A year of unDraw and the future
Today marks a special day for me and unDraw. A year full of designing illustrations and meeting awesome people. Time to think of the future!
A brief overview of 2018
unDraw began as a personal side-project to share my illustrations in a way that’s useful for everyone. This idea and a few other improvements by Aggelos, led to a much cooler project than I had imagined! It now has over 70k monthly users and a steadily growing number that surpasses 320k monthly downloads. So a huge thank you to everyone using it and know that I am grateful to be part of your work.
What is it and who is it for
It’s now clear that unDraw extended beyond a simple design project and is reaching a wider spectrum of creative people. People who are starting their businesses, people who contribute with their own open-source projects and it was used in ways I could not imagine. unDraw enables everyone, no matter how limited budget they have, to enter the competition with an equal shot. To create personal or client projects that range from extremely small budgets to large scale ones with focus on speed.
The future
- Over the past year, I’ve created 469 illustrations for unDraw and I will continue doing so during 2019, no matter what other client or personal projects I am working on.
- unDraw has gotten a great deal of attention and it would be selfish not to share this with other extremely talented people in various fields, including illustration. So the main focus on 2019 is to help other creatives find an audience and showcase their amazing work.
- Last year, we also released Evie, a framework for rapid website development so we’ll build on that and release more tools for new businesses and personal growth.
- Finally, we are still looking for the best way to bring our illustrations directly inside the designer workflows so in early 2019 we’ll have some news on how you’ll be able to find and embed illustrations on your favorite prototyping tool!
Time to be thankful
It’s been an amazing and exciting year! I want to thank everyone that reached out on social media and let you know that it has been the highlight of 2018 for me and the reason I will keep unDraw going! Here’s to another great year together and to many many new illustrations!!! A huge thank you for everything!!!
PS: I want to especially thank a few people I’ve met this year and have helped me in different ways.
- Thank you to Graeme Fulton, who I’m proud to call a friend and has been there since the beginning with great advice and lots of support.
- To Steve Schoger for selflessly helping to reach a wider audience and sharing unDraw in the most useful way.
- And finally to Kris Puckett, a designer and person I admire, who despite our weird interactions, gave me the confidence to believe in myself and overcome my own imposter syndrome.
