Three years of unDraw
A milestone I never expected to reach and celebrate, but here we are! Three years of continued design, style exploration, amazing interactions and opportunities.
What started as a side-project has now grown beyond my wildest expectations and maybe control! unDraw surpassed 400k monthly users (2x since 2019) and is now ranked with products like Gatsby.js and Product Hunt. It’s been a lot of growing for me, for Aggelos and for the website itself with a rebuild from scratch, new styles to overcome design fatigue and a way to make it long-lasting but I can honestly say that we’ve succeeded.
An innovative community
This wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing support of the community and awesome persons who are there and motivate me to go on. Thank you so much for everything. I’ve seen unDraw being used in new AWS products, established companies like Algolia, promising no-code tools and so many products, presentations and designs by creative people that make me wanna get back and improve each illustration again and again.
A glimpse in 2021
Every year, I like to set the goals for the next but this one feels different, so I’ll do my best to outline them as much as possible.
- Despite the natural urge to grow the collection, I will continue to perfect it with all the data I’ve learnt throughout 3 years of designing at a large scale. Making the illustrations even more impressive, versatile and most importantly, effective.
- I always wanted unDraw to grow steadily and even slowed down the progress so it stands through time. After Adobe XD, we took another step by bringing a visual feedback collection to Miro. Now it’s time to think how and who will be able to continue it in a way that it maintains its openness and keeps helping creatives with their goals.
- With all these going on and unDraw stabilized in a great course, I’m ready to revisit my personal work and in the process share a few tools we’ve developed and can have a similar impact on the creative community.
A huge thank you
Numbers, growth and personal projects are nothing without amazing people and this is exactly the reason unDraw keeps going. A community of creative and gifted persons who I’ve met through social media and online interactions but are now true friends. Thank you so much for all the support and hope 2021 will be a great year!
P.S.: A few people I want to especially thank this year who helped in different ways.
- A huge thank you to Farbod Saraf for being a vocal supporter and motivator for both me and Aggelos. Bringing unDraw to Miro was the least we could do for you!
- To Thor, Leke, Phebian and Kris for testing the new unDraw back in January and providing useful feedback.
- To Balaji Srinivasan who really made us think where this is going, was there to steer us away from bad decisions and helped us set new goals for our future.
- To Quincy Larson whose offer to help and kind words really meant the world to me.
