We've got a WhatsApp group that's basically childhood friends + an unhealthy amount of football and cricket chat. Every month we crown a Fantasy Premier League Manager of the Month and I've always made a little celebratory poster for the winner. It's become a thing we all look forward to.
For years I've done it the manual way: one template for the season, crack open Affinity/Illustrator, wait for the stats guy in the group to tally the points, drop in the winner's name, team, month, photo... export... send. It's fun, but it also means the whole thing depends on me being at my laptop. If I'm travelling or away from my personal machine, the poster gets delayed and the magic dies a little.
So this week I decided to fix it.
The itch
- The group loves the posters.
- I'm not always around to make them.
- The process is repeatable: name, team, month, photo to same layout.
That's perfect "mini-project" territory.
What I built
A tiny web app where anyone in the group can make the poster in seconds:
- Upload the manager's photo (JPG/PNG/WebP)
- Type the manager's name and team name
- Pick the month
- Nudge the photo around (zoom/position) until it sits nicely
- Hit Download to get a 1080×1350 PNG (Instagram-friendly)
That's it. No waiting for me. No design software. Just a clean, guided UI and a shiny poster at the end.
A quick peek under the hood (lightly, promise)
I built it in an evening with Next.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS, then shipped it on Vercel. The poster itself is rendered as SVG, so text and logos look razor sharp, and I added a background-removal step so you can drop in any photo without fiddly cut-outs. Everything runs in the browser (no uploads, no accounts), so it's private and fast.
If you're curious: the app lets you zoom and position the photo, auto-sizes longer names so they don't break the layout, and exports the final SVG to a high-quality PNG. I also saved a few sensible defaults so you can't really make an ugly poster by accident.
Why this matters (to me)
This is the kind of small quality-of-life win I love as a product person. It removes a bottleneck (me), keeps a fun tradition alive, and gives my friends something they can use without instructions. It also scratches the "build small, ship fast" itch I've had for a while. Especially with all the AI/tooling energy around us right now.
What's next
- A couple more templates (same inputs, different styles)
- A stats badge (points total / rank delta) for the data nerds
- One-click share presets for Instagram/Stories
- Maybe a little "gallery" so we can look back at the winners
For now, though, it does exactly what we need: keep the monthly celebration rolling, even if I'm on a train to somewhere with dodgy Wi-Fi.
If you try it and spot anything rough, ping me. Otherwise... see you at the next deadline day 😄
Live demo: https://fpl-poster.vercel.app/