The project
Who built RobinPad, why, and the open-source philosophy behind it.
A solo project, for now
I’m Roberto Nieto (@Syntetyc), and RobinPad is a personal project that borders on the experimental, since I was never quite sure it would go this far.
I’ve been an art director, designer, and illustrator for over twenty years, working in the tech industry on various startups, apps, and digital products. At the same time, I’ve always focused on illustrating anime-style backgrounds and fantasy landscapes. All this experience has helped me learn how to structure a project from technical, conceptual, and aesthetic perspectives.
RobinPad is a project I’ve had in mind for many years. I bought the domain ten years ago, simply because I liked the way it sounded and all the concepts that could stem from it, but I didn’t have any specific plan in mind at the time. Over time, I experimented with various ideas, such as a writing app, other text-related tools, and concepts for digital notebooks… but none of them convinced me, and I always ended up setting the project aside.
In the meantime, I focused on the visual design, quietly sketched out a first version of the logo, continued experimenting with ideas, and began shaping the concept of a digital painting app, but with a different approach than other digital painting apps. I wanted to create something closer to an experience than a purely functional tool. In mid-2025, I started seriously mulling it over, designing some screens, thinking about the architecture and theme system, researching technologies, and so on, until, in mid-2026, I found some time to focus on the project and begin defining something solid, coherent, and aligned with my technical knowledge as well as my expertise in digital painting.
And that’s how RobinPad became what it is today.