← Atlas · Topics: assets, typography-and-styles, color, motion
Design Minis
- Site
- designminis.com
- Type
- directory
- Verdict
- Useful
- Licence
- Conditional licence, proprietary free
proprietary-freeFree, no account or cookies. The terms keep the site design, text and in-house tool code with the operator and forbid scraping or republishing the directory; files you export from the in-house tools are yours to use, including commercially. Listed tools keep their own terms - Agent channels
- none
- Pricing
- free
- Reviewed
What it is
Design Minis is a directory of small web tools made by designers, each doing one narrow job: a gradient builder, an easing editor, a halftone or dither effect, a font playground. It is run by one person, Kosta Motresku, under Belgian law according to its terms, and built with Next.js and Sanity on Vercel. Makers can submit their own tools, and a small set of the tools listed are built by the site itself.
When to open it
- When you need a one-off graphic treatment (glitch, refraction, shattered glass, dithering, mirror tiling) for a hero, poster or social image and don't want a heavy app.
- When you want a small colour, type, easing or CSS helper and would rather browse a short curated list than search.
- When you need to cut out a background or trace a logo to SVG without uploading the image anywhere.
Most useful
- Catalogue: the live directory filters tools by category and price; the home page loads a subset first and offers a “Load more” control.
- Categories: filter by Motion, Images, Backgrounds, Effects, 3D, Color, Typography, Illustration, SVG, Icons, CSS, Video, Layout, Accessibility and Whiteboard. A tool can appear in up to three categories.
- In-house tools (nine at review), which run on your device: Cutout (background removal with an on-device model), Trace (bitmap logo to SVG paths), Plinth (screenshot on a perspective backdrop), Refract, Shatter, Signal, Mirrors, Paper Studio and Hatchery.
- Fluid Letters is a free browser font builder listed under Typography. Its editor offers grid-based letter construction, corner-radius and gooey controls, preview tracking, font import and OTF export. The live preview uses a vivid blue field and modular white lettering; open the maker's tool.
- Every listing credits the tool's maker by name, usually with a link.
Using it with agents
No llms.txt, MCP or API. Use it by hand: make the asset in a tool, export PNG, SVG or video, commit it, and point the agent at the file. Trace's SVG output is the most useful to an agent, because the agent can edit the markup directly. The terms ask visitors not to scrape the directory wholesale.
Watch out for
- One sponsored slot is mixed into the grid (an AI media service at review) and labelled "Sponsored"; the terms say listings are not endorsements.
- Listed tools set their own privacy terms; the site's no-upload statement covers only its nine in-house tools.
- Fluid Letters is a listed third-party tool, so Design Minis' commercial-use statement for exports from its own tools does not establish Fluid Letters' reuse terms; no tool-specific licence was stated at review.
- Its terms warn the in-house tools may break when browsers change, so keep your source files.
- Tracing or cutting out a logo or photo doesn't change who owns it, as its terms point out.
Reusable ideas
- Putting the maker's name on every listing turns a directory into credit for independent tool-builders.
- A short privacy page that says what it doesn't collect is clearer than a long policy.
- Letting a tool sit in up to three categories helps where effects, images and backgrounds overlap.