You design something beautiful.
Perfect spacing, clean grids, balanced typography.
You hand it off to devs feeling proud of what you've created.

And then you open staging

The font weights are off, the paddings look weird, the animation feels like it's lagging, and that layout you obsessed over now looks like it's held together by duct tape.

That's when you learn the truth - the perfect handoff doesn't exist.

I've seen this happen across every startup I've worked with.

Not because engineers are careless, but because design and development live in two very different worlds.

Designers work in ideal conditions - pixels, grids, harmony, creative freedom.

Developers work in the real world - data, performance, and 500 ways different browsers can break your design.

So when you hand off your Figma file, it's not a blueprint.

It's just a reference to start a conversation.

The sooner you accept that, the smoother things get.

Here's what actually works:

Stop treating handoff like a one-time event. Stay involved till it ships.

Focus on what affects the user, not what only looks good in Figma.

Explain intent, not just numbers. "It's 16px" means nothing, "it gives breathing room" means everything.

Build trust with your devs. If they see you as a partner, not another Jira ticket, they'll care more.

The goal isn't to achieve pixel perfection.

It's to achieve experience alignment.

Once you start working like that, something funny happens - your designs actually start looking closer to how you imagined them.

Because you didn't just hand them off.

You built them together.