Microtools
From June to August 2019, I worked alongside web developer Aaroh Mankad in designing two microapps for the unum.la website. The two apps I designed are a color palette generator and an Instagram text editor, tools that the UNUM community has found valuable in planning and creating their social media content.
→Check out the website here: resources.unum.la
Color Palette Generator
The color palette generator generates a color palette from a user-uploaded image. It pulls the five dominant colors found in the photo and lists their hex values. An easter egg within this mini-app overlays the photograph with the color swatches. Users can easily copy the found color values and use them in their own content creations, as well as download the image with the swatches overlaid.
Looking at commonly-used Instagram hashtags and our own user generated content, I proposed the guidelines shown above to serve as the constraints for ordering and positioning the swatches over images. The swatches are ordered top to bottom from darkest to lightest, and are positioned directly in the center with their sizes being relative to the photograph.
The most common type of imagery being uploaded onto Instagram is outdoor photography—landscape shots, panoramics, wildlife, oceans, sunsets, etc. This proposed swatch guideline took that into account in developing an original composition that aimed to feel like a collaboration between UNUM and the user.
Instagram Text Editor
The Instagram Text Editor is a separate tool that uses Unicode characters as fonts which can be applied onto the typed text and then be copied and pasted into Instagram. This tool allows avid Instagram users to style their otherwise plain text in different fonts.
