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5 lessons from 50 days of CSS art

Suzanne Aitchison on July 04, 2020

50 days ago I started out on my project for 100 Days Project Scotland - to create a piece of CSS art every day for 100 days. I wrote about my motiv...
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Jayant Lohani

You took the 50-day challenge to a whole different level. When I first read your article 50 days ago, I wasn't expecting such amazing artworks to be honest. I still couldn't believe that such arts are made using CSS. I am devastated that I didn't pay attention to CSS a while back ago. Going to pay more attention to the CSS part from now on. I am truly a fan of your work. Looking forward to the second half of the project. All the best.✌

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you so much that is such a kind thing to say!

I have to be honest that every day has been a learning curve, my normal frontend job doesn't require a lot of this!

Having a project like this has really spurred me on to learn - it's a lot more fun for me to have an idea of something I want to make, and then figure out how to make it. It gives a lot of satisfaction when it's done!

Definitely growing my appreciation for CSS 😊

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abhay tripathi

Hi Suzanne,
There are many devs who are taking similar challenges and coming up with great work. But what I like the most about yours is the simplicity. You came up with little everyday things and than tried to implement it in simplest form. Great job. Inspiring. Keep moving forward.

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you! Yes totally, part of why I wanted to do this challenge was to have a bit of regular coding that is purely for fun, so keeping it simple, bright and breezy is definitely key 😀

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Deepak Mathur

That's mind blowing work, willing to learn and try.

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you so much! Definitely give it a go if you fancy it - honestly I'm surprised how quickly you can build strategies for creating and placing certain shapes.

CodePen is chock full of inspiration too - let me know if you do give it a go, I'd love to follow your work!

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Michello

Do I need this skills too..
Or I can go with my normal CSS skills.

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Suzanne Aitchison

For me I think this kind of CSS is just for fun 🌈

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Michello

Ok
Thanks very much

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Damien Cosset

CSS can do that???

What is this black magic? I can barely align two divs...

That's just so cool 😄

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Suzanne Aitchison

Hahaha thank you so much! The magical power of CSS ✨

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Debojyoti Ghosh

Wow! Great work!!
Loved the ants one.. 🐜🐜🐜 and the ice cream one too.. 🍦
All of them were great, of course! 😊😊😊

Here's one of mine - debojyotighosh.com/xp/amusement-park/

😊😊😊

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Robert Lipscomb

I. Am. Not. Worthy. ;)

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Suzanne Aitchison

Oh wow - this is incredible! I'm really impressed - this is so beautiful 😍 Now I'm feeling inspired to do some amusement park themed images!

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Robert Lipscomb

I'm a fairly inexperienced web developer (it's mostly a hobby - I have yet to land gigs doing it to make money). I need to take on some challenges like this to push myself. I'm amazed at these creations and had no idea CSS itself could be so powerful! Thank you for sharing this. :)

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you so much! I had so much fun with this challenge - definitely recommend finding some coding "just for fun" like this if you do have time 😊 sometimes we put so much pressure on pushing ourselves and forget that we can also just take some time to see what weird things we can make CSS do 😂

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Iamsbharti

Cool ,I am in this

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Daniel Selase

How do I start?

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Suzanne Aitchison

If you already know a little CSS I'd say just pick a few shapes and have some fun trying to create them in a CodePen!

It can also be fun to look through other people's CodePens and try to recreate them, checking on their code if you get stuck!

If you need to brush up your CSS fundamentals first, maybe somewhere like Codecademy would be a great place to refresh.

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Joe Ashwell

These are so cool! The ants are genius.

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you so much! I absolutely love ants so was really excited to do that one 😁

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Prafulla Raichurkar

Awesome

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you 😊

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Julie Plummer

Wow - looks great, and the code looks doable too!
Thanks

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Suzanne Aitchison

Definitely doable! A lot of can be achieved by making divs into circles and squares and placing them next to each other really 😁

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Sopulu Nwafor

Wow! so cool! You are a css genius
All this you were able to learn and achieve in 50 days
Great job!

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you so much ♥️ can't wait to see what the next 50 days hold! 😅

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Madza

What's your preferred CSS method for layouts? Like Grid, Flexbox, etc..

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Suzanne Aitchison

In my job I use flexbox and grid mostly, but for this project I've relied quite heavily on absolute positioning. Mostly because in creating an image like this, 9 times out of 10 (9 divs out of 10 haha) an element really does have a fixed position in relation to something else. Which isn't the case very often at all for building sites and apps!

A lot of my efforts so far aren't responsive at all (mostly due to me 'learning on the go' and the time constraints for pushing a piece out daily), but even when making responsive I'd still use absolute positioning a lot, just with more % values and attention to scale.

It does depend on the image though. If I need to line up a row of things, for example, I'd still use flexbox.

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Vaibhav Khulbe

What a wonderful stuff you made!! I really like those ants... 🐜 😂

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you so much! I really enjoyed the ants one! 🐜🐜🐜

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petetrickey

Thanks for sharing this. I've been thinking about trying my hand at CSS art, these are some great pointers to get started.

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Suzanne Aitchison

Amazing! Glad it can maybe help - would love to see what you end up making!

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nandhu_sathish

Wow really cool!

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you!

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Rohit Prasad

Nice. Why CSS over SVG ?

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Suzanne Aitchison

Just for the challenge! Definitely planning to get more into SVG after the challenge is over.

It seems to me SVG is more practical for professional use-cases, but I wanted to play with some CSS 😁

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Josiah Mokobo

Amazing

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Suzanne Aitchison

Thank you so much! Some attempts go better than others 😂