In 2023/24 while working on a kitchen renovation, I was tasked with finding a way to quickly iterate on ideas for a tile backsplash given the physical constraints and the complexities of laying out tile.
Not content to simply use a single color or an alternating pattern, we decided to attempt a more deliberate mosaic, but the challenges of doing so quickly surfaced: how big is the canvas, how does that translate to tiles, how should modules be laid out, what are the effects of 3 vs 4" tiles, how much tile should we order, etc.
using a subset of fireclay tile's colors we had already decided on, we settled on a triangular module system. for this, i built a web based mosaic-design tool, built using react and bundled with parcel. it generates to-scale svgs and emits json documents for sharing state. it accomodates grout spacings as well as several anchoring options for the tiles.
Try it out here: generic mosaic or scrutinize its hasty development on github.
