"This elegantly effortless drawing app from FiftyThree has quickly become my go-to iPad sketchpad." —juror Dave Curry
"An elegantly designed tablet app that inspires creative thinking." —juror Scott Prindle
Overview: Paper is a simple, beautiful way to create on the iPad. It allows users to express ideas as sketches, diagrams, illustrations, notes or drawings and instantly share them across the web. Ideas begin on Paper. Great navigation is invisible and the key to this project is its simple user interface that immerses users in the creative process and makes it easy to express an idea and share it instantly. Gesture recognizers enable a tap to open and a pinch to close and rewind functionality allows users to control their undo history.
• Paper was developed by a team of three over ten months.
• The app takes full advantage of Retina Display to create the illusion of applying strokes on real paper; it uses OpenGL ES extensively for realistic lighting and shadows on content; and Grand Central Dispatch and Blocks enable progressive loading of art and networking and supports Twitter and the export to multiple formats.
Comments by FiftyThree Inc.:
Did you use any applications that you hadn't used before? "This was our first time designing and developing for iOS, so it was all new."
How have people responded to the project? "We have high expectations for ourselves, and the quality of the experiences we put out into the world, but we built Paper for ourselves; we needed a simple digital notebook for capturing new ideas with a basic set of tools. And we've been floored by the response to it. Creators around the world have surprised us with millions of creations—travel sketches, new product ideas, comic books, written poetry and things we never could've imagined. And that puts big smiles on our faces. Most meaningful to us, however, are the stories we hear from people who never felt they could draw until they picked up the app."
