What Diffreel is
A 720 × 1280 stage, a row of beats, and a toolbox of pieces: nodes and lines, cards and words, and figures that count, fill and chart. You drag pieces onto the stage, arrange them across the beats, and press save. Nothing to install and nothing to render, and every reel you draw comes back on any device you sign in from. It takes a free account, and nothing else.
What a reel is
Most often, two ways of doing the same job running at the same time on the same screen — side A in vermillion, side B in cyan. Watch one through and you come away knowing not just that they differ, but where, and when, and by how much. A reel can just as well be one idea walked through in steps, or a number that moves. Whatever it holds, it is vertical, under a minute, and made to be understood on a phone.
Free and Plus
An account is free. The Free plan draws five reels a month with everything the playground shipped with — the pieces, ten kinds of words, the accents, the starter templates marked Free, and every convenience for arranging them. Plus draws fifty a month and adds the rest of the toolbox: figures and charts, dashed and travelling lines, more shapes and more kinds of words, motion between beats, colours picked by hand, square and landscape frames — and a brand of your own, which is your typeface inside the reel, a kit, a library of pieces, earlier versions of every reel, and a reel without the Diffreel mark.
Plus is not for sale yet. Until it is, it is switched on by hand, and nothing on this site takes a card.
The reels on this site
The reels you can watch here are finished explainers in the format the playground makes — the reels it was built to draw — each with an article under it that says why the idea is shaped the way it is. They are free to watch and free to share, and every one has its own link: send one to a colleague stuck on the same question, drop it in a code review, or keep it in your notes. They are also the honest demo — what the tool makes, at full length, with nothing edited in afterwards.
Who makes it
DiffReel
13 reels
How to get in touch
Something wrong in a reel, something the playground should be able to draw, or a question about a plan? Write to [email protected].