Aviary, the online design tool suite, launching tonight

Allen Stern has the scoop on the launch of Aviary, a company that I've covered a lot for their online design tool suite. The stuff these guys have built is very, very cool. They took Flex and created an entire suite of tools including a 3D editor, a photo editor, a vector editor, and a pattern generator. Tonight they'll be launching with Phoenix, the image editing tool.

The tools behind Aviary are fantastic but what really makes this company so cool is the way they're going to monetize. They want to create a community around design in which the tools help facilitate the community. You can share assets that you build in the tools and even add specific copyright/usage requirements so that when others from the community load those assets in the tools they'll inherit those requirements. You'll be able to see exactly how the asset was made so you can start using your own creativity with a little extra knowledge. It's a great system and it's going to be fantastic for the design community.

Because it's all based on Flex, the Aviary team is planning on releasing an AIR version of the tools. The team is based in New York and has been working with some of the best Flash developers in the community. They've raised an angel round of funding. I've got 100 invites to give away so just go to the login page and register your email address. Update: They're using the referrer logs to give you guys invites, so click that link, request an invite using your email address (even if you've requested one before) and they'll send one along when it opens. Sorry about the confusion.