Show HN: I'm Building an Alternative to Figma

[jszersze]

I'm building Octo because I needed a tool that combined Figma’s collaboration with Illustrator and Photoshop’s tooling. As a developer, I wanted something that supports both the technical and creative sides of UI/UX design. Octo is cross-platform and built to simplify workflows for people who code and design.

[tjkrusinski]

The .coffee domain is strange. Product looks good overall. I'm not sure why I'd want this over figma though. What's the difference? It wasn't clear reading the home page.

[jszersze]

I wanted to keep the product's name short and .com, .org .io, etc. domains are very difficult to get, but since both developers and designers drink a lot of coffee, I thought it would be easy to remember.

There are a few reasons for an alternative, one of the goals behind this project is to identify and incorporate all of the tooling that supports a UI/UX designer's everyday workflow directly into the editor. I found that designers still use Adobe products to tweak vector and raster graphics, so they end up paying for both Figma and Adobe. Sure, there are some plugins available in Figma that supplement missing features, but a lot of them are not free, so you end up still paying for more than seats. Having things incorporated directly should also mean that the tools are easier to find and use and were not just slapped in as an afterthought.

I'm also hoping to solve a lot of the interface and usability problems in a different way so that it's appealing to people who find Figma confusing.

After the bulk of the editor is complete, I plan to incorporate even more fun features that support designers that would not be possible with an extension or a plugin on another platform, like better search and repository features.

[quartztz]

how does this differ from penpot.app ? i have a couple of gripes with it, but i want to see if this is a better choice by design, or if i should wait for penpot to fix the issues i have with it.

[jszersze]

Similarly to Penpot.app, Octo is web-based, but it’s designed to handle more than just SVGs in its canvas. It supports other HTML elements as well as HTML canvas, which allows for raster graphic editing and even video editing in the future.

The goal is for Octo users not to feel the need to still use Photoshop or Illustrator to supplement their work.

I am curious, what are your gripes with Penpot.app?

Great question, thank you!

[satvikpendem]

I was interested in the same question

[codenote]

I came across a link to https://github.com/octo-design. Are there any plans to make it open source?

[jszersze]

There are plans to make certain parts of the project open source in the future. For example, I’d like to enable developers to write their own code translations or contribute in other meaningful ways. However, the open-sourcing process is still being planned, and I'm determining which parts make the most sense to open up.

[codenote]

That's a good idea! I'm looking forward to it.