Alternatives
Products that do what I Made a Site for Designers to Gen Great Patterns Quickly, No Headaches does
It was a crisp autumn evening when I found myself burning the midnight oil, yet again. As a graphic designer, I was knee-deep in a project that required intricate patterns for a client's new product line. The clock ticked mercilessly as I struggled with complex design software, trying to bring my vision to life. That's when it hit me – why couldn't I just tell a computer what I wanted and have it create the pattern for me? Why did I need to wrestle with technical jargon and complicated prompts when I had a clear picture in my mind? This revelation sparked a journey that would consume the…
- 1IW
Hey everyone! After two long years of writing along side my co-author, we have finally released the book: Tragic Design. It's about the true impact of bad design and how to fix it. We felt there was a need to shed light on the discussion of Design Ethics by exploring the ways bad design can harm people and offering up solutions. When most of us think about bad design, we think the worst case is lost customers. This book explores the very real impact it has: physical harm, emotional harm, and more. We are excited to have John Maeda writing the Foreword to the book, who has been a long…
2017
- 2GC
I just launched a new project aimed at helping people to do something fun and creative every day by giving them daily challenges. The goal is to promote habitual creativity by reducing the barrier to content creation and reminding users to keep at it. Everyone can see everyone else's creations and give them some encouragement with a like. When designing Get Creative, I wanted something with a mobile sensibility: badged notifications reminding users to return, a very simple interface, even a predefined viewing size. But I didn't want to dive full in to iOS or Android where testing would be…
2012
- 3IG
I recently quit my job at a decent TTS company I was working for as a software developer advocate to pursue what I have always enjoyed doing, which is creating software that is helpful. Before and after quitting my job, I have always found it expensive and time-consuming to hire a designer that can come up with a decent logo for my software, and as a software engineer, I really enjoy coding, not designing. One day, I made a pretty bold move to design a logo, and it took me a whole day to come up with a logo that looks nice. This is the reason I built Owl AI, a logo generator that generates…
2024 · app.owlai.art
- 4WV
Hi, I wanted to share with You our project (https://comparere.io). We have built a website for comparing graphics and designs. The concept is simple, you have to just drag'n drop two designs you are having trouble to pick from. The idea has emarged when we stumbled across many different facebook groups for graphic designers, where they used to sometimes ask the community for help to decide which design is better. I had similar problem too. Hopefully this tool will help graphic/ux designers build/create projects that will appeal to more audiences. We are looking forward to…
2019
- 5FP
A little background. For the last 1.5 years I lost what could be considered an embarrassing amount of money hiring other people to work on a project that I thought had potential, I got some important people involved, had some great coders, but couldn't launch. The failure was depressing, rejection by YC didn't help.. I had to take a job, I didn't enjoy and I had a girlfriend who stood by me despite going into debt. But bouncing back over the last 45 days I've taught myself Rails some Jquery, and Javascript and built this www.hangout.io. It's empowering to build something myself because I'm…
2011
- 6PS
Hi HN, This one's a twofer. First, I'm showing off my personal site and blog, garrettgoss.com [1]. I'm looking to make a career change — from biomedical engineering/biomedical research, to research and development engineering in the consumer product development/additive manufacturing space — and felt that my prior work experience inadequately reflected my true interests and skills, which are better exemplified by my side projects. I put this together for myself, to better document my own work, for the broader internet, to share some of the projects I've developed to those who might…
2019
- 7ID
Hey HN! I develop browser extensions, I suck at web design, and I've been exploring AI/LLMs. With my new found free-time since dropping work hours, I've developed a Design Copilot browser extension [0]. It does what it says on the tin - you choose a part of your website and the tool gives you instant expert design feedback - "change this font to that, add this much whitespace, use brighter colours .... etc" The tool is completely 100% free to use, its powered by bringing your own AI API Key, and the current LLM it uses is Google Gemini 1.5 Pro. I've yet to hit the free rate-limit and I…
2024 · old.reddit.com
- 8IM
I am a non-hacker "idea guy" with zero discernible talent. Like most, the story starts with me doing things the hard way. I dreamt of a tool that would save me countless hours. Like most of my ideas, it was supposed to die in a couple of hours, but this one had some legs.... "If I needed this, surely others did too" kept looping in my head. Could I get this built? Could I build it myself? Nah...too lazy to learn how, but before I did anything, I had to promise myself one thing: No more ideas! If ideas were sit-ups, I would have a six pack instead of this tire. It was a constant mental…
2012
- 9IF
So, after many years of kicking about little apps and not putting the full effort in, I decided to bite the bullet and get on with it. Very much inspired by patio11 and Bingo Card Creator, I present Griddol (http://www.griddol.com) a tool to create and play word searches. Intended mainly for teachers, but encouraging those who like a word search too. This been churning around in my head for over a year in various forms, and I used the concept to help learn CoffeeScript, CouchDB and node.js, so even if the product itself is a failure, the learning process has been valuable. I'll be the first…
2011
- 10SI
Hey guys, I would really appreciate it if you could take a look at my new site that I have put into private beta this weekend. In summary it is a site for photographers, graphic designers and web designers to get private feedback on their work. There are plenty of sites out there were we can post our work and get it seen but sometimes you need to be able to get some feedback before having it on a public display. This is part 1 of the longer term plan. The beta has the basics to enable users to review each others work, the number of images are limited at the minute but I will be extending…
2011
- 11IM
Hi, all I worked on this tool a couple of months. I always had trouble creating a logo for my next project so I decided to automate it. Appreciate any feedback. Cheers, Dan
2024 · logo-ship.com
- 12VN
I got the idea of [mindmap.so](http://mindmap.so/) out of my own frustration of managing my personal notes in Notion and Miro in parallel. I have built it 3 months back on top of excalidraw, posted it in Reddit a couple of times, and never looked back (was using it only for personal use). Little did I know that the small and nimble tool that I created has crossed 2000+ users (was so surprised when I saw the dashboard last week). It was all organic and word of mouth . Having 2000+ users trusting a product is no easy feat. That’s when I thought may be I should put some more…
2024 · mindmap.so
- 13MH
Hi Hn, A buddy and I worked on this prototype to see if we could design a system that helps people think creatively. I'd love your feedback, tips and pointers - and yes, I know it's a bit ugly (much css work to be done). Check it out at beta.monsterlumen.com and let us know what you think!
2013
- 14IM
Hi HN, I am a solopreneur in the evenings and a software engineer during the day. In the past, I have created lots of calculators for my web projects and freelancing friends. These were pretty basic, but users always welcomed them. I also used currently available builders, but the problem was that they were either slow, broke on mobile devices, had nonsense page view limits, or were expensive. Some even ticked all those boxes. So I have decided to create my own, with a simple interface, and called it Creative Widgets (if it ever takes off, I plan to add more exciting stuff like charts, etc,…
2024 · creativewidgets.io
- 15IM
Hey everyone! I'm really excited to share a side project I've been pouring my heart into lately. As a developer with over five years of experience, I've taken on my fair share of freelance web development projects. In the beginning, I always coded everything from scratch, but as I juggled more projects simultaneously, I started using Webflow to save time. While Webflow was definitely a lifesaver, I couldn't help but wish for an even faster way to set up a website – something that would allow me to start with a template and then easily customize it to my heart's content. The problem with most…
2024 · instawebai.com
- 16IM
Hi HN! Solo developer here. 10 days ago, I started building this after spending countless hours copying/pasting marketing sections and fighting to keep them consistent with our design system. I wondered: "What if AI could understand our design system and generate React components that actually match it?" Current progress (10 days in): - Can generate hero sections that follow your design tokens - Uses your actual component variants and styles - Works with Next.js, Tailwind, shadcn/ui It's very early days, but I'm excited to share it with other devs who: - Are tired of rebuilding…
2024 · robustlaunch.com
- 17IB
process demo - https://i.redd.it/fbhlwsq1gcmg1.gif render demo - https://i.redd.it/smddwtryhcmg1.gif I love making creative software. I spent a few years making pixel art software but recently have gotten into 3d animation and 2d animation and really wanted a way to realize crazy ideas. Blockbench didn't feel quite right, spline is super well made but felt catered too much to just idle website animations, and I really didn't want to fall down a master class in Blender just to make some silly stuff. While I'm definitely not discounting Blender's literal…
Mar 2026 · app.topomaker.com
- 18AC
Check out http://swrm.io Basically, we created a feedback platform, and launched it as a tool to allow designers to crowdsource feedback from other designers. The idea is that this tool would allow designers to improve, share knowledge, learn new skills, and consistently deliver their best work. There's a lot that still needs to get done, including making money, letting posts die out after a certain time, and making the site faster by generating image thumbnails. Any feedback would be appreciated and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Feel free to sign up. Thanks!
2012
- 19IB
Hi HN, I’ve been working on a side project: 4oimage.site — a fast, easy-to-use image generator that focuses on style-driven creation, not prompt engineering. Why I built this: I love generative AI, but most tools require carefully-crafted prompts or a deep understanding of models to get good results. I wanted to create something where you just pick a style, upload an image or input a concept, and get beautiful results — instantly. Key features: • Generate images in curated styles (anime, vintage, futuristic, watercolor, etc.) • No prompt tuning or parameter tweaking needed. • Clean UI, runs…
2025 · 4oimage.site
- 20IM
Hey Hacker News, I'm the maker of Kopage, a free & self-hosted Website Builder. While working on new, cool features (AI, of course), it would be great to hear some HN feedback :) Thanks, Simon
2024 · kopage.com
- 21IB
Hi HN I built a fun little tool: It uses Groq’s LLaMA 3.3 + Puppeteer to analyze a website Then it roasts the design/content/UX with humor And finishes with 3–5 genuinely helpful improvement tips You can try it here: https://ai-roast-vert.vercel.app I wanted to: Practice fast idea-to-launch cycle (built in 2 days) Experiment with a viral-friendly product Monetize with a $0.55 pro version that gives a detailed roast + download Would love your feedback — on the idea, the tone, the usefulness — anything! Thanks in advance
Sep 2025 · ai-roast-vert.vercel.app
- 22IB
Hello everyone, I doubt this would be relevant to the kind of person who uses HN, but I thought I could share for some feedback. I built this site because there is a whole world of people who believe in new age spirituality and I am very much one of them. It is a site where you get the users gender their goals and their images and use AI and psychology to generate images of them in the process of achieving their goals. I am so deeply struggling with how to get this highly on Google. I don't even know if that is important anymore. What are your suggestions with distribution and getting in…
2025 · visionboardsai.com
- 23IR
Hey HN, A few years ago, when I was working as a freelance web developer, there were many projects that used repetitive layouts and designs That's when I built my own collection of basic UI components like buttons and all. At that time, I was using CSS, so I styled my components using CSS. Later, I decided to open-source these components, and that’s when I created HextaUI After a few months, I found out about Tailwind CSS, so I decided to recreate all components with better design, modularity, and accessibility. This time, I also added animated components, not just base components. After…
2025 · hextaui.com
- 24IB
Hey all, I'm a product designer and I built this cause' when I was designing liquidity pool and staking features for this DAO, I didn't know how the user flow worked and how the UI looked for similar pages, so I was constantly switching back and forth Balancer, Uniswap, and OlympusDAO as references. I thought that I might not be the only one with this problem, so I built this library of userflow screenshots, and annotated them, to share with the web3 community of builders, designers, and developers. Would love feedback if you're a builder in web3, let's connect too! (Also I'm aware that…
2023 · w3design.io
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