Weird Tools for Weird Times

A List of Obscure and Free Design Tools (for Weirdos)

I like weird stuff. I also like free stuff.

When it comes to design, art, visuals, and aestheticising anxieties in general – I’m always on the watch for ways to make things that look weird. Partly this is because of personal taste (being into a certain anti/amateur/against-the-grain expression) and partly because I’m not formally trained in design.

Developing one’s own visual style happens organically (I think?). I’m working on identifying what occurred during my childhood that since teenagedom I’ve leaned towards the weird, the ugly, the bad looking, the un-designed.

Un-designed? Of course, this is impossible. Even ‘anti-design’ is designed. Nevertheless, having never been taught the rules, it seems easier to break (or be ignorant of) them.

Aaaaand… I also don’t like using Adobe very much. Although it has many capabilities and is the industry standard, it is also expensive and I dislike the whole cloud-controlling turn it took.

What I prefer is to find strange (mostly online) tools that don’t look cool but can make really cool stuff. Weird stuff. Good stuff! So today I wanted to share with you some of my favourite weirdo tools in this ‘Part One’ of what will be a multi-part post.

Note: Everything suggested (i.e everything I use) adheres to one simple criteria.

There is no account/registration/sign-up necessary to use it!
Anonymous, quick, non-committal usage only! Plus, that it’s free to use.