Graphite Space is a free online website builder carefully crafted with web designers’ best interests in mind. Use familiar graphic editor tools to create professional grade web pages and publish them online without working with HTML, CSS or JavaScript code.
I read your intro and it seems like this was created with Graphic designers or designers in general in mind. I'm none of those and in fact quite poor with it. Is it easy to use, like Wix or perhaps even simpler? What about templates for different industry, do you focus on that?
Congrats on the launch!
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GraphiteMaker
@ken_moo Hi Ken, and thank you so much!
At this point, we're focused on making our product work best for designers primarily. But in the long run, we would love to make Graphite a lot more accessible to other audiences as well.
Speaking of Wix, it would be more accurate to compare us to their EditorX product. I'm willing to say say that Graphite is reasonably easier 🙂
As for the templates – that's definitely something we're pouring a lot of effort in right now. Like I mentioned before, it's a huge part of our goal to open Graphite to various audiences without any design background that might feel intimidated by other code-heavy editors. We're currently expanding our library of templates and pre-made blocks and preparing a steady supply of tutorials.
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PingBell@ken_moo @followsummer I personally think Editor X was wrong in their approach. I want to see if this fixes where they went wrong.
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RemotelyNice work @followsummer !
Can you give more info on the 'publish' part? Do you export HTML/CSS/JS etc or is there an option to have designs hosted?
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GraphiteMaker
@_duncanhall Thanks Duncan! I really appreciate it.
As for your question, there are two ways to publish your projects created in Graphite:
– we can host your web site on Netlify and add a custom domain to it. It's free and only takes one click
– or you can export your web site as HTML/CSS files and publish it using any other online hosting platform of your choice
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Looks amazing and feels very intuitive, congrats to the team! Quick question - do you have plans to include e-commerce integrations?
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GraphiteMaker
@ericfettner Thank you for your kind words, Eric, I'm happy you liked our product!
Indeed, we do have plans to gradually open up Graphite to various audiences, and not just designers. E-commerce is definitely one of the prospects that we're looking at.
To put some details in – first off, we're committed to covering all the basic needs by introducing headless cms integration. And from there, we'll move on introducing e-commerce specific features.
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@followsummer Awesome! Looking forward to see Graphite grow.
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tl;dvIt looks incredibly slick and I'm already in love with the look & feel 🔥
On a more practical side - what's the biggest difference to tools like Webflow?
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GraphiteMaker
@carlo_thissen Thank you for your support. As a designer, I am very happy to hear that! 🙌
At first, we really admire Webflow. This great tool helps to solve many problems and cure designer's pains.
What really distinguishes Graphite is that our product emphasizes visual editing and creativity, whereas Webflow is more on the code-heavy side (in my humble opinion, at least):
– Graphite does not have a steep learning curve, allowing you to create web sites with little to no knowledge of HTML and CSS.
– Settings for element size, margins, padding etc., as well as the means to create a basic grid structure in Graphite are made as visual tools available for use right on the canvas.
– Graphite can boast a much more concise, intuitive and user-friendly interface: we have fewer settings, toggles, buttons and levers than Webflow, while allowing you to create web pages of equal complexity.
– Graphite offers a much more familiar approach to the design system and visualizing your ideas in general, and it lets you implement previously familiar tools and techniques that you'd normally use in your favorite graphic editor.
Basically, if you're a designer and you prefer visual editing over working with code, we're pretty sure you'll have a lot of ‘oh yasss’ moments while exploring Graphite. At least that's what we’re hoping for!
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tl;dv@followsummer thanks for the in-depths answer! Can definitely sign the learning curve issue with Webflow. Looking forward to dive deeper into Graphite and some other visual builders on the weekend. The first impression is great!
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GraphiteMaker
@carlo_thissen Thanks a million! Can't wait to hear what you think 🙂
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GraphiteMaker
Hello Product Hunters! 👋
And a massive thanks to @kevin for introducing us to the community.
My name is Victor, and I've been grinding my way through the marvelous plains of Web Design for over 12 years. Starting out small as a clueless padawan, I've worked my way to the position of an Art Director. So it's pretty safe to say I've seen most of what this line of work had to offer – and from various perspectives too.
But 7 years 'in the field' and over 90 web sites and apps designed later, having worked with dozens of various editors, website builders and other tools, I could never really say, 'Yep, that's the one! The Web Page editor that I'm 100% happy with'. It just never happened to me, nor to any of my fellow designers out there. There are 'perfect' solutions for business owners, marketers and front-end developers. But somehow, not for designers. Hopefully, the product that I'll show you today will change that.
Enter Graphite Space. Quite possibly the first and only web page building solution that puts designers and the visual aspect of creating web pages first. Essentially, Graphite allows virtually anyone to use familiar graphic editor tools and techniques to design a web page (like you would do in Photoshop, Figma or Sketch) without working with HTML, CSS or JavaScript code – whether it's a necessity or just a preference.
Now that's hardly a new idea, is it? Well, Graphite adds a cool plot twist to it. Instead of a mockup or a .png file, you actually get a fully responsive pixel-perfect web page render of your design. No code, no outside 'help' from developers, no deviations from your original design. Sounds like something you'd enjoy? 😎
As for the more specific features, if I had to pick just one for the spotlight – that would be our Hybrid Grid technology. As the name suggests, this feature allows you to create a fully custom responsive grid that will combine auto-layout and absolute positioning in one workspace. And it works! How cool is that? 🙌
But do you have to be a designer to enjoy Graphite? Not really! While we originally meant Graphite to be a web designer's best friend, it also turned out to work just great for various other audiences – like graphic designers looking for a smooth transition into web design, or inexperienced web enthusiasts feeling intimidated by code.
Our ultimate goal is providing Web Designers with a robust and versatile toolkit that would cover all their professional needs in just one comfy solution. A place where you can come up with a cool idea, flesh it out on the canvas and get a ready-to-go web page – with no code, no developers and most importantly – no compromise to your comfort involved.
We've poured our hearts and souls into Graphite, and are anxious to know what you think! The product is in early development, but we'd absolutely love to see you give it a try and please share your comments, ideas and suggestions with the team.
Thank you for your time, and hope you have a blast with Graphite! Every comment means the world to us 🙏
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Stratum UI Design Kit for FigmaThat's awesome! How complex websites can I create? Is it possible to create an e-commerce, an online course service, and things like that?
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GraphiteMaker
@danilov_den Glad to hear that! 👋
As for your question – even at this early stage, you can already create landing pages and fairly simple multi-page web sites in Graphite, as well as add a little spice to your projects with powerful animation effects.
As for the nearest future, we plan on introducing feature that would allow our users to design truly sophisticated web sites and manage huge amounts of content. Visual components and headless CMS integration are among those features.
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How well do SEO and third-party javascript code integrate into websites built using your platform?
What sets this project apart from Webflow, and Wordpress?
This is an awesome project! I'll keep a close eye on it!
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GraphiteMaker
@tycooperaow Thank you for your support!
We currently support basic SEO functionality: traditional web page meta-tags, 'alt' and 'title' element attributes, and the option to specify a tag for an HTML element. But we plan on gradually expanding our SEO toolkit.
Third-party JavaScript code integration can be done using the 'Code' element within the editor. In this case, the HTML/CSS will work right on the canvas, whereas the JS part will work on your web site once you've published it. We do have plans to make custom JS code work before publishing – first in the preview, and then in the editor workspace itself.
The short version of what makes us different from Webflow is we're much more focused on visual tools. This also means providing a much more designer-oriented experience that is a lot closer to what you might be used to working in a graphic editor rather than a webdev IDE.
As for the Wordpress comparison: Graphite gives you static web pages that load a lot faster and are much more stress-resistant. Also – the whole process of creating a landing page is a lot smoother and quicker (or so we aim to achieve) in our tool. To be fair though, when it comes to creating complex web sites and managing heaps of content, we don't have much on Wordpress yet. Fortunately, we do have a few updates in mind that will help us even the odds... in our favor 😄
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