It always starts with an idea, doesn't it?
Alright, here goes nothing...

So, a while back, a friend of mine asked if I knew any website where he could find Figma designs for a full product flow for a mobile app. Or an AI tool that could generate the end-to-end flow. He was on a tight deadline and he needed to submit by the day's end.

I didn't know of any such resource at the time, so I just told him no. Then a lot of time passed. Another friend asked the same question. And another.

You'd think I'd gotten the hint, but I didn't. I never really gave the idea much thought. I mean, if we're talking about Figma templates, there are obviously a lot of them out there. And I've tried building templates before, and I can tell you from experience, they can be really boring, not to mention hard to make. But one Friday evening (or was it a Saturday?) I opened my design agency portfolio. A lot of it was old work. I had a few recent projects that I was proud of. Faleh. Riva Fruit. I started scrolling through the designs, and I realized something: I had been building things from scratch for years.

Anyway, I decided to update the portfolio, so, as usual, I opened my Chrome browser and went into my bookmarks for inspiration. For context, I have about 8 bookmark folders all full of design inspiration. You know, the jaw-dropping, mind-blowing stuff that makes you stop scrolling, the stuff that makes you think, "Fuck, how the hell did they pull that off?", you know?

But I noticed that some of them weren't what they used to be anymore. The websites had changed. The designs were different. Some of them didn't even exist anymore. So a lot of these bookmarks are now just either useless or dead links.

Why didn't I save it while I had the chance? I thought. I mean, I could have saved it as a Figma file, or even just a screenshot. But I didn't. And now it's gone.

Oh well...I was about to keep scrolling through the folders...

...And that's when the idea hit me.

Well, it didn't hit me, like your typical "Eureka!" moment. It wasn't a voice in the back of my head saying, "Hey, you should build this app".

I used to believe in this nonsense. Haha.

...But no, it was nothing like that. It was more of a slow, 2-hour thought process that went like this: " "Hmm... I need to start saving these inspirations. But saving screenshots and videos won't cut it..."

[Pause]

{I forgot to mention, I have a habit of saving screenshots and videos as well. I used to have an external hard drive full of design inspiration, both videos and images, from many websites, from Pinterest to Behance to Dribbble to Awwwards.

[Visual of a folder with screenshots and videos of design inspiration]

I barely opened them more than twice, but suprisingly, I still kept on saving more, because I was just in awe of so much great design work on the internet. It wasn't just websites or mobile apps. It was...everything... that caught my eye. Banners. Gradients. Dither effects. Illustrations. Animations. Microanimations. Everything. To think that it will all be gone in time...that I found quite disappointing. But the more I saved, the harder it became to
1. Find what I'm specifically looking for, and
2. Know what to choose, and when to use it. }

[Resume]

...

Saving them is not enough. I want them to be easily accessible. So if I open Figma or just start coding, I can easily pick one and get started.

Won't it be nice to be able to find an inspiration, copy it, but edit it to match your specific idea? It wouldn't neccessarily be an exact copy of someone else's work, because that would be downright stealing; but instead, it would be something interesting, something...inspiring, about the work that is can be applied limitlessly anywhere? Like, say, the way a gradient effect twists and curls on hover? Or an illustration style for a product ecosystem?

- What if you could turn a simple inspiration into a reusable design language?

- What if I didn't have to start from scratch ALL THE TIME? I used to love it, but the more I moved from freelancing to running a design business, I realized it wasn't always neccessary. Sometimes you just need a collection of reusable design you can start from. Saves time and effort.

- Oh yeah...come to think of it, some of my designer friends asked me something similar the last few times...Hmmm, I think I might be onto something...

You know what? Let's give it a try, see how it goes.

And...yeah...I guess that's how the Supershipped journey began.