We built what Canva AI should have been | Hacker News Reader

We built what Canva AI should have been

markup.one

3 pointscyrus_kelly4 comments

Hey all! Wanted to share something me and a friend just launched - we've been building markup.one, an AI design tool that actually follows brand guidelines. The frustration that kicked it off: every time we've tried using AI design tools for anything brand-related, it's been a coin flip whether the output is actually usable. Worse yet, when you want to adapt that same piece of content to different formats, the AI just starts from scratch. We've built our own models that are really good at consistency and quality. Once you've perfected your post for one format, the AI can translate that exact design into as many different formats as you need - no starting over. And unlike Nano Banana Pro or GPT-Image, the designs are fully editable if you want to tweak things yourself. For any devs in here, we're considering launching an API so reach out if that could be useful. We just went live on Product Hunt today and have already crossed 100 active users. If you've got a sec, an upvote would really help: https://www.producthunt.com/products/markup-one?utm_source=o...

Great app. It's at the perfect level of advanced and simplicity for the usecase you have mentioned.

I tried my hands on a few things and would like to ask / share feedback:

- Not sure if you're already on it or planning to, but target design/marketing agencies for it first. I know a few and they always have a chaos in their designing apps because they have to tell their team which brand they are designing a particular graphic for, and then find those specific templates, etc. Design process with your app starts from the brand which solves that problem.

- I currently work in a technology consulting firm and we regularly need to make multi-page reports, social media posts in carousal formats, or a series of graphics on the same topic. I noticed that currently your app doesn't support multi-page reports. I tested an A4 size, and did not see an option for social media post to generate more pages. That will be super helpful if you end up targeting individual brands for it later. Not having this could be a deal breaker.

- The design editor is really buggy at the moment. Totally understandable noting that you're at very early stages. But providing and option to "edit" AI designs and then a user really struggling to edit is counter productive. It did what MS word does to design when you try to resize and image and the element actually goes missing. I wasn't able to freely move elements on the page, or when I tried to resize an overlay element, it teleported to another dimension.

Overall, really great initiative and refreshing app. For generic usage like a single page social media post, a poster, or a featured image, this works amazingly well.

Thank you for the feedback, really appreciate this and we've shipped some of your recommendations:

- We've just released carousel / grid posts. Multi-page reports aren't directly supported as PDFs yet, but vertical carousels get you most of the way there. All panels sit on the same canvas in this mode, which allows continuity between different elements (for example: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUhHDZQE86J/?img_index=1 )

- We've made some improvements to the design editor since, but there are still some significant issues. We're currently working on further fixes to the design editor to make it more reliable and hope to have a much more polished experience within the next week.

- The agency angle is really interesting and not something we'd deeply explored yet. We're looking at launching a referral program soon so let me know if you'd like to be looped into that given your connections to agencies.

Thanks again for giving the product a shot!

Would love to be looped in and can also work as a design partner if that is something you are looking for. I have been in this space for over 12 years now and have tested dozens of apps. Have worked briefly with Canva's team too back in the days.

How do we connect?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com