think I've heard about the code practices from people over in the town working in a five unit provided service I mean five and I think that's what we need to do in the future so that's why we need to continue the construction before we finish our time I also want to make sure that the subcontractors because many times the subcontractors are in large companies that are coming from abroad the subcontractor operations here the subcontractor operations here they don't make a contract and if you find yourself that they have not been paid they stop working and they can go buy and if you don't they can go hire people so I would say that the subcontractors especially in San Antonio are in large companies that are the subcontractors and they're not the only two Thank you, let's take a look Is there another question? Our current city councilman he thinks that we need to address and so we need to do something about planning something we can appoint someone from the district a question are y'all here to do this planning because it's the top of the city council so are all of y'all ready to go to the government to figure out an account for me and discuss this but at the same time let's keep these out of my mind I would kind of get as close as we can if you guys don't mind saying last night I'm very worried and if you need to learn about the question we want to talk about that I think I know about that case I came to be fair with you and I had the opportunity of listening about not the specifics but I am resolved to bring somebody to represent this three-day and sunny commission that understands the issues that we present here I always with people and I'm not a very clean idea or anything for etc I don't mind any of any kind that will get involved in this I want somebody who will be just dedicated to take care of the citizens and not just special interests and I make this promise today from the long view because I'm seeing that you're hearing these two tricks that are especially tricks that are happening and people show up and try to push this rain of system land so I promise that I will take care as soon as I violate it I will take care of this issue because I am not in agreement with what's going on I would make sure to answer this question because there's an echo in here where you ask me if we would appoint someone to zoning commission about the planning commission about the planning commission they try to change that there's an urgent account they want to do that they like the way it is because there are best interests to keep it going there's no person that's appointed for these visitors so you want to appoint someone to work with a development to make a change to the planning where it's just not people who are related to land development in real estate if I can summarize this it's a big question about for citizen engagement in the planning process that's supposed to be just for animals so I agree that's one of the big comments that we have is that city council who listen to the special interests and not the people and as your city council women I can tell you, I would make sure that your voice is heard that is how the government set out to be not to just listen to the special interests but in order for it to work we have to work as a community we have to have the people to play to do the work because one person cannot do it by themselves if you want to be heard you have to be willing to work with your council person to take the time off to go to work towards that and I agree, we have to have more transparency and the people's voice should be heard more so than a developer that's giving a city council person a donation so they're going to do what they want the people have to say so I would support that yes I think it's very important for citizens to be engaged in planning and I certainly would support of any changes to the current timing of the efforts of the city who's engaged in and whether the city goes through the planning process to increase the citizens' engagement I think it's absolutely critical so yes, I would definitely make changes to get more involved with citizens in the planning process can you repeat the question I'm kidding I'll tell you the answer for me is to make sure that the people who you can point to these boards know what they're talking about I certainly think it's important to have citizen representation from the neighborhoods and we've got so many smart people who work in the neighborhoods who are business folks who are not experienced with real estate and so many of them I would search into very, very thorough vetting of the kind of quality people that we've got not just somebody who paid the city council person $500 during the campaign number one, number two the apartment situation that you're talking about we've got to work on it I represent the homeowners association in the nearby area in Peru and our city council person took a lot of bruises on that case and I talk about that case a number of times before we actually took those bruises that case is not necessarily a study of zoning it's a study of leadership sometimes you have to stand up knowing that you're going to lose the zoning commission he knew he was going to lose the city council and he still fought anyway and he was right on top of another neighborhood wasn't the right call for that one of that thank you for that first thank you for the question also thank you for taking up that after your path and thinking of other things I appreciate it and I go back to us as members of the community looking out for each other and doing what's right so talk about what's right that's one of the lessons that I learned at my school to stand up for myself and stand up for others not only two people I have the answer to and that's God and that's to myself and so I always understand what I feel is right even if it costs me and that's what I've done in my workplace and I'm not looking to sit back and complain that's why before I ran I volunteered to become special department coordinator for this committee I went out and pursued that opportunity nobody gave it to me because I wanted to make a difference working in business we have competing priorities and that's a skill set that I've developed how I work with not only my coworkers but also my superiors to get them to buy into my vision and that's what we're going to have to do as city council we hope in that time but now we have to talk more about that later thank you thank you I've been a resident of the district for almost 29 years and I've seen quite a bit of development in and around this area especially in the past 10 years we're talking about how repopulation has been going on quite a bit one of the things that I've noticed when we talked about a tree column was tree preservation and parks, things like that as developers come in for an outstanding and just want to build up their departments and just leave they're just going down trees and paying them for a small fine to get around the tree houses what we do to strengthen the tree houses and continue to keep our county alive and well and not create all these asphalt jungles that keep a parent especially around car lots I would also propose that new car lots that were cars being sold trees be placed at the end of each row at least in the parking lots because trust me trust me is this is attributed to what global farm it really is and I just I'm just concerned about how the country just gets moldy and thin and get plowed in the tree orchids need to be much stronger so what would you do? I'm a tree lover too so I'm here to help I'm just going to help our home there are a lot of trees on it the minimum of how many trees because this first one I'm sorry to say homeowner was notorious for doing exactly what you just said just plowed down so I would say that you need to pass the orchids to preserve the trees that are there to work around the trees that are there so that they're there and also to plant more trees so that we can have that canopy the trees are really good they also work the runoff you know where there's too much rain and so it also provides something beautiful to get to besides just asphalt a question that we can ask the orchids yes some of them are tree herbivores yes I think I say that yes how can you say that? well everybody loves trees so I'm not going to well I think what happens is that the developers they see money and they see that they can make more money despite loathing trees and I think yes we do need to have stronger orchids to prevent them from doing that but it needs to be part of any developed consideration is our trees going to be preserved and the developers can check in that regard yeah so we do have tree orchids and it's a very well worded tree orchid that is a need that can be very skinny and can easily be violated and the consequences for violating it aren't that impressive so there are lots of developers that will violate it and consider it a constant structure like all orchids is the only way people follow them is if you actually enforce them and so we do keep code enforcement with teeth we need to keep that power and development services and we do keep people going on property as part of the license that you get the part that you get in order to construct you have to be able to, as a city go along the property before they start knocking down trees cap the trees and say these trees better be up right when we come back other cities do this and we do too there's no reason to be sure so thank you again for your question and the amazing suggestion you had there too about the crops and farmland so one here in San Antonio it seems like we have a real problem with follow-up rules and when people break rules there are no consequences so we do need to add teeth to that to make sure that the rules are following because that's why they're there they have to make sure they have more and more engagement so we have ideas like that but can we have it more online or in person where we can share those ideas I have to work for great organization where we have an innovation that's open to anybody in the company where we have a whole line of ideas if you have a great idea you can share and then everybody in the company can see and come it up and we can refine it and a lot of those can implement it into the technology that drives our company forward why can't we do that here in the city so that all your voices will be heard and we can talk about how to solve this together thank you, bye I am very lucky that in my neighborhood we cannot touch the trees to handle as we wish so I am not a big problem I have only been living or was back from and two weeks ago I gave permission to the Chinese restaurant of my life to be able to have a parking lot but not much of their trees are mine so I came back after the weekend and a big tree was gone so I drove around and I drove Gale and I made a big deal out of it and they brought the arteries and they apologized when my tree was gone and I knew that now we move from those trees because now they are getting very close to my other trees I have six huge trees on the right side that means my area has trees everywhere green shade, green beauty and it's amazing I have a tiny front that people can see with all my trees and plants and they are about to touch I mean to cut my trees I got out of my office and I have a hard time and they gave me a glass and they said don't touch those trees and I sounded like that was hysterical but I was because if I could not have gone out I would have bought four beautiful trees so I'm going to do that thank you but I'm going to go out so I think something that's interesting is that I think it's an alternative obviously by processing and building by processing is very expensive but we do have a ton of commercial film lines that run across the city for example when we use the brand or when we work in the data center so I'm wondering as a council if we could be willing to help and engage in conversations with companies like the United States and technology to allow those commercial film lines to be simultaneously used with Castro thank you back did you say commercial rail lines? yes do you start commercial rail lines? no okay so there's commercial rail lines all over the city that are owned by companies like the city it's not leased so there would have to be some sort of pressure to put onto those companies to allow conversations again and technology to be invested into them so it allows for the passenger rail as well and not make us have to build completely different systems all across the city so you wanted to use existing rail lines? right which would save money and it would be easier but there would need to be technology invested so they could be used safely well I appreciate your question however I'm not a proponent of rail at all because of the cost it's a hundred million dollars a mile and with technology the way that it's going I see other things on the horizon so you're standing back up? yeah because like I said it's a good existing rail right so you're not going to be spending you're not going to know why it doesn't exist so you need to invest in technology that allows simultaneous use of the passenger and could be other thank you thank you it's rail and those rail lines don't go everywhere and so you're going to have to create more rail and in talking to Barney Cameron who's VP of VIA and he told me that the 20 SHR plate is to connect all the regional centers and so there will be casualties which means that if he has to plow through some of the tone they're going to do that and so I'm not a proponent of that and I would rather sit back and wait and see what's on the horizon and technology because I see things that are coming up like Skytree and those are the port of the pods they're utilized in the air but now if you call a proponent they implemented those and those are 110 of the cost of rail so that's why I'm not a proponent of that thank you Paul well I am a proponent of Blackrail I think that we will have to engage that in the foreseeable future we say as long as that is where it's a planning issue and we have to come up with solutions and I'm certainly using current rail lines is one solution that can be beneficial to reducing the cost for any rail system such as rail canings within the city I can even envision at some point asking the national rail line to build lines outside of the city and we can complete a convert of their rail lines into lots of means within the city I know it will be quite controversial but it's not yet that's one of the things I like to try to do is try to think outside of the box and try to think of other ways to do things and I think certainly converting existing rail lines and using them for convert trains could be a good use of those lines and so yes I would advocate considering doing that so your question is very specific in that you're not even talking about you're talking about existing rail lines already across San Antonio and using those rail lines and how San Antonio is getting acquainted with U-Bed that's a fantastic idea and actually that's something that I got to work on in 2004 we created a team that was called the Animal Rail District and we did that in reaction to Union Pacific's reluctance to work with us at all on getting certain parts of the manufacturers of Union and San Antonio they were charging us so much money because they knew they were the only one so what we did is we went and changed the law and we said that we're not going to buy a car we'll pay you with the law says it's going to cost us and Union Pacific and we now have a really cool rail district on the south side and it's accomplished in some way what you're talking about it's a great plan, I love it thank you for asking my question don't let's deal with it again well I think this goes right back to what I was talking to you people before I mean we have 1.4, 1.5 million people in here there's going to keep people like yourself that have amazing ideas why wasn't that something that we could put up on the website say hey bro this is the line and then you can have a conversation with the council the council and people can come back to you and say hey bro we're looking into this here's some of the challenges to the roadblocks we can talk about what are the legal barriers we can talk to TCI what are the costs that we have to we have to do to modify those rail districts to handle transportation but the point is we're not having these conversations it's easy for us as citizens that transparency is not there you can suggest that councilman may say yes I love it but then it dies when they're here but it's great transparency for the use of technology so we can all be on our own thank you for that I'm not using those old paper cracks I don't I have the trade that goes live in it is I just don't understand how the business is saving the roadblocks to transport people because I don't know because I think that they are using our tools so I would like to talk about there's more transparency about what's important each of them have their own interpretation I would like to try to learn more about these the things that are important that I would like to talk about thank you yes sir first of all my name is Muhammad Sajid Rana I'm from Rana I'm a chair from Salman Center New York has talked about all the streets construction trees gas, dog, everybody else my specific concern is every time something happens in the United States there's one of the difference in your side when you are the mayor chief of the police or something will come and give us a big line about don't you like what nothing will happen to you so this is just a failed promise and they come and they say don't worry about it while we are waiting something happens in any minority church or our Islamic center but there is a temple sacred for Muslims all the minorities specifically minorities why can't we provide them with this is the number one minority it should be the city providing the security why today do we have anybody policemen here today you see somebody walking, shoot everybody all the people in CNN and the city will come up and have a big beating don't worry about it so we need to city I expect at least I know you guys are ready for in the city one of the thousand men of course no but I am here would you promise us to provide security from the city because we cannot afford to have four or five policemen, three policemen on a regular basis if they cannot provide at least one special day we have some special holidays so I guess while we are waiting something happens in the city for the dark community I want to say these words so when we are going to make up and have somebody I expect you guys to understand the name of the city so do you need any clarification on the question I think he is asking if you want to there are all of the country there are lots of maybe hard down people from the CNN just a judge personally I think a judge so the question is what kind of security do you provide for the federal I agree that is one of the things that you have to do when you have a problem especially if for example if they are being attacked then absolutely you have to deploy your mind forced into control those areas and that is how you reduce crime in fact I did a research project on this and it was if you are having a crime issue you deploy your police officers where the problem is at you don't just oh where are you if you are a target you provide the support and you control the neighborhoods and you make sure everything is okay and that is how you control it once they see that they are protected then they go away you don't allow the federal to do the neighborhood thank you of course our police department is stretched I will mention that my experience is that usually when there is an event or a facility where there is some concern about security police officers are available or willing to work under all powers and I will say it is very condescending for that by the organization so I would say it is mainly up to any organization where they feel they need security to look into hiring security they are open to visiting the people about their operations and their security concerns and it was a situation where it seemed like it would be appropriate for the city police to be involved in helping the security and certainly we were looking into that but usually the first step is for the community or the organization to make their own plans for what their security means are but I would certainly be able to talk about that if that is not out of the idea before we get you into it I would like to ask you a question we started late so we are going to thank you so much for the question you asked about promise yes you are going to have more police here often because I will ask the city council do you know why they show up because we city council are in charge of their salaries and they really want to make city council happen city council people ask the police to spend more time in one neighborhood because they are getting complaints all you have to do is pick up the phone and call that is pretty simple thank you you bring up that concern now I truly understand where you are coming from I think my own experience has been avoided to see people just because they look a little different or at least something different to have most vulnerable members they think it is not right so that is possible we can lead by example let's make sure we are protecting these people it is more than just a sound and to start that we are going to put our city manager and our police force because we are short of 225 officers maybe even a little more so we need to get to the bottom of how do we recruit other officers but also the right time so they can provide the services to truly protect the service and yes just like Annie said you give me a call and I am here to help you lead by example thank you we have always been and we need to be aware of what is happening we need to work at we have a team we need to be vigilant around to the neighborhood to the church my building another building is where she comes to speak and works back and all the employees we met we talk to them about the second time around me and then we have we have more policemen and then we have more police men and then we are always looking and making sure that we are not in danger so I think it is a two ways we need to work together with the police in order to make the city manager more police thank you so what we are going to do now is I am going to ask the next five people to ask their questions continuously and assuming they are safe on the team I am going to ask you guys to answer them it is a challenge for you guys do you have any questions do you have any same questions me not how do you speak to a police officer when I ask that question you come to the microphone good my name is I am from the city of TSA my question is what are we all about what is your opinion if like that as a councilwoman they will control changing the future of the whole city not just about history so what I want to ask you is what is the biggest challenge in your view that faces the city over the last few years and what are your plans for the future ok thank you what are your plans for the future beyond history ok but as you know San Antonio has over 8000 refugees from other countries these are women and children who fled countries where they lived in the victims of genocide chemical weapons, torture, addings and other horrible things today many non-proper organizations and local churches are helping Hispanics in need of basic services English classes financial emergency health training to pay the services so the other question is I just simply agree I will look into the face of the page and found the following comments you made about women don't need them to send them back they can't speak the language they can't listen to the language because they're foreigners things such as going to the parks to call on the terrorists and also going to the parks to talk about the Second Amendment the Second Amendment rights ok thank you oh do you stand by to comment and let's get into one more my name is Dr. Dee I'd like to thank you all for being here for us my quick question is about Islamophobia and the bullying of our children and women with covers and so on I am receiving daily accounts of a lot of hate crimes against our community all over the United States of America unfortunately my quick question is how can we take measures in the city a beautiful city of San Antonio to make it really a model for peace and coexistence and respect yes, thank you good evening my name is Naziris Abdubi and I am a member of the Muslim community and along with the other members of the community I appreciate you being here my quick question is actually started with a comment as we all know that a lot of our economy draws from small businesses it is energized with the response of small businesses I am aware of programs that the city has for small businesses and we wrote including the UDSA Small Business Administration program at the beginning but what additional ideas you'll have that will benefit small businesses in the city thank you good evening, my name is John Bryan I am an immigration attorney I am the executive director of the refugee and the member of the Center for Education and Legal Services we're a refugee who settles an agency we're also a legal services agency for refugees and immigrants here in San Antonio I'm an immigrant and I'm also a homeowner here at District 8 I was asked tonight to come and speak but I didn't want to do that I represent refugees and immigrants I organize with them but I don't intend to speak for the community I was told that they would like to speak because members of the community were asked but they were afraid and now right there is the subject of my question the people that we work with and you're going to be leading a district that is known for its connection with the refugee community a diverse part of our city many of the different countries that we know are predictable as I work with refugees they're not leading those despots the people, the names in those applications of the ones who are hurting harming oppressing people are local officials in those countries and people who come to this country may associate you that they fled and we're entering into a country now those people who do those actions in countries we associate with refugees and you're doing so because they're operating under that permission structure that was set by that radical, erratic leader this permission structure is also opening up we are seeing attacks on communities like it has never happened before and it's not just theoretical we have a bill in the Senate of Texas as before which is prepared to turn our cities into instruments of this oppression what are you going to do as someone who's job is to protect our communities and who has the power to do so you cannot say that this is a Washington issue this is a San Antonio issue what are you going to do to protect me, my friends and our communities last question I want you guys to address the immigration of refugee issues a slow one I'm a support engineer so I'm not going to ask you so many questions you can actually hold on this gentleman here but my question is you've seen a lot of issues in America in terms of the Muslims the hijab of Muslim women or people along in America not just fire national leaders but also by a local individual so my question is what do you guys actually believe about Muslims what do you believe our location is San Antonio our position in San Antonio is supposed to be are we Americans do we not belong the reason I asked this is because it's written there has been a question there's a lot of people that are pushing that they don't belong here they shouldn't be wearing hijab they shouldn't be exercising their food so that's why I want you guys to address that thank you I think the last question is we're obviously fully out of time Paul also gave me an answer to the refugee question and the last question last question it's possible well yes these are very important issues obviously they've become more important these are the things that have been going on not only the rest of the world but the United States as well and I think certainly we need to stand up to keep America diverse and to support those who immigrate here this is a nation of immigrants basically except for the Indians we're all immigrants of course they were immigrants about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago themselves I suppose I think that's actually what's there to be great is the fact that we are a nation of immigrants so I would definitely work as hard as I can to support Muslims and other minorities in dealing with whatever issues they need to face thank you if you want to continue you can first of all thank you for what you do for that organization I'm actually thinking of voting for you for District 8 you are San Antonio District 8 is the most diverse district in this city 8,000 refugees living in San Antonio almost every single one of them I'm not here 30,000 families that call themselves Muslims living in San Antonio all of them living in District 8 what would I do if I found out that somebody was being discriminated against my employer or by law or by anybody else or feeling unsafe in their home or attacked I would step down from that dynamics and I would stand with you and I would sue whoever it was and that's what the city needs to do more often is to fight the fights even if we know it's going to be a hard fight so when the Texas Legislature decided to change the redistricting to make sure that fewer Latinos voted and more Republicans got out there in poverty, you know what I'm talking about I stood up and I went and filed the necessary makers to make sure that we helped set that aside I'm happy to tell you that Supreme Court that is the most racist thing we've ever seen and that is not Texas you are Texans you know who delivers babies in a cell must be doctors the first person oftentimes that a Texan meets is a Muslim it is not acceptable for that person then to be afraid of the adult that person is the better way it is going to become not in my San Antonio thank you so to hear about you know the figure that the Supreme Court needed to be asked it outstrips my heart and to hear what the other two have recorded that we have a kid who says something about you know immigrants come here and not putting the language that they don't love that makes me upset he graduated from high school started family went to work realized that the importance of education he started interviewing with the administration officers so we're not going to teach language and that pissed him off he said you know what I'm going to graduate from the University of Michigan that's exactly what he did he looked at the marriage agreement and I'm here to stand up for everybody so they can look at that I came here just like you I come from Mexico and I've been through my hard times getting my great part my US citizenship getting it just like you and I you know how you feel but through business I have to be I think that's what I'm going to do because we immigrants we bring a lot to this country we're mostly small business owners and then we bring business, we bring jobs, we bring opportunities I will in my building I have 70 different nationalities of small businesses we talk about the issues that we're discussing here and we we think that by doing business you know we're doing this for others like us we are able to become stronger unify a different culture I promise but this is what it's like to be discriminated against I was raised here in San Antonio I was raised in Amarillo, Texas my mother was born here but she moved away and up there I'm brown olive but I was a white so I know what it's like to be discriminated against so I feel you're kind too and it's not right but you know that's really bad it doesn't matter which country you're from prejudice is there from around the world and I don't understand it and I don't know why but it's just there in my expanded family prejudice on my white-sided prejudices and I know from other countries you're prejudiced too and it's just there it's not right we all have to work together if you are an American citizen and you have everybody to be here and you should be discriminated against it's against the law so I'm sorry go ahead I was going to give you so for almost out of time I'll assume one minute I'm really sorry Sydney and the gentleman asked you about six or seven statements that you made on the Facebook page calling refugees terrorists and you should be discriminated against those people who escaped those worst couple of the worst and are speaking only neighbors and friends and kindness and you're running for city council and then you're going to have all this in here and tell these people that it's wrong to not like people like that what are you talking about? we'll come back and put it in your post so my words are it's discouraging to say that you don't want to insult your refugees I'm a Christian and I believe in the scripture Jesus tells us whatever we do to the least of us we do to him so when we see people playing a pressure that are hurting, that are hungry it's our child I would like to say that especially in the world because I have a little bitch off you I want to close by telling the next few times opportunities for a small business because I want to help her I know how to do it and I'm going to make sure that I talk to her I want to close by saying that I'm very honored to be here your questions are amazing I I really believe that you have the right to be in this country and I have the right to be in this country I want to tell you that I believe that everyone of my brothers and sisters because I believe in them so I want you to see what's happening here someone stood up in a political room and made accusations saying I said something really I haven't seen it I want to see it tomorrow morning you'll be seeing those comments I'm going to show you exactly those comments so there you go my opponent right here is making accusations about something that I said that's not fair I want you to believe somebody just because they said it's not a discrimination it might not be a discrimination but something that somebody said if you're saying I don't recall seeing that saying that and even if I did I want to see what context it was said one more please one more please one more please right here here's your question what I said I'm just fighting kills my country now we need to end that's not fair I'm ready to end I'm just going to stop I'm just going to stop I'm just going to stop I'm just going to stop I think it's true people are just important things that should be the matters that should be the matter this situation is going to be anything if you're going to do that just look at it for our option our communication our reports I'm just saying that if you're sour all get out of this give me the time to get back to you what we can have in 30 years thank you we're taking you away from all the time we'll just stay together okay well I think it's clear that we all believe that discrimination is a thing all of it she didn't say something contrary to what was said I know perhaps I hope that you all need to see the understanding that we're all here because we believe in a diverse country a diverse community and we believe in human rights and the individual rights to conduct yourselves as you see fit with regard to religion and the way that you live I mentioned that my parents in Tehran were shocked about I had a lot of muslims very different and so I consider myself one a little bit of discrimination in my body at this point thank you all 24 24 24 24 24 24


In this video, I'm going to show you how to redesign any website in Figma without any design skills needed. So while I'll teach you in this video, I'll take you through step by step how to import any website into Figma, how to edit texts, how to insert images and icons, and then finally how to share your new design with your colleagues. Hi, I'm Johan. I'm a product designer and nowadays also a workshop facilitator. So I've been working in visual design for well over 10 years and I've designed over hundreds of apps and websites and collaborated with a lot of different teams and setups. So what I'm going to teach you in this video here will be quite useful in situations where you, for example, have an existing website or an existing web app that you want to create quick versions of. Maybe you're doing an A-B test and want to do a version B. Maybe you run a brainstorming workshop or some sort of concepting workshop for a new part of your website or an existing part of your website where you want to improve it somehow and you want to quickly come up a new design version of that existing thing. Or you just found a website on the internet and you thought it looked pretty cool but you want to improve it and you want to try out this design tool and do a version of it. There might be many reasons why you want to try this out but the coolest part is this saves you so much time that you can spend on more important things like talking to your customers or collaborating better with your team or facilitating other workshops to solve more important problems efficiently. While you're watching this video and you have any questions of the steps I'm showing you just leave a comment below. If you want to learn more about workshopping and facilitation head over to our free community. Over there you can find hundreds of designers and facilitators like me sharing their insights and experiences so that you can level up and take your career to the next level. The link to the community is in the description below. Okay, I think that's it. Let's get started. I'm going to be using a design software tool called Figma and if you haven't heard of it it's right now probably the most the market leading design software for all product and UX designers out there. If you have used Mirol or Murol or any other like blank canvas digital whiteboard tools you'll probably recognize yourself using Figma. It's very similar in the sense that it's an open canvas where you can just put stuff everywhere. It's a browser based design tool. So this means that you can work and design in the browser. Everything is saved to the clouds. All changes you do is just happens in instantly. And the most cool thing is that you can of course share it live and actually design stuff live together with people at the same time. All right, so if you don't have an account just go to Figma.com, click it started and create an account. I'm going to start a new account just to have a clean slate. So the first time you log into Figma they ask you to name a team. So this doesn't matter too much right now. Just give it your own name maybe or whatever you want, your favorite football team. You can also invite collaborators. We're not gonna do that right now. So let's skip that step. We have to choose a plan here. For this demo you'll do fine with a starter for free account. So don't worry about that. What you want to do first is start a new design file. Choose a blank canvas. By the way, all of these settings they're asking you for this first time you can change that after. So don't worry about too much if you make the wrong choice. And you'll notice a new tabs opened up. Obviously there's a lot going on here. There's a lot of these weird icons and tools and everything. You don't have to really care about most of this stuff. I will show you only the relevant tools you need to know to achieve this redesign of any website. If you want to see a longer, more detailed instruction video for Figma I recommend watching my colleague Amber's video on this subject. You can probably see that video linked here on the video. Okay, so now that we have Figma all set up it's time to redesign something. So what are we going to redesign? I mean, you can do anything almost. You can't do native apps. There are, as far as I know not any easy ways to use magically importing a native app. But anything available on the web you can import, which is quite magical. In this case, I'm going to be using Uber as an example. So I'll just open up a new tab here. I'll go to uber.com and yeah, we can pretend that we're tasked to improve or make a new version of this landing page. Maybe we want to run some experiments and see if we can improve conversion of getting more drivers signed up or something. Anyway, all you need to do is just go to any website and copy the URL. So I'm doing command C or control C if you're on a Windows computer. And I want you to look up to your left here. There is one super weird icon. That's your resources tab and you click that one. You can see there's a component, which is the first tab here. We're going to move over to something called plugins. So plugins are these extra add-ons that the open community have developed and made available through Figma. It's pretty awesome. And this particular plugin, it feels almost illegal to use, it's crazy.  And then you click, if you hover over it, you see there's a button called run. You just click that one and this is browser based. So it needs to think a little and there we go. So what you can see here is we land on something called a tab called export to code. That's not what we are looking to do this time. We're going to import to Figma, so click that tab. There is a URL field here. Make sure to drag and mark the entire URL to import. That's already there. That's the builder.io homepage, I guess. And then press command V or control V in Windows. This way that replaces the full URL. There's a weird thing that usually happens this plugin, there's an extra HTPPS thing happening. So then the import won't work. So make sure you actually mark the entire existing URL and replace it. The viewport width, you can play it with if you want to, but I usually leave it at the default. That's 1200 pixels width. And then simply press import to Figma. You'll notice here, it says note, this plugin is not magic. It does its best, but your mileage may vary. There will be some cleanup needed. You'll see now that what we get here, the result here is not exactly what the live website looks like. Obviously the big header image is missing. It imported the actual cookie banner. Sometimes that's a good thing. If you want to play and redesign that one, we don't want that right now. There's a weird rectangle going on here. There's some missing images, some overlapping icons. There's a little bit of cleanup needed. So just go through your site and clean it up. Just a small tip. When you're doing cleanup, look in the layer list to the left. And what's the layer list? So for example, that header image seems to be missing. I'm going to click this rectangle here. And if I look to the left, I see here, that is this rectangle. And below, that means maybe something below, there is an image. So if I remove this rectangle, I'm gonna press backspace, just to delete it. And voila, there it actually was. That sometimes happens. I don't know why whatever website you import, it might be completely different. It might look a lot better or worse. So go through, make some cleanup, remove some stuff that you don't want part of it. So I'm going to remove this cookie banner, for example. And be careful when you're clicking around. I'm just clicking each element here and deleting it one by one. Very easy to accidentally click and delete something in the background here. Maybe I accidentally click and delete that header image that I actually wanted. So if you do a mistake, you press command Z, that's the undo action. When you want to import a page that is behind the login, it's not going to work the normal way. You will need to use a Chrome plugin to make sure that works. Let me demonstrate. Here's this click up space. Click up is a project management tool. I'm logged in here. A fast way to access your plugins. You could go to the resources tab again, but you can also right click anywhere on the canvas. And you'll find plugins and recently used ones over here. Now if I use this URL and I try to import it, the plugin needs to think a little bit and will fairly soon. Yeah, there we go. We'll get an error. It just doesn't work because this plugin can't override that login that we made. So we're going to need to do a different method. So what we're going to need to do is use the Chrome browser plugin from Builder IO to download a file that we then can import locally from our computer. It's easier if I show you. Right click again, open up the plugin again, the Builder IO plugin and we go to import. And then here we have a little section that talks about this Chrome extension. Simply click this link and you'll be taken to the plugin and there you go. Now it's just remove here because I've already installed it, but for you, you can probably just add it to Chrome. So mine is installed. I'm going to go back to this click up homepage. I'm going to click this little puzzle. That's the Chrome extensions. I have a multitude of them, but here it is. HTML to figment by Builder IO. I'm going to click that one and then simply press capture page. This will download a JSON file. And now I can go back to my file. Here we have the plugin. And now step two, upload the figment.json file. So I click that one and I've downloaded a few. So I'm going to use that one. And voila, now it actually worked. It actually landed on top. I can simply move that frame so it's not on top of the Uber one. But now we have this page captured even though it was behind a login. It's time to do an actual redesign of your imported page. Before you start changing anything, it's quite useful to make a copy out of the imported original that you spend a little time cleaning up, you know, so that you have something to refer to when you show this to colleagues as well, like, okay, here's the original, here's what I changed. The way I like to do it is just make a copy of the entire frame. We'll actually start with giving the frame a meaningful name. Changing the names of frames is as easy as just click. You hover over the name, the word frame here and click it, actually double click it. Uber landing page, original, and hit enter. By the way, if you'd like keyboard shortcuts, I love them, mark the frame and press Command R. And then now I can rename it, hello. All right, now we have a cool name. Now we just make a copy. You can make a copy of frames in a multitude of ways. You can press Command C and Command V and use land right next to it. In other ways, mark in the frame and then holding Option or on Windows computer Alt, holding that down and clicking drag. That's also a pretty fast way to make a copy. Obviously we need to rename this one to redesign perhaps. It's not the original, so I'm clicking that on Command R. By the way, what I'm rewriting, you can see that happening up here in the actual layer list and that will also reflect. When you rename the frame name, that will reflect here on the canvas as well. Google landing page, redesign. I'm gonna use uppercase for this. It's very clear what's going on. If you want to, you can also add actual text frames above. So anyone going in here to this file later will actually see it more clearly. I'll show you. By the way, these names on these frames, later on, if you want to export these as images, maybe to put in a slide deck or something, the file name of the picture will actually be whatever you name that frame. So it can be quite useful to name them something logical. All right, now we're ready to edit some text. So it's super easy. Any text frame, you can just double click and you'll be in editing mode. Yeah, maybe I want to change this landing page headline. Start driving, get paid. Cool, so it's that easy. You can change any text frame just like that, double click and type away. You can also play with the font options. If you direct your attention to the right-hand panel here, you'll see something called text. Every little setting here, there's a lot going on here. Take it from the top. You can change the font. This is a long list of fonts. It's using everything from what's built into Figma. You can also use locally stored fonts. Just be aware that if you use a locally stored font that someone else on your team does not have installed on their computer, they won't be able to edit text without replacing all of the fonts first. So be mindful of that if you're going to change the font. You can also type to search. So I just click into this field. So I'm going to search for one eye like inter. That's a good font. Press enter and now it changed. You can also play around with the font weight. Bold that one, font size. Maybe go down a notch. No, actually let's go back up a notch. That looks cool. You can add things. You can type in things numerically, but you can also, for some of the settings you can also drag. You get a little cursor going on here and you can also play with the alignment. You can center the text, right align it. So fourth and aligning it vertically. You can align middle, align bottom. Doesn't really show here, but if I increase the height of this text field, you'll see the difference now when I jump between the options. Finally, behind these three dots, there are even more type settings. This will depend a little bit on what font family you show some, but there is a lot of stuff going on here. You can change, for example, the case. If you go to the details tab, subscript and superscript, if you're doing chemical stuff, I don't know. All of this depends on what type of font family you have. Not all of these settings are available for all fonts, but you know, have a look, see what you can do with your font that you've chosen. All right, that's basically it with font settings. There's also one thing you should know about the text options. If you look to the right here, you see there are options for auto width, auto height, or fixed size. I can just quickly show you. If I press auto width, text will just be as long as it is. How long it is, it will just be on one big line. That can be useful for smaller buttons and stuff, but if you see text behaving that way, have a look over here and set it back to auto height that's usually the setting you want. Auto height, it will adjust the height according to whatever width you control it to be. So that's pretty handy to know. Finally, you can also add new text boxes. So you don't have to stick to the ones existing here. Adding a new text box is really easy. You just use look up here to the left. Here you see the text tool, or you can use the keyboard shortcut T and just drag out a new text box. Let's start typing away. To exit out of editing a text box, you either click away anywhere on the canvas or press escape. All right, that's it for text. Let's move over and play around with images and icons. So adding and changing images in Figma is super easy. I'll show you a couple of methods now. For example, let's start with this header image. Let's say we wanna replace this guy with something else, someone else driving, perhaps. One way is to go to a stock photo place. One I particularly like is pexels.com. Reason is the licensing is very generous. You don't even have to give attribution. It's recommended, of course, but you don't have to actually, and you can use it commercially. This is search driver here. Something sunny, maybe. That one is not too bad. So I'll just download that and then I'll go back to Figma. So this is how you do to replace an existing image. Click the image layer.  You see there is a heading called fill. And below that, you can see here's the image. I click that one. And here I can actually change things like exposure. You have a little bit of control of that. But yeah, choose image. This will open up your file browser. And here we have it. I'll click that one, and open it up. And there we go, it's replaced. If you're not too happy with the way that one has been cropped or placed within the frame, you can click here again. Here you see it says fill. You can change that to crop. And now you have more control and you can change the size of it and move it around a little bit. Yeah, that looks all right. There we go. Another way of changing images is using a plugin in Figma called Unsplash. Essentially, it's a stock photo website, but it's built into Figma. I'm gonna mark that image again. And then I go to my resources and I go to the plugins tab. And now I'm going to search for Unsplash. There we go. That's it. That's the one. You press run. Give it a chance to think a little bit. Now you get this window up, open up. You can move it around. And here you can search again. So I'll search. And I click here, and I search for driver. There we go. That's a little bit more moody in a rainstorm. I just click that one. And since I had this layer selected, it will automatically populate that layer with the image you want. So it works with either one of these. For example, that's a portrait mode picture. See what happens now. It gets squeezed. That doesn't look too good. So I wanna show you how to fix that. You go into the fill again here to the right, change it to fit. There you go. It doesn't look great either, but now we got the proportions correct. And now we can change it again to crop. And now you can grab the corner of this one. Actually, I grabbed the side of it now and to maintain the proportions, I'm holding down the shift key. So shift makes everything transform with maintained proportions. There we go. Right, so that's how you use unsplash to put images in here. Another way how to add new images, not replacing existing ones, it's also super easy. Figma support is drag and drop. So I can actually grab that driver image that I downloaded from before. And I'll go to my downloads here. If you're on a Windows, obviously go to your file browser and just open up a window. And I just easily drag and drop it in. Boom. And you know what? That's a fairly high-res photo, as you can see. So we have to make it smaller. Again, if I'm not holding shift, it will crop the image. It will actually maintain the image's proportions, but the layer will be cropped. So I'm gonna regret that. I'm holding down shift now. And now we're maintaining the proportions. And by the way, as you can see this image is within this frame. So it's being, you know, you can see it's cropping. It's not exactly in the middle of the screen here. So I'm gonna move it over here, make it smaller again, make it smaller again. Gonna zoom in a little bit. Try to emulate the width at least of these images. And you see, you get the supporting lines going on. There's little tiny red lines on the sides. It's very helpful for aligning stuff. There we go. That's the same width of that image that looks good. Save on Uber Eats with Uber One membership. Actually, it doesn't make sense to have a driver here. I'm gonna quickly use Unsplash again to replace this with something like a picture of a burger or something. So a fast way to reuse a plugin you just used is, as I showed you before, right click anywhere on the canvas, or even faster is a keyboard shortcut, which I love is command option P or control alt P. That automatically runs the latest used plugin. So here we have Unsplash again. I can actually click one of these categories, so click food. Ooh, what do we want? Something tasty. Cool burger with a knife that looks a bit dangerous almost. Let's go with that one. Not even sure what it is, but it looks tasty. Great. All right, so next we wanna add some icons to make our design pop. If you're doing this design at a company already has a so-called design system, you might already have icons that you should be using. But sometimes for some web apps, it doesn't really like the icons aren't necessarily a core part of your visual identity, so you could use pre-made icon packs very successfully. And Figma, of course, supports this. Figma actually has a community where you can find all sorts of designs and files and plugins that you can use in your design. To find community, you go to the top left main menu button here. It's the little Figma icon.  Now we're at the start of your homepage, so to speak, of Figma again. And to find the community, you open up, you click here. And over there you can see community. Here is the community. There's a lot of files, popular files and stuff. What you wanna do is look up here. There's a search bar. I'm going to search for a very popular icon pack that I've used a lot when just comping something up very quickly and the branding is not that important. So it's called untitled UI icons. I hit search. And here we see the same pack actually, duplicated a lot of times. Anyone can actually republish these. So I guess that's why. We can just pick any one of them. I'm going to click this file. Here it is. This is a file full of icons essentially. And up on the top here, you'll see a button called get a copy. And that will duplicate a copy to our instance of Figma. It won't download anything locally because this is Figma, it's browser-based. You don't need to download stuff. You just have it in your area of Figma. So get a copy. That'll open up a new tab. Let's let her load a little bit. Here it is. So here's some instructions on how to use this icon pack. I recommend you read this because there's a more efficient way of using icon packs and components in the design system but we'll make it just a quick and dirty way now. We'll just copy over icons to our redesign. If you look over to the left, you'll see there are different pages in this design file. We're on the welcome page right now. And below you see there is one page called line icons. Click that one. And here we have the line icon pack. I'm going to grab over an arrow. Which one should I pick? Arrow right, a default one. That's perfect. So I'll mark that one and then hit command C. Now I'll copy that. And now I'll move back to, I need to find my redesign file again. Actually, since I have tabs up here, I can go back maybe here, recently viewed. Here it is. This file is untitled, we'll name it later but I'll go back to my design file. Let's zoom in here on Uber for Business. I want to put an arrow icon in this button here. So I'll use paste, command V or control V on a window computer. And there we have that little buddy. Now if I put this icon in the button here, it won't show up because it's black on black here. So I need to change its color. So the way to do that is you scroll down here on the right hand side. You see a small heading called selection colors. You just click this little colors watch here and here you can pick and change and change the color as you wish. Fully red one, you can change the hue. But we just wanted a white one. So I'll drag it all the way up top left. And there we go. Now we can barely see it because it's on a very bright background. But that's basically it. So I'm gonna place it over here and I'm gonna grab this rectangle and drag it out. And whoops. And that looks fairly okay. I can also nudge, if you wanna get really detailed you can nudge things, not by using the mouse but using your arrow key. So I'm nudging one pixel at a time by pressing up and down. You can see here. Oh, we actually found the middle of it. You can go left and right as well.  So now I'm jumping. I think eight or 10 pixels at a time depending on your settings. There we go. Sign up to drive. I'll actually go back to my icon pack over here. Do we have a car somewhere? How to search this file? You simply press command F. Up on the top left here you have a little search bar now where we will search throughout the layers. I'll write car. Sim car, erud. Almost. Do we see a car somewhere? There we go. Car 01. There we go. Look. A small car. I'm gonna grab that one. Command C. Go back to my design file. Here we are. And command V. Quickly change that little body's color. The selection color is black. And now I'll show another way of quickly doing it is you can use this little eye dropper. This will look at what color you're hovering over and apply that color.  There we go. Place that on top. Adjust the width of this. There we go. A little car button. Not sure that makes 100% sense, but you know, now you know how to add icons. Okay, let's imagine you're done.  It's very easy. Thanks to this being a browser-based application, you can just share a URL and copy that and paste it and anyone can come in here and look around and edit and comment depending on what access you give them. Let's just look up in the corner here. There's a big glaring button here saying share. So click that. And you'll get some options here. I'd recommend one of these two options. If you don't have huge security concerns, maybe this is just something you played around with. It's not, you know, important proprietary business information going on here. You can have this as an open URL. So you change this little dropdown to only people invited to anyone with a link and can view, change that, then copy link. Now you have a URL that you can share with anyone. You just email them that or send them via Slack or whatever, you know, means necessary. And they'll click the link and they'll be in, they can open up the file and look at it. Now if this is something internal that not just anyone should have access to, then you can change this to only people invited to this file. And then you use this field up here where you simply enter their email address. The thing is, I mean, this increases the pressure a little bit for sharing your design with people in your organization. So it all depends on what your preferences are. When you have shared it with people, you can also leave comments in the design to yourself or to your colleagues.  If you look up in the toolbar, it's the most furthest to the right tool here, add comment. Or you can press the keyboard shortcut C. So now you can give more detailed feedback. For example, this image here, if I'm talking about this one, you just drop the comment here and say something like burger. Nice, really it. Another quick tip, if you wanna talk about an entire section on the website, you can click and drag. You'll get this little highlight. This section, perfect. You can also add emojis. And if people are invited to this file, you can also tag them by using the app. And when someone looks at this, they'll see that it's, okay, it's referring to this entire section when they hover above it. Pretty handy. And the final way of sharing your redesign is exporting it as a picture or a PDF. For example, if you need to store it as static documentation somewhere, really the magic of having a browser-based design software like this is that you don't have to export things as static images. But I understand that some people might wanna show this in PowerPoints or other areas. Maybe you wanna export something to actually use as images on another website and so on. You can essentially mark anything and export it.  You can decide the size. You can export it half the size or twice the size and so on or exactly the same size it's set to right now. This one is, if you remember when we imported it, it's 1200 pixels and by 4,000, more than 4,000 pixels high. So this is gonna be a pretty big image. You can also change the file format. You can change it. JPEG SVG Sevector Format and PDF. It's as easy as you just pressing export. And that will be downloaded to your computer and you can share it. If you just want to export a smaller section of the website or maybe an image, just grab that image, press export and now only this little image will be exported. And there you have it. Now you know how to redesign any website in Figma in just minutes. Again, this is perfect to use after a brainstorming workshop or any type of workshop where you want to try out new concepts for an existing product. So you can quickly, anyone can quickly come up new high fidelity design for it. This merger of product design and workshop facilitation has really leveled up my career and my skills and it's been great fun. If you want to learn more about facilitation and how to level up your career with these skills, head over to the free facilitation community. The link is in the description below. Over there, you'll learn more about how to use workshop and facilitation and incorporate that in your line of work so that you're not just involved in execution, you're also involved in the actual product strategy. All right, that's it. If you like this video, make sure to hit the subscribe button and the bell and thanks for watching. See you next time. Wait to the camera. Who's a good designer? Who's a good designer? By the way, can't speak, need coffee, blah, blah, blooper reel. I should have read them before I started recording. Editing nightmare, I'm so sorry. Pop.