Why I Created Armed-One

I have worked with spray paint for more than 20 years.

As a street artist and muralist, I have collected hundreds of cans across different brands, colour ranges, sizes, and locations. Some were stored at home, some in the studio and others were left over from previous mural projects.

The problem was simple: I could never clearly see what paint I already owned.

Before starting a mural, I would open boxes, shake cans, check labels and try to remember which colours were still usable. Often in cold and dark.

Sometimes I bought a colour I already had. Other times, I arrived at a wall and realised the shade I needed was somewhere else.

For professional artists, this becomes more than a small inconvenience. Paint is expensive. Projects require preparation. A missing colour can delay a mural, while duplicate purchases quietly waste money over time.

I looked for a tool that could help me manage this but most inventory apps were designed for warehouses, retail businesses, or general household storage. They did not understand how artists actually use spray paint.

A spray can is not simply owned or empty. It may be full, half full, nearly finished, reserved for a project, or stored in a different location. Artists also work with spray caps, wall paint, multiple brands, and colours whose names and codes are often difficult to remember.

That is why I created Armed-One.

The idea was to make logging paint as natural as possible. Instead of manually typing every product detail, an artist can scan the barcode on a spray can, confirm the product, and add it to their inventory.

From there, they can record how many cans they own, how full they are, where they are stored, and which colours are assigned to a project.

Armed-One was not created from a business trend or a theoretical problem. It came directly from years of working at walls, travelling to projects, preparing materials, and repeatedly asking the same question:

"What paint do I actually have?"

I began building the app because I needed it myself. But while speaking to other artists, I realised the problem was much bigger than my own studio.

Street artists and muralists around the world manage valuable materials using memory, handwritten notes, photographs, spreadsheets, or boxes they have to physically search through. Armed-One gives that process a dedicated digital home.

The goal is not to add more administration to an artist's life. It is to remove uncertainty before they begin painting.

Less time searching.

Less money wasted on duplicate colours.

Better preparation before reaching the wall.

More time focused on the work itself.

Armed-One is being built by an artist, for artists, around the realities of how we actually work.