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Show HN: ThePenTool – Library of design assets

18 points by arsenkolyba 6y ago

arsenkolyba 6y ago
Hey HN! This is something I've been working on for the last 6 months. I'm coming from a Product Design background (I'm actually still a product designer) and I've learned a lot building this product. Pretty much everything here is #nocode and is built mostly using Webflow. The goal of this product is to be able to cover all (or most) routine tasks that designers do for them to be able to focus on creating products and not on designing email templates (or something else). Would love to hear you feedback, especially designers!
- nickthegreek 6y ago
  dont change my cursor and to be honest, i cant stand the font.
  - arsenkolyba 6y ago
    thanks for the feedback!
- meristem 6y ago
  (Me: UX/ Human Factors/ Prod Management background) A big thing in design is "form follows function". The pages you designed skew heavily to the form side of that equation. From a pure UX POV there are so many visual elements competing for attention that I cannot tell you what is important. I can tell you my heart rate went up while I tried to understand the site, and that now there is cortisol floating around. This is not a " delight" neurochemical reaction.
  - arsenkolyba 6y ago
    You can treat this as an art piece. This product is for designers mostly and one of my goals was to impress.
    - pan69 6y ago
      Congrats on launching this, I'm sure a lot of work has gone into it. > This product is for designers mostly and one of my goals was to impress. To me this doesn't make sense. Wouldn't designers not be capable of designing their own? If you have a set of prefab design assets for sale then I would assume that your target audience would be non-designers, and, if that was the case that format in which you present your product would be catered to that audience, not?
      - arsenkolyba 6y ago
        They usually take them as a base layer and then modify to what they need, saving lots of time. Here's where thePenTool comes into play
    - meristem 6y ago
      Wow, this reads to me as a version of "You are not a designer, you do not understand artistic goals". Could you clarify if I properly understood your response?
      - arsenkolyba 6y ago
        Not at all! I just tried saying that making a simple and "usual" website was not my goal. I wanted to make something crazy and that's how I got here
    - nc 6y ago
      Designer here, yeah the visual style is pretty rad but I wouldn’t use this in practise due to how busy it all is.
- brulard 6y ago
  Although it might be artistic or even pretty, I didn't figure it out and I leave feeling overwhelmed and very confused.
  - arsenkolyba 6y ago
    Thanks for the feedback!
kanobo 6y ago
Thanks for sharing, hn isn't quite the audience for the site's design, but fwiw I really like the quirky design - there's alot to appreciate and get inspiration from.
- arsenkolyba 6y ago
  Still, thanks!
evanmaynard1 6y ago
I wanted to love the value prop here as a founder that just had our first professional design refresh. It's a great price for a lot of inspiration but too busy to use. Quirkiness impresses first but then starts to distract. As a technical person, I've always wanted a design 101 best practices guide that could help me make better decisions on the fly. I'd definitely pay for an hour course/chapter that solved this problem and I was excited at first when I thought this was going that way!

18 points by arsenkolyba 6y ago

Hey HN! This is something I've been working on for the last 6 months. I'm coming from a Product Design background (I'm actually still a product designer) and I've learned a lot building this product. Pretty much everything here is #nocode and is built mostly using Webflow. The goal of this product is to be able to cover all (or most) routine tasks that designers do for them to be able to focus on creating products and not on designing email templates (or something else). Would love to hear you feedback, especially designers!

nickthegreek 6y ago
dont change my cursor and to be honest, i cant stand the font.
- arsenkolyba 6y ago
  thanks for the feedback!
meristem 6y ago
(Me: UX/ Human Factors/ Prod Management background) A big thing in design is "form follows function". The pages you designed skew heavily to the form side of that equation. From a pure UX POV there are so many visual elements competing for attention that I cannot tell you what is important. I can tell you my heart rate went up while I tried to understand the site, and that now there is cortisol floating around. This is not a " delight" neurochemical reaction.
- arsenkolyba 6y ago
  You can treat this as an art piece. This product is for designers mostly and one of my goals was to impress.
  - pan69 6y ago
    Congrats on launching this, I'm sure a lot of work has gone into it. > This product is for designers mostly and one of my goals was to impress. To me this doesn't make sense. Wouldn't designers not be capable of designing their own? If you have a set of prefab design assets for sale then I would assume that your target audience would be non-designers, and, if that was the case that format in which you present your product would be catered to that audience, not?
    - arsenkolyba 6y ago
      They usually take them as a base layer and then modify to what they need, saving lots of time. Here's where thePenTool comes into play
  - meristem 6y ago
    Wow, this reads to me as a version of "You are not a designer, you do not understand artistic goals". Could you clarify if I properly understood your response?
    - arsenkolyba 6y ago
      Not at all! I just tried saying that making a simple and "usual" website was not my goal. I wanted to make something crazy and that's how I got here
  - nc 6y ago
    Designer here, yeah the visual style is pretty rad but I wouldn’t use this in practise due to how busy it all is.
brulard 6y ago
Although it might be artistic or even pretty, I didn't figure it out and I leave feeling overwhelmed and very confused.
- arsenkolyba 6y ago
  Thanks for the feedback!

kanobo 6y ago

Thanks for sharing, hn isn't quite the audience for the site's design, but fwiw I really like the quirky design - there's alot to appreciate and get inspiration from.

arsenkolyba 6y ago
Still, thanks!

evanmaynard1 6y ago

I wanted to love the value prop here as a founder that just had our first professional design refresh. It's a great price for a lot of inspiration but too busy to use. Quirkiness impresses first but then starts to distract. As a technical person, I've always wanted a design 101 best practices guide that could help me make better decisions on the fly. I'd definitely pay for an hour course/chapter that solved this problem and I was excited at first when I thought this was going that way!