What type of images would you be most interested in? (Logo's, general branding images, blog, social)
Hello fellow Indie Hackers,
I'm a long time IH reader, and have only recently become more active on IH :)
I'm working on a website that will generate images based on templates. It will help to come up with well designed images, without design knowledge. Similar to how Logojoy and similar websites work. I worked on this a while back but dropped the project and now I'd like to pick it up again.
My question to you is: What type of images do you (as an Indiehacker) need or want the most?
I'm thinking one of the following:
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Logo's, generated quickly, with free options that can help you get started on a project quickly, and perhaps better ones that are premium, but all options would allow you to download a logo in multiple sizes/formats very quickly.
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Logo's/branding, again a logo, but also with supporting branding images that can be added to a website and get a website filled with visual content more quickly.
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Lastly, the one I'm leaning towards most, blog and social media images, kind of like stock photos but easily add words, shapes and other things to get more engagement. This would help content creators and social media people. I've blogged in the past, and have experienced the pain of adding images to a blog post (although Canva and Snappa do a good job of it).
What do you think of the above three options? What have you needed the most in the past (or currently need)? Or have I missed some options?
I'd love to have your opinion and feedback.
Nick
With the third one, Canva is a big player in this market.
You're right Josh, they're a huge player, and Adobe is also big and not to be underestimated.
Which is why I think going niche would help.
I also think that Canva is a bit too much of a design tool. But they have great reach in the market, that's hard to tackle directly with limited resources.
Logos
Thanks Onyeka, I'm assuming you're in need of a logo, or have been in the past?
I don't understand - bullet one and two...what exactly do you propose?
Bullets one and two refer to creating logo's and branding in a web application. There are many such applications, but they either provide very generic looking logo's, or take a while to generate (and some look dated). So the idea is not new, but there's room to improve the offering.
Does that explain it?
The last one. I'm looking into the same thing, for the same exact reasons (it's a pain for me to find/create graphics for social media).
Curious: what's your background? Are you a developer with some (graphic) design knowledge, or no design knowledge?
The biggest challenge for me in this, is that I don't have graphic design experience. I can def work on the code and UI, but ultimately I need a designer to generate templates.
Hi Panos,
Thanks for your reply!
I'm a developer (although in my day job, I work in corporate security and privacy). In the past I've had my own business in apartment rentals, which is when I used to blog and discovered the pain of looking for relevant images.
I can develop in Ruby on Rails, although I'm not an elite developer nor do I have frontend experience (e.g. React or Vue).
I'm not a designer, although I know what looks good and so could build upon inspiration from blog and social media posts that work well.
I think there's been an evolution of image creation, from complicated Photoshop, to easier design tools like Canva and Snappa. But, I still think they are design tools, rather than as a user inputting 'I need a relevant image + text for something about apartment rentals', and a tool would create that and provide suggestions.
As always, the challenge is how to find (paying) customers. Perhaps it would help to focus on a single niche, e.g. only blog posts in a certain industry, or only Facebook images.
What are you working on specifically?
I haven't started working on anything specifically. I've made the mistake in the past to build too many stuff, before validating demand. So now I'm hesitant to start building before validating demand (ideally paying customers).
Like you, I've seen the success of the various logo creations tools (Logojoy etc.), and I was thinking what other design services could you offer in the same model: take some input from the user, and automatically generate variations for the user to pick (and perhaps customize a bit). I think social media posts is definitely a good candidate.
Also, I've looked at productized design services (see, for e.g., ManyPixels) and I've thought about Facebook posts design as a service. Made a landing page to explain the idea: https://socialdesigns.landen.co/.
But such a model requires even more design experience (hiring designers, etc.). At least with the Logojoy model, you could build some templates (on your own or hire a designer), and then write the code that generates some good looking variations based on certain inputs. You can call it machine-learning, but I think it's mostly a bunch of if/else's. 😀
Agreed. Sure you can use Canvas to create FB posts - probably even better than any automated tool, if you have some design skills. But if you don't, the idea is that these tools are "smart" to create variations according to certain design best practices. So at the expense of customization, you get images fast and with no design skills.
It's a good idea, there really does look like the market is there. Might be worth giving it a go and see if you can take a slice. Good luck.
Thanks James, I think I will, I'm already developing an application.
Then go for it and give it a try, you will learn some good lessons from it, I know that's been my oath every project I've done I've learned from and take those lessons forward.
I'll message you when I launch it! ;)
the third one. I'm working on this exact thing too, and https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tyle
Just came out on ph. Seems like there's a market.
Hi Jak,
Wow, I looked at your website and it's really amazing. I'm going to upvote you on PH!
A few things I noticed (just to be helpful):
On PH you say 'A social graphic design tool for non-developers', whereas if I go to your website, the title is 'Video creation tool'. I think it's a bit confusing what your focus is. It seems like you're providing both (so image and video content for social media), yet the messaging focuses on only either one of them.
I see lots of Asian text (not sure which language specifically), I think it's confusing to have both English and Asian text, I would create separate language pages.
It seems a bit slow to load, but I think that's just because you're on PH right now.
I think the pricing is confusing, you're mentioning slides, but end users don't care about those types of terms when creating image and video posts, they want easy to understand pricing.
Have you had much traction with paid users?
The above are just my opinions, and I'm saying so just to provide helpful feedback.
It looks amazing and I'll be following your progress closely!
oh I'm not affiliated with Tyle. I meant that there is competition in this space, and that I'm working on a similar tool. A few months from launch, but here's the landing page: grafire.com