Readymag Brand Guidelines: A Digital-Magazine Idea Turned Freeform Web Design Tool

An online-magazine tool that outgrew magazines.

Readymag is a browser-based design tool for making websites without code, and its name keeps a trace of where it started. English Wikipedia says the idea began in 2009 with a focus on online magazines, that the company was founded in 2012 and that it launched publicly in 2013, bootstrapped by its founders. It names three co-founders: the designer Anton Herasymenko, Diana Kasay and Kirill Danchenko.

The design magazine The Brand Identity, in a July 2023 feature marking the company’s tenth year, gives more of the early detail. Herasymenko recalled that the “proto-idea” came while working with a friend on relaunching a digital magazine around 2009, and that he wanted a tool that would not be template-based, because a freeform workspace was essential “to give the feeling of freedom while designing.” By that account he began sketches in 2011, showed the mockups to Kasay about a year later, and Danchenko then joined to lead development. After the 2013 launch, the feature says, Readymag was named Product of the Day on Product Hunt, which helped it raise a first funding round; English Wikipedia also records that launch on Product Hunt before the first round.

Users soon took the tool beyond magazines. Herasymenko told The Brand Identity that people began using it for portfolios, pitch decks and visual stories, which led the team to develop Readymag as a tool for designing websites. In early 2016, the same feature says, Herasymenko and Danchenko left the company and Kasay became chief executive; she is still named as co-founder and CEO by PRINT magazine in March 2024. She has described a path from start-up to a sustainable business without outside investment, English Wikipedia says.

As for its base, the Red Dot award listing for a Readymag project in 2023 gives the company as Readymag, New York, USA, and English Wikipedia calls it an American company. The Brand Identity reported in 2023 that fewer than 50 people in 16 countries worked on the product.

A freeform editor and a type toolbox.

Readymag’s editor is its signature. English Wikipedia describes a freeform editor in which designers can place elements without rigid grids, and says TechCrunch once called the platform a “hybrid solution” between template-driven site builders and developer-centric platforms. The review site Website Planet, in a review last updated in May 2026, described a drag-and-drop, layer-based editor with detailed spacing, animation and element settings, including animations along custom paths, and noted that mobile layouts are adjusted by hand.

Typography is the second pillar. English Wikipedia lists a built-in library of fonts, the option to upload custom fonts, and detailed controls for ligatures, stylistic sets, fractions, small capitals and variable fonts. In 2022 the company’s producer, Alya Datiy, told Creative Boom that its “passion for typography” runs through Readymag’s interface, font library, typography presets and the editorials it produces.

Templates exist, but play a supporting role. Website Planet counted 91 free and 36 paid templates at the time of its review, filterable into six groups — company website, landing page, presentation, portfolio, editorial and online store — and noted that users can submit their own templates for sale through the platform. English Wikipedia describes the business as freemium, with paid plans needed to connect a custom domain and for more advanced features, and names designers, agencies, freelancers and businesses as its main users.

The company also uses its own tool as a publisher. With the Type Directors Club, it made The Faces Behind Typefaces, a seven-chapter web editorial launched in October 2022 for the club’s 75th anniversary, in which type designers discussed figures such as Paula Scher, Paul Rand and Adrian Frutiger, Creative Boom reported; it was designed by Tatiana Egoshina. Red Dot lists the project among its Brands & Communication Design winners for 2023. Its Designing Women editorial series began in 2019 and was relaunched in March 2024 with a showcase of 37 women in design from the 20th and 21st centuries and a small grant programme, the ReadyLaunch Grant, PRINT reported.

Design and documentation.

Website and portfolio builders present themselves first through their templates. Ucraft’s home page offers more than 120 “designer-made” templates sorted into categories such as business, photography, restaurants and art, and credits each one to a designer on its team; Readymag’s templates, Website Planet reported in May 2026, are grouped into company websites, landing pages, presentations, portfolios, editorials and online stores, and include designs submitted by users.

The editor is the second part of the pitch, and the products differ. Ucraft’s editor works with blocks and elements that snap into a page grid, according to reviews in TechRadar in 2021 and PCMag in 2026, with a separate page of typography, button and layout settings that the company calls Designer Tools. Readymag’s editor is freeform, with elements placed without a rigid grid and detailed type controls such as ligatures, stylistic sets and variable fonts, according to English Wikipedia; Website Planet describes it as layer-based.

Showcase sites made by users do much of the brand’s work. Ucraft keeps a gallery called “Made with U,” and Readymag runs an annual Website of the Year award for projects built on its platform, judged by a jury of designers and art directors, according to English Wikipedia. Plan and feature names follow a similar logic, pairing plain tiers with branded tools: TechRadar listed Ucraft’s paid plans in 2021 as Pro Website, Pro Shop and Unlimited, alongside features such as a logo maker.

Corporate pages on founders and owners vary widely. Ucraft’s about page gives a dated timeline and names its investor, SoftConstruct, but not its founders, while Readymag’s founders and chief executive are named in English Wikipedia and in design-press interviews. This guide sets out what each company says about itself, and what independent dated sources add.

Recognition through its own projects.

Much of Readymag’s recognition has come through work made with the tool rather than for the tool alone. English Wikipedia lists the Red Dot Award for The Faces Behind Typefaces in 2023, a 2023 Indigo Design Award in the digital-tool category, a 2023 Webby nomination for The Faces Behind Typefaces, a Fast Company Innovation by Design Award in 2024 in the “Established Excellence” category, and a 2025 Webby nomination for its Design Layers Conference, a free online event it organised in 2024.

It also runs an award of its own. English Wikipedia describes the Readymag Website of the Year award as an annual competition for projects built on the platform, judged by a jury of designers, art directors and creative technologists, with categories that include visual style, interactive experience, editorial projects and experimental design. Users’ sites are, in effect, the brand’s showcase: Website Planet described examples ranging from a retro-inspired portfolio with pop-ups and animated cursors to long-form journalistic projects.

The company’s voice is that of an editorial team as much as a software firm. Kasay, in The Brand Identity, contrasted builders where “people assemble pages from bricks” with a tool in which designers “craft and combine elements.” Those are the company’s own descriptions, and its editorials, awards and grant programme carry the same voice: the brand speaks mostly through design publishing.

For a design guide, Readymag shows how a tool can build its identity from editorial design and typography, and let its users’ projects carry the brand. Compare Tilda, another website builder covered in this series, and Cargo, a site platform from the same group of website and portfolio builders. For this guide we use a press black, an editor red and a newsprint off-white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Readymag’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.