image from the game Omori, a game with unique artistic design
Ok, ok, Hive isn’t UGLY, but it’s not pretty either. Every project is clearly designed entirely by people over 30 with corproate jobs or influenced by the corproate world. It isn’t fresh and it isn’t interesting.
Hive projects need a makeover. Most, if not all of them. They need more character. They need an identity that is just as visual as it is conceptual.
I’m not talking about a UI or UX overhaul. I’m talking about the details. Icons, colors, fonts, logos and landing pages. They are not interesting enough to keep anyone’s attention in 2026 and onward.
We don’t neccessarily need “professional artists” to do the design. We need people with fresh, interesting and unique sensibility, with enough knowledge of art to have a sophisticated perspective. Don’t feel bad if that’s not you. I am not sure it’s me either, and I’m an artist by trade in a sense.
It could be your 9 year old kid, or it could be your friend with wacky tastes, or maybe it is a professional, but we need something fresh.
“Decent” doesn’t cut it, and “Unoffensive” isn’t even close to memorable in 2026. I’m not saying it should be jarring or ridiculous (athough it COULD be), but I haven’t seen one project take a risk or make an attempt to stand out in their visual design. @meno (whose project Hivesnaps is still new) pointed out Hive Skate and I stand corrected, they at least have a direction, but what about the major front ends?
I get the sense that @meno is thinking about finding a visual identity for his project, and I hope that Ecency, Peakd and Inleo could level up theirs.
This is not a jab at them or whoever made the call on their visuals, I’m just saying “decent” or even “good” doesn’t speak to people in 2026, we need to know who you are through your design and if it isn’t something that catches attention, we need to explore what you could be, at least if we want to catch new users and keep them.
All this time we thought outreach was the problem and usability and politics were the problem and yes, they all influenced our growth, but considering how much Hive has had an impact on so many of it’s users and ex-users lives, it should have been able to go further than it did up until now, even without fixing any of that.
It just didn’t catch people’s eye like it could have.
Everyone is focused on integrating AI and, don’t get me wrong, in some aspects it is really important, being able to code fast and impliment features quicker will keep other projects from stealing your ideas before you grow legs and make it easier to turn imagination into reality. Autotranslate is wonderful. Text to speech can be very helpful.
But what about adapting to the changing psychology of people with the world in their pocket, access to everything, never sure what’s real an what’s not, able to start a million dollar business in a few hours a day on GPT but not commited to doing so because before you’ve even solidify your vision, someone’s beat you to it.
How do we create projects for such an era?
Experimentation, creativity, and real human connection are more vital than ever. That doesn’t just mean monetizing such behavior, it requires embodying it at every level. From the devs to the team to the core community.
That includes visual design.
We need to get our minds off being X killers and reddit killers and reaching the masses and focus more on being exactly what we want to be and how we can get closer to it in the present moment because that speaks to people louder than anything.
And I am telling you with 100% certainty that for every Hive project, leveling up the visuals will be the fastest easiest way to see more interest in your project.
Not the promise of earnings.
Not the promise of immutability.
Both are important but they aren’t what make people want to stick around long enough to find out what this place really is.
The promise of profit sounds sketchy and the promise of censorship resistant only appeals to a tiny fraction of people, many of which aren’t all that active online because physical reality is inheritaly more censorship resistant than the internet. Don’t even consider giving up on censorship resistence if that’s important to you, but maybe it doesn’t belong in the tagline or the first few sentences.
I realize there are other issues at Hive. Downvotes have scared some people off, and demand for the token has gone down due to lukewarm sentiment towards crypto in general. It’s not as if we don’t have other problems. We can talk about those another time.
I love what this place has been for me and as I develop my own ability to express myself, I want to help this ecosystem do the same.
We need to be catchy, but not just for the sake of being catchy. Catchy and real and raw enough to embody the future. It needs to be genuine and fun and have high standards for itself, not just in the tech but in everything.
It’s not about catching everyone, but about making everything cohesive and consistent in it’s energy. If we represent the future and if we envision that future is less corporate controlled, we need to find an aestetic that is very much detached from one a corproation would design.
Just because we use AI to develop doesn’t mean we want our ecosystem to look and feel like it was built by AI either.
I can feel a massive shift in my own work and the response it gets due to more focus on leveling up aestetically. It may not be the most beautiful art, but it is consistent with my personality and my music and it’s constantly improving, and that really stands out to people.
For the past two years I’ve been focused on music in a way I wasn’t before. I’ve been trying not to neglect the physical world and to meet people face to face more. I don’t look at my music as just music, I look for ways to use my music to create worlds.
My shows aren’t just a presentation of my songs. They are an invitation to participate and think about things we don’t usually think about. I focus on the atmosphere of the venue and the people in atrendence and what they bring just as much as the music itself.
I stopped trying to catch people who are all overwhelmed with a wall of disconnected information whenever they open their phone, and I started focusing on developing myself into something so unique to me that it naturally invited curiousty.
You don’t become unique by trying to be unique. You get there by digging and exploring and mixing parts until you discover things you didn’t know were there.
I started experimenting with video and images rather than waiting til I had money to hire people to do it. If i could afford to hire them, I would, but I think this experimentation phase was vital for me because it helped me figure out what kind of colors and effects and stimuli I am naturally attracted to amd how people reaxted to them. Even if you want to hire someone, it’s good to play with the tools to get a sense of what’s possible and what you like.
The result wasn’t instant success, but a clear path opened up, where there was no room for doubt. I no longer felt uncertain about what might get people’s interest.
It became undeniable that developing my own unique style would come naturally through my curiosity and pragmatic problem solving, and that I didn’t need to think about attracting people, only being more attractive. Not more attractive in an objective way, more of what I wanted to see, without any self-limiting beliefs about what might alienate people.
If it alienates people, find a way to make it less alienating without sacrificing the vision.
I was realistic enough to start with the easier fixes and take steps to get there rather than jump right in prematurely, and that whole process created a story that people were more eager to be a part of. I didn’t need to engineer the story. I needed to start living it. You don’t need to state upfront who you are, just to move closer and closer to it every day.
Once again, I am still a tiny artist without many followers, but I’ve gotten the attention of more than one of my favorite artists in Tokyo, and now I am invited to play shows when I wasn’t before, and I get new follows on social media almost every day from friends of friends. The momentum is slow but it’s obviously increasing beyond any doubt.
Many hive projects already have some momentum just by having an existing (albiet small) user base and experience.
I recognize a front end and a music project are not the same but I believe the same overall philosophy applies.
Experiment.
Look for aspects of yourself or your project that you never appreciated before. Or challenge your ideas of how things “should be” to find new possibilities.
Reflect.
Develop and redevelop the way you express your identity through trial and error.
Focus.
Don’t aim for the masses. Aim to be undeniable to those who can see you for what you are, and get better and better at just knowing cleary what that is and what that LOOKS LIKE (literaly, visually).
Look and Listen.
Your current situation will tell you what’s missing or what could be better. Sometimes news or a discussion will spark an inspiration, and sometimes a random user will tell you exactly what you need to focus on out of the blue🙃
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As for visual designs, I am sorry for putting her on the spot again but I really really think that no projects asking @hiddenblade to be a visual advisor is a MASSIVE wasted opportunity. She is the one artist here that I’ve felt for years has the sensibiltiy that could make a project stand out and still feel comfortable. Even just letting her share her thoughts or making a logo.
I would also be happy to just advise if you are insane enough to ask me. High risk, high reward, right? I’d put more effort into it than I do on most of my blog images, those I usually make in a hurry.
Just to give you some ideas to run with or to get the juices flowing, here are the themes I’ve come up with as starting points that I think easily catch peoples eyes and shouldn’t be THAT hard to design without a world class web designer and artist.
- graffiti
- gentle neon
- vaporwave
- 8-bit
- minimalistic cartoon (similar to the game “Hidden Folk”
- modern art (various versions of it)
- clay figure
- paper cut-out
- dreamcore
- puzzle
- kids drawings
- watercolor paint drops
Search any of those terms if you are unfamiliar.
I went ahead and had GPT generate some rough idea of what this could look like. I know there are better AI for image generation but I just wanted to give you an idea of what I am talking about.
Ideally a real artist and or web designer with unique tastes will work to adjust or at least to advise with each project but even just a change in the color scheme could be a big step up:
Ecency/Peakd X Minimalist Cartoon -
GPT automatically changed the blog image and icons to the theme, which actually would be an awesome option while uploading your post “Do you want us to edit your image to fit Ecency’s theme? yes/No”
Peakd X Vaporwave -
Ideally the image at the top of the second screen capture would be something a little less generically vaporwave than this, but that’s where an artist comes in. I would like more abstract shapes and images in there and a slight change in color, but I love the color scheme of the first image so maybe closer to that, with yellow and blue:
INLEO X 8 bit -
I couldn’t get GPT to stop using nintendo characters after mentioning old NES and arcade games without forfeiting the theme entirey but some original 8 bit unique lion characters and crypto themes sprites would be PERFECT
Hive Snaps X Modern Art / Dream core -
I ran out of images twice trying to get something interesting out of modern art, jackson pollack style and other prompts focused around modern art so finally I tried dream-core. This was the batch I was least satisfied with but “modern art” has a lot of potential. Dream core is very niche and would be a cool option, not a good default for most projects, and you could definetly do it better than this
Just some ideas to start with!
I hope this sparks some conversation around visual aestetics and getting outside of the norm a little bit, experimenting a bit more, and finding people with visual talent and unique sense to help with the design of projects.
Usually I hate tagging a bunch of people but I think this is important. @jarvie @peakd @ecency @arcange @inleo @khaleelkazi @meno @snapie @3speak @acidyo, this is a letter directly to you so I think a tag is warrented. This is not criticism of your overall work! You’ve done great things for this ecosystem. We just need a KO punch that makes people really want to stick around even despite everything else.
Posted Using INLEO