What Are.na is
A place for saving and connecting ideas: blocks of images, text and links, gathered into channels that connect to other people's channels.
- Connections between channels turn saving into research
- A thoughtful, ad-free community of designers and researchers
- Everything is public by default, so the archive is shared
- Good for slow, long-term collecting
Where it stops
Are.na is the best place to follow a thread of references across other people's collections. It is not a reference itself. A channel called "brutalist web" is other people's examples; what brutalism is, where it came from, which typefaces it uses and what palette it runs on is not in the channel.
What Omoro is
Omoro is a visual research system: 224 named design styles, each taken apart into its palette, typefaces, materials, history and where it shows up in real work. The library is open to everyone without an account; the Studio, where your own references become one directable style, opens to the waitlist.
Side by side
| Are.na | Omoro | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Collecting and connecting references | Documenting styles as reference material |
| Styles | Channels, user-made and uneven | 224 styles written to one standard |
| Palettes | None | 660 palettes with hex codes |
| Typography | None | Font pairings per style |
| Lineage | Implied by connections | Stated: origin, period, related styles, a timeline |
| Community | Central to it | Not the point; the library is |
| Free tier | Free with a block limit | The whole library, no account |
Which to use
Keep Are.na. Keep Are.na for the collecting and the connections. It is the better place to wander.
Add Omoro. Add Omoro for the looking-up. When a channel names a style you do not know, the style page is where it is explained.
Pricing
Are.na is free with a limit on blocks, with a paid Premium tier. Omoro's library is free without an account.
What is coming
Next in the Studio, opening to the waitlist first: image and video generation from a style, collage building, inpainting, reference saving and taste detection.
224 styles and 660 palettes, free, no account. See what a documented style looks like before you decide anything.