
Humaaans: Mix-and-match illustrations of people with a design library - plurby
https://www.humaaans.com
======
shanehoban
Favourited. Really nice work and impressive landing page.

Would love to have an online tool for this also, as others have said.

The style of work really reminds me of undraw [1]

[1] [https://undraw.co](https://undraw.co)

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Oh my god, the real gold is in the comments. Can you share some other cool
stuff from your bookmarks?

~~~
shanehoban
Undraw is like the only thing I have to mind that I've noticed isn't as widely
known. Perhaps these:

\- [https://cruip.com](https://cruip.com)

\- [https://unsplash.com](https://unsplash.com)

\- [https://feathericons.com](https://feathericons.com)

\- Why didn't I get any money from my startup? - A guide to Liquidation
Preferences and Cap Tables [1]

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/a8f6xz/why_didnt_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/a8f6xz/why_didnt_i_get_any_money_from_my_startup_a_guide/)

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Waterluvian
Something's fascinating to me. Clearly there's a lot of diversity. But there
also isn't. I don't associate with any of it. Not because I'm a green space
monster. But where's the potbellied, grizzled 55 year old welder? Or the "I
hate kale, more bacon please" mother of three? Everyone looks so... Chic and
young and modern and... Silicon Valley.

Is it the art style? Is that the point? Is that what the robotic "HUMAAAAN" is
teasing? That these aren't anything like real humans?

~~~
whatshisface
> _I don 't associate with any of it. Not because I'm a green space monster._

When I checked I didn't see any white people, so assuming that you are white
the explanation for your reaction is probably just that your race isn't
represented. People identify more with other people that look like them. If
you had a kid from China draw a picture of some people they would all look
Chinese, so my guess is that the author of the page is from a country that's
mostly black and Hispanic. They might not even have noticed that they left
white people out.

In that light the "real humans" comment comes across as a little weird,
though, so maybe this doesn't explain your reaction. Although if it helps
clear the air, I'm fine with pointing out that I would prefer to use an icon
pack that included white people, after all that's me.

~~~
stronglikedan
> In that light the "real humans" comment comes across as a little weird

But that's the light painted by _you_ , not OP. OP gave _very_ specific and
valid examples of types of people that are missing. OP said, nor implied,
anything about race. That's your straw man, and yours alone.

The only thing that's weird is that an illustration library called "humaaans"
is no where near diverse enough to represent humans.

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whatshisface
> _But that 's the light painted by you, not OP._

Right, I'm saying that's the most accurate light. I'm not trying to accuse the
OP of anything.

~~~
stronglikedan
It's actually the least accurate light, and a straw man argument fabricated by
you alone. The criticisms about the lack of diversity have nothing to do with
race, neither explicitly nor implied.

~~~
whatshisface
It's not a fabricated straw man, it's my actual opinion. (Typically a straw
man would be a caricature of your _opponent 's_ opinion). I used to roll my
eyes when people added new skin colors to emoji options, but now that someone
left off people that look like _me_ , I understand that it's a nice gesture to
be included.

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theon144
Nice! This came at just the right time for me too.

I find the general attitude in this comment section curious, though; lots of
people are arguing about the skin tone choice which is notably brown. Yet I
feel that if it were lighter in shade, there would be much less grumbling and
criticism about not including every single possible body shape?

~~~
whatshisface
The author left out white people, and since he's white himself and from
California the "he just doesn't live around white people" explanation that I
was originally going for can't be right.

If he had left out a people group that he didn't see very often (if he lived
in Nigeria that could be white people, if he lived in Norway that could be
Native Americans) then nobody would be upset. But all signs point to this
being some kind of misguided political expression. I can see why everyone is
riled up; it's (apparently intentionally) tapping in to one of the lava pools
of "this is unfair" sloshing around America these days.

~~~
danielvf
Nah, there's a simple explanation. Humaaans uses an artistic style of solid
patches of color against a white background. Very light skin tones work
terribly in this style because they disappear into the background.

~~~
whatshisface
If true that would be hilarious, but I don't see how we could ever know for
sure. If the real reason were unsavory, there would be an overwhelming social
bias not to reveal it; and as a result even a true, positive answer wouldn't
help.

~~~
danielvf
I made a white humaaan for you. It has some readability problems. :)

[https://danielvf-
downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/2019/whumaaan.pn...](https://danielvf-
downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/2019/whumaaan.png)

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cmpb
OT: The word "Humaaans" makes me think of the Ferengi from Star Trek.

E.g. [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/63716/why-do-
the-f...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/63716/why-do-the-ferengi-
pronounce-human-the-way-they-do)

~~~
glitcher
Bjork's "Human Behavior" immediately popped into my head.

"If you ever get close to a humaaaan..."

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innerspirit
Interesting how I did not notice any issues with the library until I came to
the comments and there were several mentions of implicit racism. There is some
projection going on here.

Upon reviewing the site again, there are some lighter skin tones that I would
identify with as a pale white man, if I really cared.

~~~
whatshisface
> _Upon reviewing the site again, there are some lighter skin tones that I
> would identify with as a pale white man,_

I looked through it and I have to disagree, the skin tones are all dark. There
is no reason to call that racist though, maybe the author just doesn't see a
lot of white people in whatever country they live in.

Edit: ouch, I guess my optimism was misplaced. Given that he's from
California, it really does look like the author was making a political
statement.

~~~
nmstoker
It appears he lives in California
[https://mobile.twitter.com/pablostanley](https://mobile.twitter.com/pablostanley)

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gus_massa
Is it possible to add beard to the drawings?

Is there an online version that is posible to use without installing the
library in my machine?

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detaro
[https://ozgrozer.github.io/hdt/](https://ozgrozer.github.io/hdt/)

~~~
gus_massa
Thanks! I don't understand something: Is this a full demo, or an example with
only a few features / images?

This demo doesn't have autosnap (I'm not sure about the official name).

Also, I can't change the color of the hair, but it is not clear if it is
possible in the original version.

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elfakyn
This looks like the generic "people" artwork you see in so many places.

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augustk
Indeed. Clipart is low culture.

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Hoasi
Low culture is necessary and perfectly fine. Still, a lot of work went into
releasing these free generic illustrations. Also, the more free clip art is
available and used everywhere the quicker it will go out of style.

~~~
DoctorOetker
I think the ambiguity is what makes clip-art attractive, you can recognize
people you know in them, while with the other extreme, actual photos, it would
look like a stranger

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nmstoker
What would be an interesting side-project would be to apply some machine
learning, so a user could describe the kind of person / activity in a sentence
and it would be generated using this.

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Etheryte
This is a quick and easy way to add a humane touch to a landing page and other
similar content with the added benefit of being free (CC Attribution 4.0).

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jmknoll
This is awesome. Going to add it to a project that I was working on a new
landing page for today.

For a bit of constructive criticism, the name makes the project really
difficult to discover. I remembered having seen this on HN a couple of days
ago, but when I went to look it up, I remembered it as "Humans with a few
extra A's or U's," and I had to Google five or six variations before I found
it. One too few or one too many A's will not bring up your project. I'm not
sure if this is a lack of SEO, or a function of how Google treats misspelled
words.

Other than that, looks like a beautifully designed library, and looking
forward to putting it to work.

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b_b
Nice little Daft Punk easter egg in the panel with the "Nothing Found" example
page ([https://genius.com/Daft-punk-digital-love-
lyrics](https://genius.com/Daft-punk-digital-love-lyrics)), and the ending
statement "We are humaaan after all."
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_After_All](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_After_All))

~~~
yellowapple
I managed to get Daft Punk and Level 42 simultaneously stuck in my head.

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codeape
On a Windows PC, what (free, open source) drawing program would I use to
create illustrations using these pieces?

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projektfu
Inkscape

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hnacc0
( out of topic ) similar to material design, metro design, what is this
website using?

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hmak
I'm using this on my landing page. The illustrations are beautiful and the way
Pablo Stanley organizes all the assets in Sketch is amazing. Also note,
Humaaans is under CC 4.0

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aboutruby
This is really neat! Reminds me of the style Airbnb, Stripe and Dropbox uses.

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rchaud
Now that this art style is freely available, prepare to see it slathered over
every new startup promising an API for your SaaS that integrates with their
PaaS and builds a future-proof IaaS.

~~~
louisswiss
Hope you're using AI and machine learning to do that on the blockchain.

~~~
rchaud
Of course! Our cloud-native, Agile-first team of DevOps rockstars are working
on that as we speak.

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dharma1
Great execution and right on the money with style

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agp2572
Looks like the artwork used on Google Fi website.

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JUSTed
This is the new version of stock photos for lazy and conformist people. But
instead of having some young attractive models smiling at the camera with a
flipchart in their hands, now you get a fast-food-style illustration, devoid
of soul and personality, identical to the other designs used by some other
startup, that's going to age like milk and will require a rebranding in two
years. tl;dr — it's a fad.

~~~
rchaud
That's tech industry marketing in a nutshell though. How many startup
homepages promise "seamless integration with your stack" or "first-class
customer experience" and fail to deliver?

Nokia's tagline back in the day used to be "Connecting People", and yet today
it is FB that brazenly repeats this ad nauseam in its press statements each
time another breach of user privacy is revealed.

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bullen
I can't find the SVG files?

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coldtea
There are several prominent "get the library" links on the page that lead to
Dropbox where you can download the whole package. SVGs are in the "flat assets
-> Humaaans" folder.

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Rainymood
What is the font?

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cowflik
[https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/latinotype/recoleta/](https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/latinotype/recoleta/)

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fredley
This is great, and I really, really love the inclusive-by-default approach.

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coldtea
Where inclusive == everybody is brown skinned?

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fredley
I noticed the use of wheelchair users, and the different skin tones used on
the landing page. I hadn't looked into the actual resources so hadn't seen
that they are not in fact offered in a range of tones. Oh well!

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KineticLensman
> We are humaaan after all

I'm not

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TheGrumpyBrit
Are you dancer?

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crisstringfello
where are the white humans? and the yellow humans? and the jet black humans?

I feel like the 1 skin tone is meant to be provocative, possibly be a
deliberate troll, maybe start a discussion.

does the author wish to weigh in?

as a white human I feel excluded. maybe I'm attaching too much importance to
skin tone as a part of identity. I think partly that's in our brains, partly
it's emphasised by the media to divide us and create outrage, for power and
engagement.

~~~
AYBABTME
The average color of all human skin mixed together would probably be brown.
Picking an average of everything should be highly uncontroversial.

~~~
coreyp_1
Nobody is average.

OK, that's too short to really mean anything, so I'll elaborate. If you take
the average characteristics of everyone in the world (wealth, skin tone,
intelligence, BMI, height, gender, etc.), and turned that into a single
person, then you would have a new, unique person. In other words, it would not
"represent" anyone, and so should definitely be seen as controversial. There
are a myriad of engineering stories about this discovery (one size doesn't fit
all).

If anything, I would have loved to see more diversity, or at the very least a
prominent message on how to achieve it. Color might be the easiest change to
make, but I didn't see any old or fat people on there, or how to make those
variations.

I like the overall idea of the project, though.

