So many little design helper sites!

I had one of those little single-serving designer helper sites bookmarked the other day: getwaves.io. Randomized SVG waves! Lots of cool options! Easy to customize! Easy to copy and paste! Well played, z creative labs.

But then I saw the little link at the top of the page, that it was part of something called Haikei. So I checked that out, and holy mackerel, it’s great! There are a dozen or more similar “generators” within one app, each just as well done as the SVG waves one.

Kind of reminds me of Omatsuri which is a similar collection of useful little on-off tools.

But heck, those are just two apps, even if they are collections of mini apps in an of themselves. Around the same time, I became aware of tiny-helpers.dev, which is a roundup site of all sorts of these little one-off helper sites. Haikei and Omatsuri are both on there, along with many hundred more. Just the SVG area alone is super:

I’m sure y’all find these things just as useful as I do. They don’t make us lazy, they make us efficient. I know how to make a pattern. I know how to draw a curve with a Pen Tool. I know how to convert SVG into JSX. But using a dedicated tool makes me faster and better at it. And sometimes I don’t know how to do those things, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take advantage. Fake it ’til you make it, right?