Gesso is a project about curiosity: having room to explore an idea, understand how it works, and see what you can create with it.
Adobe Dreamweaver taught me how to code Myspace layouts while I was in high school. I could open a page, change something, break it, and figure out why. That was how the web became real to me.
In college, I studied digital media, communications, and marketing. Creative software was where I practiced the ideas, found my way into design, and learned that I could make a life around this work.
I still have a lot of affection for the tools that made that learning possible. Gesso isn’t an argument against those products. It’s another choice.
I wanted a capable design app that someone could use without paying, or purchase at an amount that fits, learn slowly, keep locally, and return to when the work came back. So I started building Gesso.
I use AI-assisted coding to turn product decisions into working software. I still set the direction, make the visual and product calls, review the implementation, and take responsibility for what ships.
Gesso does not generate images or artwork. Optional on-device Apple Intelligence can help with design operations and stays off unless you choose it. The studio stays focused on drawing, arranging, editing, reusing, and preparing your work.
In development: a directory and marketplace for illustrators, designers, photographers, copywriters, and other creators. When the work needs another person, Gesso should help you find one—not replace them.
I’m interestedCuriosity. Time to make. The same design experience for everyone.
Creative work already asks for time, attention, and resources. Gesso should reduce the load around it—not add another subscription, another set of limits, or another decision about which features you can afford.
Cloud collaboration, deep template libraries, mature production pipelines, and education programs are real advantages, and the big tools have them. What they also have is a meter. Gesso trades those for something else: a design app you can open in a browser or on macOS, pay for once or not at all, and still open on the day the invoices stop.
Gesso is built for the kind of slow, curious learning that made design possible for me.