7 years unDraw - Rebuild

Tomorrow marks 7 years since launching and almost 5 years since the last major update of unDraw. So it's time for a brand new version, with significant changes and many firsts.

New website

The re-design is probably the first thing you notice, but the biggest change is going from infinite scroll to pagination. This was the decision that troubled us a a lot but was really necessary to be able to grow the number of illustrations unDraw can serve. It also makes unDraw as fast as possible.

Next is the improved search functionality. Now not only you get the results with the same near-instant speed but also a new url you can revisit and share. The only UX change is that you have to submit the form. So finally you can go back and forth with your browser, while maintaining the color you have selected.

The most important change though is the quality of the downloads. The SVGs are now rendered in the initially designed dimensions and of course remain scalable in any size without quality loss. But now the PNG files are also 2-3 times the previous size for crisp results everywhere. You'll also notice that both types of downloads are near instant with download times less than 10ms. So now you can use the illustrations with even better results.

The illustrations grid is significantly improved to better showcase the artwork and maintain your focus as uninterrupted as possible. The color picker has been changed for the first time and is now ready for stored palettes, which will soon be available. Also worth mentioning that the blog is now part of the main website and a small number of posts were kept so we can start over and write more on our own space instead of relying solely on social.

Artwork

All these are significant changes but unDraw is mainly its illustrations. For the past few years we were mostly in a maintenance and experimental phase. The collection kept being re-invented so it doesn't become too overused or boring. But these years of experience make it easier to know what works, what looks great and how to scale the design system of the illustrations, to achieve that.

You'll notice that we're already returning new and older entries to the more classic unDraw style. So as we move forward the collection will include more clean, distinct and fashionable illustrations instead of more subtle and/or experimental ones. Soon this will have been applied across most of the collection.

Supporters

For all these years unDraw has been successful thanks to its supporters. Everyone who helps spread the word, uses it regularly and the awesome people who subscribe to unDraw Plus and contribute for us to keep working on it. This new version allows us to start creating features directly on unDraw and make it even more useful for all of you. So you can expect to be able to start storing your colors in an organized way really soon. You'll also be able to store the illustrations you like for later use and even re-download already downloaded ones with the same color, among other features.

Integrations & Other Products

Last year we were also able to share a new open tool to create card graphics and the response has been great. We'd love to continue sharing free and other products we are working on. To be able to expand we had to decide to stop maintaining some previous projects. Like our Miro integration which is not available anymore. Moodful for Adobe XD is also no longer available for new installs and the unDraw for XD and unDraw for X are going to be deprecated later this year.

These create the space and allow us to work on some exciting new things and will have some new ones really soon! You can already see a link to ShareBoost, a new project by us to make your idle domains start ranking on search engines early. More interesting projects to follow soon!

Thank you

There were many things to mention this year, but it's time to wrap this post up! We are excited and believe this is a great version and hope you'll enjoy it too. The whole point of unDraw is the people who use it and love it. So we keep on improving it and expanding its scope to make it even more useful. For all the support and motivation throughout all these years, thank you and enjoy the brand new unDraw!