What if graphic design tools were not only used as ready-made solutions but reimagined as spaces for experimentation? Today’s digital applications remain locked into standardized workflows shaped by software companies. Although these tools were originally developed to democratize design, they have grown increasingly uniform, often restricting creative freedom and limiting possibilities for interaction. Why have their core functions changed so little, and why are alternative modes of interaction – beyond the click, the dropdown, and the default –still so uncommon?

Reimagine Design Tools approaches these questions through coding experiments that explore how designers might build their own tools using JavaScript and open-source libraries. The experiments treat code as a site of speculation, play, and community-driven authorship. Methods such as game controllers, camera tracking, and body gestures are tested as alternatives to conventional mouse-and-click workflows, examining how programming can open new relationships between ideas, materials, and tools.

Rather than reinforcing the image of the designer as a passive user of fixed systems, this work introduces ways of becoming co-authors of the systems themselves. What we need today is not more authorship, but companionship, partnership, and shared processes of relationships.