So many little design helper sites!

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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.

Random scattering of vector stars.

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?