YD-LABS
An Ongoing Experiment in Digital Art and Collective Creativity
YD-LABS is a continuously evolving digital art laboratory exploring raw artistic expression through simple tools and collective participation. Founded in 1999 by designer Louis Paschoud and developer Peter Holberton, the lab has expanded through various initiatives, collaborations and installations, always guided by the belief that constraints, limited tools and minimal interfaces, can ignite creativity in unexpected ways.
YouDraw 1999 - Today
YouDraw was one of the earliest online drawing platforms, providing users with a minimalistic set of tools to create digital drawings directly in their browser. With just a white background, two black pens (thick and thin), and two erasers, it offered an exercise in pure creativity, unrestricted by complex features.For more than two decades, the drawing tool remained unchanged, fostering an organic community where users could engage in a global, open-ended creative exchange. Over time, the platform grew into a massive digital archive, preserving the raw artistic expressions of countless contributors. YouDraw continues through Gen III, building on the original project while expanding the ways its archive, artists and community can be discovered and experienced.
YD-LABS is a continuously evolving digital art laboratory exploring raw artistic expression through simple tools and collective participation. Founded in 1999 by designer Louis Paschoud and developer Peter Holberton, the lab has expanded through various initiatives, collaborations and installations, always guided by the belief that constraints, limited tools and minimal interfaces, can ignite creativity in unexpected ways.
YouDraw 1999 - Today
YouDraw was one of the earliest online drawing platforms, providing users with a minimalistic set of tools to create digital drawings directly in their browser. With just a white background, two black pens (thick and thin), and two erasers, it offered an exercise in pure creativity, unrestricted by complex features.For more than two decades, the drawing tool remained unchanged, fostering an organic community where users could engage in a global, open-ended creative exchange. Over time, the platform grew into a massive digital archive, preserving the raw artistic expressions of countless contributors. YouDraw continues through Gen III, building on the original project while expanding the ways its archive, artists and community can be discovered and experienced.
Youdraw GEN III 2026 - Ongoing
YouDraw Gen III is a continuation of the original project.The drawing tool remains unchanged: the same canvas, the same pens and still no undo.What changes is everything around it. New ways to browse, discover and share drawings. Artist profiles. Better ways to explore more than 25 years of the YouDraw archive. And full support for mobile devices.Gen III expands YouDraw beyond the drawing tool itself, creating a richer platform around its archive, its artists and its community while preserving the simplicity that defined the original project.
YouDraw Book Collection
The YouDraw Book Collection brings the archive into physical form through an ongoing series of publications. Each volume brings together drawings from across the history of YouDraw, allowing the work to be experienced at a different pace and scale while preserving a physical record of the project. Together, the books form a growing collection documenting the creativity, diversity and unexpected character of the YouDraw archive.
MOON DRAW 2025
A piece from the YouDraw collection is now part of space exploration history. Selected for inclusion in the Blue Ghost 1 mission, a digital artwork from YouDraw was etched onto a nickel nanofiche and sent to the Moon aboard the Firefly Aerospace module.The initiative, led by the Moon Mars Museum in collaboration with LifeShip's Pyramid on the Moon project, ensures that a small piece of the YouDraw archive, and the collective creativity it represents, now exists beyond Earth.
Wikipedia
500K 2022-2023
500K grew out of the YouDraw archive and the questions emerging around digital art and ownership during the rise of NFTs. The project explored the idea of giving the 500,000 drawings collected through YouDraw a new identity and presence, while creating ways to navigate and experience the archive as a whole. The 500K Map was developed as an interactive way to explore the collection, transforming a vast archive into a more fluid visual landscape. Ultimately, 500K did not develop into an NFT project. As the context around NFTs evolved, the project was closed and some of its ideas folded back into YouDraw.
