Why I Built a Square Avatar Generator (and What I Learned)
When building side projects or small tools, you often don’t realize how many tiny problems add friction—until they stack up.
One issue I kept running into was avatars.
Most platforms (GitHub, social profiles, dashboards, comment systems) expect square images.
But real user photos? Rarely square.
Cropping manually works… until you have to do it over and over again.
So I decided to solve it properly.
The Real Problem with “Simple Cropping”
At first glance, this feels like a solved problem:
- Upload an image
- Crop to 1:1
- Done
In practice, it breaks down fast:
- Faces get cut off
- Important details fall outside the crop
- Automatic center-cropping fails on non-standard poses
What I actually needed was:
- Face-aware positioning
- Consistent square output
- No manual tweaking for every image
That’s when I decided to experiment with an AI-based approach instead of traditional cropping.
From Manual Tools to AI-Based Generation
Rather than just resizing or cropping, I explored using AI to:
- Detect the subject properly
- Reframe the image into a square
- Preserve facial proportions and composition
The result is a workflow where you upload a photo and get a clean, square avatar without thinking about margins, alignment, or cut-off edges.
While working on this, I ended up turning it into a small standalone tool:
SquareFace Generator
It’s focused on one thing only—turning photos into square avatars that actually look right.
What I Learned Building This
A few takeaways from this mini project:
“Small” UX problems are often under-engineered
Cropping sounds trivial until quality actually matters.AI shines when rules break down
Once images stop being predictable, heuristics fall apart fast.Constraint-first tools are underrated
Doing one thing well is often better than shipping a toolbox.
Final Thoughts
This wasn’t meant to be a startup idea—just a way to remove friction from my own workflow.
But it reminded me how many developer tools start exactly this way: scratching a very specific itch.
If you’re building side projects, I’d highly recommend paying attention to the small annoyances you repeatedly ignore.
They’re often the best ideas hiding in plain sight.
Happy building 👋
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