Terms and privacy

1. The agreement

Visual Explorer is a digital creative brand. These terms cover visualexplorer.app and everything on it, including Archive, our platform for design inspiration (together, the “service”). “We” and “us” mean Visual Explorer. “You” means the person using the service.

By using the service you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy below. If you don’t agree, please don’t use it. If you use the service for a company or a client, you confirm you’re allowed to agree for them.

2. Who can use it

You must be at least 13 years old, and old enough in your country to agree to these terms on your own (16 in much of Europe) or have a parent or guardian agree for you. You may not use the service if we have previously removed you from it.

3. Accounts

You can browse without an account. To submit work, give stripes or follow makers you need one, created with your X account or an email address.

• Give accurate information and keep it current.
• One person per account. You are responsible for what happens under yours, so keep your sign-in secure.
• Usernames must not impersonate anyone or mislead people about who you are. We may reclaim or change a username that does.
• Tell us promptly if you think someone else has used your account.

4. Your work stays yours

You keep every right you have in the work you submit. We don’t claim ownership of it.

So that we can run the service, you give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, resize, display and distribute the work you submit, on the service and in our own channels that promote it (such as our X account), always with credit to you. We don’t sell your work and we don’t license it to anyone else.

The license ends when you delete the work or your account, except for copies that remain in routine backups for a limited time, and posts or shares that other people have already made.

When you submit work you confirm that you made it or have the rights and permissions needed to submit it, that it doesn’t infringe anyone else’s rights, and that showing it on the service won’t break any agreement you have with a client, employer or collaborator.

5. A curated archive

Every submission is reviewed by a person. Submitting work does not guarantee it will be selected, and we don’t owe anyone a place in the archive or a position in a feed.

We may decline work, choose its category, edit titles and descriptions for clarity, black out strong language, feature a piece as an editors’ pick, or remove a piece later. How selection and ranking work is explained in Docs, and may change as the service develops.

6. Work we find

Editors sometimes add work they find posted publicly, so that good work by people who haven’t joined can still be seen. That work is always credited by name to its maker and links back to where it was posted.

If a piece of yours is here and you would like to claim it, correct the credit or have it taken down, tell us and we will act on it promptly. See Rights and removals in Docs.

7. Stripes, badges, ranks and verification

Stripes, badges, leaderboard positions and verification marks are recognition within the service. They have no cash value, can’t be bought, sold or transferred, and aren’t a promise of anything.

We may adjust or remove them, and remove accounts, where we see fake accounts, coordinated or automated activity, or anything else meant to game the rankings.

8. Rules of use

Please don’t:

• Submit work you don’t have the right to submit, or pass off someone else’s work as your own.
• Post anything unlawful, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit or deceptive.
• Impersonate a person, studio or brand.
• Scrape, copy or bulk-download the archive, or use the work in it to build datasets or train machine-learning models, without the makers’ permission.
• Use bots or scripts to create accounts, give stripes, follow or submit.
• Probe, overload or interfere with the service, or try to get into accounts or data that aren’t yours.
• Use the service to send spam or advertising, other than through our sponsorship program.

Work in the archive belongs to the people who made it. Being shown here is not a license to reuse it. Ask the maker.

9. Copyright and removals

We respect the rights of makers and expect the same from everyone here. If you believe something on the service infringes your copyright, send us: the address of the piece, a description of your work, your contact details, a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorized, a statement that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act for them, and your signature (typed is fine).

We remove or disable what is identified in a valid notice and let the person who posted it know. They can reply with a counter-notice if they believe the removal was a mistake. We close the accounts of people who infringe repeatedly.

10. Sponsored posts

We operate our own advertising platform. Sponsored posts appear in the feeds and are always labeled as sponsored. Every sponsored post is reviewed by a person and we may decline or remove one that doesn’t fit the archive.

The price, dates and other details of a placement are set out when you book it and form part of your agreement with us. Sponsors are responsible for what they submit and confirm they have the rights to it. We don’t promise any particular number of views, clicks or sales.

11. Other services and links

The service relies on and links to things we don’t run, including X, the tools named on tool pages, and makers’ own sites. Their terms and privacy policies apply to them, and we aren’t responsible for what they do.

12. Features on the way

Some parts of the service, such as Brain, Assets and Earn, are marked as coming soon. They may launch with additional terms, which we will show you before you use them. Anything we say about future features is a plan, not a commitment.

13. This is a beta

The service is in public beta. Features will change, some will be removed, and things will occasionally break. We may change, pause or end any part of the service. Keep your own copies of anything you submit.

14. Our brand and site

The Visual Explorer name, logo, stripe marks, site design, text and code belong to us. You may use the name and logo to refer to us, following the brand kit on the About page. Please don’t use them in a way that suggests we endorse or are part of something we aren’t.

15. Leaving, and being asked to leave

You can stop using the service at any time, delete your own posts from your profile, and ask us to delete your account. We may suspend or close an account, or remove content, if these terms are broken, if we are required to by law, or if keeping it up would cause harm to others or to the service. Sections that by their nature should outlast your account, such as 16 to 19, continue to apply.

16. No warranties

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no warranties, express or implied, including that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure, or that work shown on it is accurate, lawful or free to reuse. Some places don’t allow these exclusions, so some of them may not apply to you.

17. Limits on liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Visual Explorer and the people who work on it are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the greater of 100 US dollars or the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that can’t be limited by law, or takes away consumer rights you have where you live.

18. If your use causes a claim

If someone brings a claim against us because of work you submitted or because you broke these terms, you agree to cover the reasonable losses and costs that result, to the extent the law allows.

19. Law and disputes

Talk to us first. Most problems can be sorted out with a message. These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state in which Visual Explorer is established, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and disputes will be heard in the courts located there. If you are a consumer, you keep the mandatory protections of the country you live in.

20. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the service grows. When a change matters, we will post a notice on the service before it takes effect. Carrying on using the service after that means you accept the new terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed.

The short version

• We collect what we need to run accounts, show work and keep the rankings fair.
• We don’t sell your personal information and we don’t run advertising trackers.
• People, not software, decide what gets into the archive.
• Your profile and your work are public. Your email address never is.
• You can see, correct or delete your information by asking us.

1. What we collect

Account details. If you sign in with X, we receive your X account identifier, username, display name and profile image, and an email address if X shares one. If you sign up with email, we receive your email address; your password is stored only in hashed form by our sign-in provider and we can’t read it.

Profile details you choose to add: username, display name, bio, website, X username, profile image and the kinds of work you make.

Work you submit: images, video, links to X posts, titles, descriptions, the tools you used, and your confirmation that you have the rights to it. Editors’ decisions and notes on submissions are stored with them.

Activity: the stripes you give, the makers you follow, badges you earn, and views of project pages, which we count to help rank the feed.

Sponsorship and messages: the details you send when you ask about or book a sponsored post, or when you contact us.

Technical data: like most sites, our hosting and back-end providers automatically record things such as IP address, browser and device type, pages requested and times, to deliver the service, keep it secure and measure overall use.

Stored on your device: a sign-in token if you are signed in, your cookie choice, your interface sound setting, and small conveniences such as whether you have dismissed a prompt.

2. What we don’t do

• We don’t sell or rent personal information, and we don’t share it for cross-site advertising.
• We don’t use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Sponsored posts are placed by us and are not targeted using your personal data.
• We don’t collect payment card details on the site. Sponsorships are invoiced separately.
• We don’t collect precise location, contacts or anything from your device beyond what is described above.
• We don’t make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you. Submissions are reviewed by people; feed order follows the published rules in Docs.

3. How we use it, and why we’re allowed to

• To provide the service you asked for: accounts, profiles, publishing your work, stripes, follows and badges (performing our agreement with you).
• To review submissions, credit makers correctly and handle claims and removals (our agreement with you and our legitimate interest in an accurate, lawful archive).
• To rank feeds and keep recognition fair, including spotting fake or automated activity (legitimate interest).
• To keep the service secure and working, and to understand overall use so we can improve it (legitimate interest).
• To answer you and to arrange sponsorships (our agreement with you, or steps you asked us to take before one).
• To load content from X on a project page, only if you have allowed it (consent, which you can withdraw at any time).
• To comply with the law and enforce our terms (legal obligation and legitimate interest).

4. What is public

Your username, display name, bio, links, profile image, approved work, badges, stripe counts and follower counts are visible to everyone and can be indexed by search engines and AI search tools. That is the point of the service: we want your work, with your name on it, to be found.

Not public: your email address, the list of who you follow, submissions that were not approved, and your sign-in details.

5. Cookies and similar storage

We use your browser’s storage for things the site can’t work without: keeping you signed in, remembering your cookie choice and your settings. These don’t track you across other sites.

Some project pages can show the original post from X. Loading it lets X set its own cookies and learn that you visited, so we only load it if you choose “Allow all” in the cookie notice or on the page itself. Otherwise you see a plain link.

6. Who we share it with

Service providers that run the service for us and only act on our instructions: our website host (Framer), and our database, sign-in and file storage provider (Supabase). X is involved when you sign in with X or allow X content to load.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect people’s rights or safety, or to a successor if Visual Explorer is ever reorganized or sold, in which case this policy continues to protect your information.

7. Where it is kept

Visual Explorer is based in the United States, and your information is processed there and in other countries where our providers operate. Where the law requires safeguards for transfers out of your country, we rely on our providers’ standard contractual commitments.

8. How long we keep it

We keep account and profile information for as long as you have an account. When you delete a post it is removed from the service. When you ask us to delete your account, we delete or anonymize your personal information within a reasonable time, apart from what we must keep for legal reasons, to resolve disputes, or to stop a removed account from returning. Copies may remain in backups for a limited period before they are overwritten.

9. Your choices and rights

You can edit your profile and delete your own posts at any time, and change your cookie choice whenever you like. You can also ask us to give you a copy of your information, correct it, delete it, or stop or limit how we use it.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you also have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests, to data portability, and to complain to your local data protection authority.

If you live in California or another US state with a privacy law, you have the right to know what we collect, to have it corrected or deleted, and not to be treated differently for using those rights. We don’t sell or share personal information as those laws define it.

To use any of these rights, contact us. We may need to confirm it is really you before acting.

10. If your work is here and you aren’t a member

For work that editors add, we keep the maker’s name as it was publicly credited and the link to the public post. If that is you, you can ask us to correct the credit, hand the piece over to an account of your own, or remove it.

11. Children

The service is not for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us personal information, tell us and we will delete it.

12. Security

We limit who can reach personal information, protect data in transit with encryption, and rely on established providers for sign-in and storage. No service can promise perfect security, so please use a strong, unique password and tell us if you notice anything wrong.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal information, we will update this page and its date, and post a notice on the service when the change is significant.