Show HN: Website themes designed by machine
resimit.com
resimit.com
Our goal is to do creative visual design using machine learning and AI algorithms and to provide diverse creative elements with minimal configuration or customization.
It's a bit hard to separate sample content from theme characteristics, and we're aware we must show fancier preview content.
Anyway, I appreciate any feedback on what we're doing, what we've done, and what we could do better.
I think the issue is that your machine learning doesn't seem to know what goes together and what doesn't. It may focus in on a small subset, but then it mixes and matches elements that don't go together. Like it's not seeing the whole picture, more it's taking certain elements from 'good pages' and jumbling them all up. If it randomly produces a good design, how are you sure that it's not an exact copy of one of the training designs?
The integration algorithm merges orthogonal dimensions based on human feedback. For example, a monotonic color scheme with 3 columnar layout, flat design and no borders could be a few of the orthogonal parameters. Final feedback comes from humans, and I guess that ll ensure an overall harmonic result.
With newer iterations and more feedback it's getting better indeed.
Edit: I appreciate your critical thinking.
Picking an ugly font that has to be huge to be legible and providing too much empty space and padding? Yea, I can do that.
That particular case, the colors make the text not so hard on the eyes, but the font itself is just awful at that size, it may be interesting in print, but on a webpage it's just too jumbled and it's certainly not very legible. You wouldn't want to read a book written in that font.
Click on the 'features' or 'bootstrap' on that page, and tell me you don't spot something wrong.
Also, where does the magenta color come in? I see it nowhere in that theme...
I think it's great that you are working on making something like this, I'd love to tell my computer 'give me something gloomy' and then 'but not too dark' and it would generate and iterate until it got something I liked. I just don't think it's quite ready for primetime. Unless of course you are just looking for feedback on the themes. In that case, I'd suggest you open up the comments on each theme page and allow rating anonymously.
First, you might find it interesting to look into Shape Grammars. While shape grammars are a dead end from a creative design point of view, they can capture layout strategies that work but can be varied parametrically. One crucial area that the theme you posted falls down on is balancing negative space around images and panels. Using a shape grammar which constructed the layout with border elements, centered elements, etc. could fix this.
Another thought is to consider the fact that letterpress printing is often taught to design students before computer tools, because it enforces a great degree of discipline in laying out elements. Students move on from that to design with a grid system. The theme "abdvbjtx" on the resimit front page as I look at it is missing a sense of alignment and grid structure, although it is impressively complex in terms of layering. The typographic and rational side of things needs work, basically to bring visual order to all the elements. I think some kind of generative grammar is probably the only practical way to achieve this.
As far as typeface choice goes, that seems to be a weak point but it is such a complex and emotional thing that I doubt it can be automated beyond specifying serif fonts for old-style centered layouts and sans serif for more modern, left-aligned layouts.
The interplay between elements is just as important as the individual elements themselves. Basically, context is super important.