In the world of digital design using premade workpieces such as UI kits, textures and icons is as inevitable as using high-level programming languages by developers. But you are going to have a hard time trying to make your designs look unique when using resources created by someone else.
That’s why today we will introduce you to our top free scripts developed to enrich your design experience with mind-blowing randomly generated artwork.
Experimenting with these free tools is real fun, largely because it often takes only one click to build a creative, professional-looking background. They cover all the modern styles being suitable for virtually any web design project.
Trianglify Generator
This tool can be used to create low-poly backgrounds with rather soft gradients (compared to Delaunay-based generators) and preset color combinations.
In the settings you can change the size of the canvas in pixels, pick the palette, the size of cells, and set the level of variance. The Variance parameter defines the entropy of polygons: if you set its value to 0 your background will be comprised of neat rows of triangles.
This generator offers a choice of 27 refined foolproof color schemes, but if you feel like it’s not enough to satisfy your creative endeavors you can build your own scheme using the 24-bit color picker. The resulting images can be downloaded as PNG or SVG files.
Trianglify Background Generator
Trianglify Background Generator (we have already featured it in one of our previous posts) uses the same Trianglify JS plugin, but differs in implementation. This script utilizes several hundred palettes from ColourLovers and ColorBrewer, and also provides some additional settings such as a choice of a gradient type. Although there are two new parameters in its menu – Bleed and Cell Padding, this version of Trianglify lacks the intuitive Variance slider, and is limited by premade palettes.
Geopattern
In the beginning was the word. And now you too can create something beautiful using your word as a tool – thanks to Geopattern. This simple script generates seamless geometric patterns from a string using 16 shapes and unlimited colors. The resulting patterns which can be saved in PNG format.
Although the demo is fully random, by digging into the source code of the plugin you can send it to your direction being able to choose a specific pattern, save your images in SVG format and enable Base64 encoding.
Delaunay Triangle Pattern Maker
This tool makes use of Delaunay triangulation to generate impressive high-contrast low-poly backgrounds.
In the settings you can change the size of the canvas, its depth, cell size, etc.; apply up to 7 lights; change the color, position and their distance from the canvas. If this sounds like a lot of trouble just use the “Randomize” button and let it do all the work for you. Keep pressing it until you receive an awesome background.
Flat Surface Shader
Flat Surface Shader comes with a different, more dynamic and random approach to Delaunay triangulation. Although its interface looks exactly as the one of Delaunay Triangle Pattern Maker, there is a great difference between them: the light sources in this tool are in constant movement (unless you set their speed to 0), thus increasing the randomness of the resulting image.
Waterpipe.js
Using this JavaScript plugin you can create backgrounds with a realistic smoke effect. You have an option to either choose from the available presents, or tune up the settings manually.
Colorful CSS Gradient Background Generator
Our next generator is indispensable for web and app designers, especially for those, who work with iOS, as it allows you to create beautiful gradient backgrounds on fly.
The sweetest thing about this tool is that it automatically generates the CSS code for the gradients it creates. The drawback is that you obtain only the code at the output, so if you are going to use it elsewhere than the web you will need a separate script or application to salvage the raster images. We recommend using Phantom.JS for this purpose: it requires a certain level of coding skill, but is flexible enough to handle this task.
Unique Gradient Generator
This tool is able to create abstract blurred backgrounds from any image. It takes a tiny area of the uploaded images (e.g. 7×3 pixels) and blurs it beyond recognition, similarly to the ‘Gaussian blur’ effect in Adobe Photoshop. Backgrounds created with the Unique Gradient Generator have a grungier look compared to truly random ones.
This generator comes with a library of 33 ready-to-use images, but you can upload your own source files. The results are available either as raster images, or as CSS code.
Material Design Background Generator
Material design trend introduced by Google is at the peak of popularity. With the help of this one-click script, you can generate hundreds of unique material-styled wallpapers. Some of them are fairly bizarre, while some are truly amazing. It will take some time to stumble upon a usable one, but this is the price of randomness.
Unfortunately, this project is not represented on GitHub, but you can download the script from its homepage, tune it up a bit, and create your own homebrewed material backgrounds.
Go to the Demo View the Script
K’s Watercolor Background Image Generator
This script gives you a hand an adding a handmade pseudo-watercolor touch to your designs. The backgrounds created with the help of this generator are formed by circles of different sizes, so they are not really ‘watercolor’ in the conventional meaning of the word.
To generate a background you need to specify the number of circles and their size, generate new chromatic color information (i.e. the palette), and click on the canvas. The same way you can add new layers in order to modify the look of your image.
Random Pattern Generator by Codegena
This one is as simple as such thing only could be. You just type the size you need in pixels into the proper bars and hit the “New” button. The result is shown as the background to that website, so you can see what it will look like right away. The picture is combined of a number of geometric figures of different color and size. Most of the variants are not really beautiful, but after a dozen clicks, you can find some that will fit your needs.
Random Pixel Background
IMGonlone offers visitors a number of tools to work with the JPEG images, such as resizing, conversion or compression tools. One of them is random pixel background generator. The usage of it is really narrow, a rare website owner would like to put a diverse picture in the background (it is a real burst of colors and might look a little… well, too much). However, if you were looking for such a bright solution, this generator will be a real treasure crate. You choose the size of the picture and squares, file format and quality and then hit “OK” button. You will be redirected to the page where you get an opportunity to preview the image and download it.
Zen BG
BACKGROUND GENERATOR
BGPatterns
Behind the Scenes
There are many more similar tools, but they are either not random, more difficult to use, or are not very suitable for web and graphic designers. Anyway, they are worthy of a special mention, and we hope you will find them useful.
Random.org – This website is a one-stop-shop for all things random. Unlike generators based on algorithms, it takes its randomness from atmospheric noise (whatever it is). Its possibilities are not limited by generating numbers and sequences – it can pick random colors for your inspiration as well. Most of the services on random.org are free.
Material Design Logo Generator – This ultra-useful online tool is intended to compose material-looking CSS icons and logos based on the Font Awesome icon font. All you have to do is to pick one of the icons, modify its size and color, apply shadows, round the corners, and copy the resulting CSS code, which can be embedded into your web pages.
Color Palette Generators – The collection of color palette pickers featured in this post will surely ginger up your creative thinking.
BGPatterns – One of the best ways to create seamless patterns is by using this simple free tool. Just upload your graphic elements, position them on the canvas, scale and rotate, and then download your pattern.
Logo Generators – If you need to create a logo really quickly this gallery of logo creating tools will help you with this task.
Low-Poly Generators – We have mentioned some of the triangulators here, but there are more of them over the web. See the complete list of such tools in the respective post on our blog.
Wrapping Up
These were the best of the best among random generators for designers. If you ever need a colorful background, featured image for your blog, or a stylish button, remember that you can create it by yourself in no time.
What about you? Do you use any automation, or do you prefer to work out your designs from scratch? Tell us in the comments below.