New FOSS diagram/drawing project + FOSDEM infographic - looking for feedback

I’ve been working on a new free and open source drawing project to help people create graphics/diagrams/docs. I hope you don’t mind me sharing here, I would be very interested in your thoughts as designers (I come from a dev background). If you have the time to check it out please let me know what you think: Figular.com :slight_smile:

The idea is to let anyone easily create diagrams (or ‘figures’) just from plain text, style them via a simple UI (maybe CSS too), then save/export/embed. I’ve only got two examples so far - an ‘org chart’ hierarchical figure was released just this week - blog post.

To show an example of how the org chart could be used I created a map of the recent FOSDEM event and its hugely impressive virtual presence on Matrix (800+ rooms). I’ve highlighted the Open Source Design Devroom space and its rooms below:

Up close on the OSD rooms:

You can find more details on how this was made on my posts on pixelfed/twitter.

I eventually hope to build a whole library of figures by designing and collaborating in the open with a community. I’m thinking the next figure could be something that creates timelines as those can be tricky to draw by hand. However I’m open to ideas. Thanks for reading!

3 Likes

That sounds like a really practical and great project you got going on! Can’t wait to see how are you expand and personally I love a good visual representation of data so this is great :slight_smile: and I am an interaction and brand designer. First what caused me to reply to your post was this book called storytelling with the data ( have not read it but saw this YouTube video summarizing it The book every Data Analyst should read - YouTube ) and it shares the different ways we use data visualization to tell a story ~

In your case I Think considering who will be using your project and what kind of information they want to visualize will help with the designing process.

Godspeed!

2 Likes

Thanks for the encouragement! I will check out that book, it sounds spot on.