I used Squarespace’s Blueprint AI to design a website

Squarespace via Jacob Roach

There’s a lot you can explore in the Squarespace editor later, but Blueprint AI brings you into the editor with a clearer view of what your site is and what it should look like. Squarespace loves to highlight its award-winning templates, and they look great, but often only within specific contexts. The Tantillo template is bold, straightforward, and colorful, for example, but it works better as a template for a restaurant website rather than a photographer’s portfolio, for example.

Blueprint can combine elements from other templates in a logical way, while also filling your website with AI-generated content. Even if an AI-generated website isn’t the final destination — nor should it be — Blueprint offers a great starting point. You can get a mockup of content, design, and layout by answering a few questions and making a few simple choices, and you’re left with a website that needs some tight possibilities and goals. It is much faster than converting a template into something functional.

Using Squarespace website builder

Squarespace via Jacob Roach

Although Squarespace describes Blueprint as an AI-powered website builder, it is not a separate tool that lives independently of Squarespace’s main website builder. When you’re done creating your website, you’ll be launched into the Squarespace control panel, where you can further customize your site, change the design template, manage your SEO settings, and more.

The ability to use a standard website builder is what makes Blueprint stand out. For my website, I created a faux online retail store called Goofy Garments, and I didn’t have to change much in the editor. I switched to a slightly different layout for the website headers, changed the font in one section that was difficult to read, added a login page, and I was done.

Make no mistake, the AI-generated version wasn’t perfect, and AI-generated images of generic clothing look like they were AI-generated. But I’m able to put everything together faster. Instead of thinking about image spacing, font sizes, and button bindings correctly, everything is ready; I just need to drop what I need. Blueprint even made a few pre-made product listings that were ready to use with photos and descriptions.