Figma — Recreating Instagram’s 3-Person Liked Post Icon using Boolean Tool (Subtract Selection)

Here’s a quick guide on Figma in how to recreate the 3 bubble icons you see next to a liked post if three or more of the people you follow like the same post.

This is what I mean:

Let’s get right into it!

First, you would want to start off by making a perfect circle, however big you’d like. Make two of them and overlap the ends depending on how much of a cutoff you would like.

Creating two circles overlapping one another.

Next, you will want to select both circles and expand the ‘Boolean Group’ Selection Tool (3rd icon in the top middle of Figma’s toolbar) and select ‘Subtract Selection’. This will subtract the layer that is on top from the layer on the bottom.

Boolean Tool — Subtract Selection to create a crescent circle.

You can see that the crescent circle is on the opposite side of what we wanted. You can easily fix this by going to the angle tool on the right and changing it from 0 degrees to 180 degrees.

Flipping the image 180 degrees.

Finally, we’ll just copy and paste another copy of this and recreate another perfect circle of the same size and we will have the layout of the 3-bubble icon. You can select all 3 layers and in the design nav on the right, on the first row, select the last option and then select ‘ Distribute Horizontal Spacing’ to get them all the same length away from one another.

Creating the 3-Bubble icons.

Then you will want to flatten each of the crescent circle before adding in a drop shadow for all 3 icons. Here, I added a 2px drop shadow in both the y-axis and x-axis.

Flatten images to work with them easier.

Lastly, you’ll want to add an image into each circle. This can easily be done using the plugin — Unsplash. They have great royalty-free portrait images!

Adding portrait photos via Unsplash.

And there you have it! You can use this in many different ways and create all types of shapes. Enjoy!