Gradienty was first conceived as a gallery of computer-generated gradients, but early attempts at generating an AI to combine colours produced some truly awful gradients. The AI would need training using two key inputs: user-generated gradients and a concept of what a good gradient.
User-generated gradients would be easy enough to build a tool for. The challenge would be understanding what a "good" gradient is, moreover, doing this without requiring tedious manual labour.
The ideal solution would be a way for users to 'like' or 'favourite' a pool of existing gradients. I settled on Tumblr for its flexible API – a gradient could be posted to then referred back to after a period of time to see users' reactions to it.
Visitors can search through all published gradients in a variety of ways, copy the colour values or complete CSS code, or create a brand new gradient. Tumblr users can like, reblog or comment on the gradient.
A new gradient is published every hour of the day and, at the time of writing, Gradienty's users and AI have generated a combined total of 45 thousand unique gradients.
Gradienty is full of tiny details like subtle animations and useful features. My favourite is the browser favicon that changes to the open gradient – really useful if you open lots of gradients in different tabs.
© 2021 — Andrew Stichbury