Posted 4 months ago

Generative Placeholders

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One constant issue in design is how to represent a half-finished design. It has to be representative enough to get the idea across, but if it looks too polished or finished people will mistake it for the final design and have expectations that the mockup can’t live up to.

[…]

Enter Generative Placeholders. Instead of using a temp image, you can just link to the generative-placeholders service and get a procedurally-generated temp image. It looks good (making your designs look good) but also looks generated (making people less likely to mistake it for the finished product). It’s like lorem ipsum for images.

procedural-generation.tumblr.com

This website lets you use generative art as your image placeholders.

<img src="https://generative-placeholders.glitch.me/image?width=600&height=300">

Visit the project page for instructions and more examples. You can click the previews to generate new images.

And the image thumbnail used on social media is generated randomly as well.

This project was featured in:

• Codrops Collective #576
• The Overflow #8
• UX Collective (January 4)
• The Verge
• B3ta Newsletter #739
• and shared widely

generative art generator glitch image generator images lorem ipsum node.js web design web development webdev