2 hours ago by Nancy Owano

A preorder campaign has been launched for a web design platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to bring people closer to the quality websites they wish they had without a lot of bother and time. The offer: Any user, regardless of knowledge of web development, can use the platform to get an elegant website. The target: Anyone wanting to start a business or showcase talent with a good web site, without the fear of having to drop beans into pipes of a template-driven ordeal with results that in the end disappoint. Say hello to something called The Grid, which proposes to become a new way to create beautiful websites using AI to design the site based on content and user goals. The Grid engine auto-designs; the technology involves algorithms which analyze the media and apply palettes that can keep the messages consistent.

"A template isn't for you," says a promotional video. Your site should reflect who you are and should look good doing it. Problems arise because designing and developing are time-consuming jobs, and would it not be better if the website made itself? In a sense that is what The Grid does: no coding, no walled gardens, no templates, says the video. You tell The Grid what you want and its AI builds a solution tailor-made to the purposemore customers,, or more followers. What is more, The Grid site can adapt and adjust content.

The team explains how it adapts: everything you throw at it - videos, images, text, urls and more, is automatically shaped. Instead of spending time cropping images, for example, The Grid crops images to fit any size on any display. If the site owner should want to add e-commerce capabilities, then the user can add products and a shopping cart optimized for desktop and mobile automatically appears. Remove the products and the shopping cart disappears. "The layout changes as you add content."

The team behind The Grid, founded in San Francisco in 2010, consists of web developers and designers. "Template making platforms take hours, if not days to make something you'd be proud of," said The Grid CEO and cofounder Dan Tocchini. "We've spent the last few years building a form of artificial intelligence that functions like your own personal graphic designer, able to think about your brand and present it in the best way possible. The design adapts to your content, not the other way around."

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The Grid's crowdfunding campaign officially launched Wednesday, and the company is hoping to release the first accounts by late spring 2015. The software will retail for $25 per month but, according to the press release, a limited number of founding memberships will be given to pre-order supporters at a locked-in rate of $8 per month in addition to other features and benefits.

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More information: thegrid.io/

2014 Tech Xplore

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The Grid: Artificial intelligence as your personal graphic designer