Why I build small tools

I've spent most of my working life making things for screens, and a surprising amount of that time isn't spent designing. It's spent hunting: for the hex value of a color I saw on a site, for the name of a typeface, for the one SVG buried in a page's markup. Each hunt takes a minute. Across a week, it adds up to hours.

Every tool here started as a note to myself: I wish I had something that did this. When the same wish came up often enough, I built it.

Small on purpose

I'd rather make a tool that does one job completely than a suite that does twenty jobs halfway. A small tool is easier to trust, because you can see everything it does. It's faster, because it isn't loading features you'll never touch. And it stays out of the way, which is the highest compliment I can pay any tool.

Made by someone who uses them

I use every one of these in my own work. That's the only quality bar I've found that holds up. If a tool annoys me, it gets fixed, because I'm the first person it annoys.

If you design, draw, or make things for a living, I hope a few of them give you back the minutes they give me.