Humaaans: Mix-and-match illustrations of people with a design library
humaaans.com
humaaans.com
Would love to have an online tool for this also, as others have said.
The style of work really reminds me of undraw [1]
- Why didn't I get any money from my startup? - A guide to Liquidation Preferences and Cap Tables [1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/a8f6xz/why_didnt_...
Designers are my new favorite people. I have to go out now and meet some.
The impact's minimal, but it still rubs me a smidge wrongly.
Is it the art style? Is that the point? Is that what the robotic "HUMAAAAN" is teasing? That these aren't anything like real humans?
I'm serious. What does that look like to you?
But that's beside the point, I was only explaining what I think he was saying.
Which is neither here not there, as these are not fonts.
Also I assumed the gender of the original comment, could be a she, if so, I apologize. I use he in a generic way, but seeing your post you used they.
When I checked I didn't see any white people, so assuming that you are white the explanation for your reaction is probably just that your race isn't represented. People identify more with other people that look like them. If you had a kid from China draw a picture of some people they would all look Chinese, so my guess is that the author of the page is from a country that's mostly black and Hispanic. They might not even have noticed that they left white people out.
In that light the "real humans" comment comes across as a little weird, though, so maybe this doesn't explain your reaction. Although if it helps clear the air, I'm fine with pointing out that I would prefer to use an icon pack that included white people, after all that's me.
That may be OK, but I can't think of a country where 80% of people are female?
But that's the light painted by you, not OP. OP gave very specific and valid examples of types of people that are missing. OP said, nor implied, anything about race. That's your straw man, and yours alone.
The only thing that's weird is that an illustration library called "humaaans" is no where near diverse enough to represent humans.
Right, I'm saying that's the most accurate light. I'm not trying to accuse the OP of anything.
That said, it's a cool project but I wouldn't use it just because the art style clashes so much with anything I would design. It looks like Word clip-art, imvho.
It's tough to appeal to everyone, especially with images like this. Therefore isn't the safer bet to go for a 'middle of the road' aspirational image that's _close enough_ to the target demographic the product is generally associated with and for the most part doesn't offend or put off anyone, even if it doesn't exactly hit the mark?
You also got me thinking about how some of the tools here lend themselves to assembling then contributing additional elements. Ie. drag out existing elements, do some basic vector drag and drop and editing, paint bucket, border thickness, etc. "Submit for peer review" (which can be a Pull Request).
Also, to make a realistic drawing of a building it is difficult to paint from a point of view that is directly in the front, because you must hint the 3D shapes with the shadows and the draws. It's much easier to draw it from a point of view that is somewhere on the side, in front of a corner, like 45° or something like that. The perspective alone makes the 3D part visible, and the shadows only help to make the 3D effect better.
I find the general attitude in this comment section curious, though; lots of people are arguing about the skin tone choice which is notably brown. Yet I feel that if it were lighter in shade, there would be much less grumbling and criticism about not including every single possible body shape?
If he had left out a people group that he didn't see very often (if he lived in Nigeria that could be white people, if he lived in Norway that could be Native Americans) then nobody would be upset. But all signs point to this being some kind of misguided political expression. I can see why everyone is riled up; it's (apparently intentionally) tapping in to one of the lava pools of "this is unfair" sloshing around America these days.
I'm not sure if it does, but the topic was being discussed so I joined in.
>What is so triggering for you about a web page without a depiction of a white person?
I'm not sure if "triggering" is the right word to use, but although I used to think that representation didn't matter (a la skin tone variants in emojis) I now realize that it's a nice gesture to be included in art asset packs and marketing material. Next time someone talks about how they added twelve different versions of a thumbs up asset I'll roll my eyes a little less hard. ;)
https://danielvf-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/2019/whumaaan.pn...
Even if you change the complaint to being about low white representation, it's also a little unfair to say that the author is "intentionally" trying to make it political. What about their work or documentation gives you an idea on their intention?
I want to get in to this tarpit less than anybody else on earth, but after trying to come up with another explanation, I wasn't able to. The artist depicted a skin tone balance that is significantly different from what they're used to seeing, and the only reason for that that I can think of is if they were consciously attracted to the political side.
Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? No, of course not. In fact, I think the artist has a right to make a political statement if they want to. I might even agree with it. I'm just trying to take the discussion from 99% truth to 99.9% truth.
I might be wrong (and although it would sting my ego, in the long rung I would be happier if I was wrong), but I feel like this is one of those "everyone sees it but nobody is allowed to mention it" social things that is the bane of humanity. This project is definitely noteworthy because of the skin tone distribution of its front page, that's clear enough from observation.
I find it unsettling that people here try to read too much into this choice, it was released a month ago on Designer News and there's not a single mention about it:
https://www.designernews.co/stories/98999-humaaans-a-library...
E.g. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/63716/why-do-the-f...
"If you ever get close to a humaaaan..."
Upon reviewing the site again, there are some lighter skin tones that I would identify with as a pale white man, if I really cared.
I looked through it and I have to disagree, the skin tones are all dark. There is no reason to call that racist though, maybe the author just doesn't see a lot of white people in whatever country they live in.
Edit: ouch, I guess my optimism was misplaced. Given that he's from California, it really does look like the author was making a political statement.
Either way, these are SVG files and can be edited to switch out colors. That's the whole point of a library like this.
Is there an online version that is posible to use without installing the library in my machine?
This demo doesn't have autosnap (I'm not sure about the official name).
Also, I can't change the color of the hair, but it is not clear if it is possible in the original version.
For a bit of constructive criticism, the name makes the project really difficult to discover. I remembered having seen this on HN a couple of days ago, but when I went to look it up, I remembered it as "Humans with a few extra A's or U's," and I had to Google five or six variations before I found it. One too few or one too many A's will not bring up your project. I'm not sure if this is a lack of SEO, or a function of how Google treats misspelled words.
Other than that, looks like a beautifully designed library, and looking forward to putting it to work.
Nokia's tagline back in the day used to be "Connecting People", and yet today it is FB that brazenly repeats this ad nauseam in its press statements each time another breach of user privacy is revealed.
Except for people with pale skin... I guess.
Paler skin (whites, asians, latinos) is totally missing, so not really interesting how the parent singles it out.
I'm not
I feel like the 1 skin tone is meant to be provocative, possibly be a deliberate troll, maybe start a discussion.
does the author wish to weigh in?
as a white human I feel excluded. maybe I'm attaching too much importance to skin tone as a part of identity. I think partly that's in our brains, partly it's emphasised by the media to divide us and create outrage, for power and engagement.
OK, that's too short to really mean anything, so I'll elaborate. If you take the average characteristics of everyone in the world (wealth, skin tone, intelligence, BMI, height, gender, etc.), and turned that into a single person, then you would have a new, unique person. In other words, it would not "represent" anyone, and so should definitely be seen as controversial. There are a myriad of engineering stories about this discovery (one size doesn't fit all).
If anything, I would have loved to see more diversity, or at the very least a prominent message on how to achieve it. Color might be the easiest change to make, but I didn't see any old or fat people on there, or how to make those variations.
I like the overall idea of the project, though.