Mailbox
OpenIdeas #1
Written by harv on November 11, 2023
Mailbox đź“«
Project name: harv-mail
App name: mailbox
Ethos
In my lab project, [harv-mail] or [harv-mailbox], I came to realize that online newsletters / email subscriptions are just like the old days when our Lolos or Titos were reading newspaper in front porch back then (captain obvious). But then email services (AOL Mail, Hotmail, Lycos, Mail.com and Yahoo! Mai) came around and were so boring and dull for me, like, most people only use it for soulless work email exchanges or for signing up in apps and products or even early stages of online dating loljk I was like <10yo or something, idrk how’s the internet culture back then.
So I have came up with an idea of “what if” we reinvent “email services” again, make it ✨ fancy ✨ and pushing the creativity forward.
Do you remember the very first e-mail you’ve sent? Me neither but IIRC I think it was on yahoo mail back on mid 2000s, or used it for registering for an online games back then so I could play Ran Online and those OG games when I was still a kid.
Few days ago, I encountered a cool web app bedrock.computer and I quickly thought of a new user interface concept for email to mimic a retro newspaper layout design. And oh, I also encountered that cool retro design in X (previously Twitter), here’s the source. Another inspiration is ultra.tf by @rauno (my lodi, jk) and web portfolio by [@alecbabala](https://www.alecbabala.com/ which are both a web canvas.
I have been a fan of canvas for the sole reason of freedom, literally, figuratively, digitally. Freedom to express. So how are we gonna do this?
We use the 4 most used tabs of any existing email services such as Gmail and iCloud.
- Inbox
- Sent
- Drafts
- Starred