“In a world of virtualization, it is thrilling to see a tool that invites tangible collaboration and glorifies creativity.” —juror Tali Krakowsky
“FiftyThree created one of the best drawing apps for iPad, and Mix takes that experience and makes it even better by making it social. Sometimes the hardest part of creating something is starting with a blank canvas. With Mix, an artist doesn't have to.” —juror Jon Jackson
Overview: Online sharing is often a dead end—users can repost or comment, but not much more. Mix is an open platform for creativity that was built to connect and inspire people through the act of co-creation. Instead of simply viewing content, you can tap a creation to open it and then sketch or write within it. Built right into Paper, FiftyThree’s iPad app, Mix provides a mixture of productivity templates, creative starter content, educational prompts, font collections and sketches. You can share your work with others and follow users whose style you like. Mix helps people overcome their fear of the blank page by remixing, being able to take someone else’s sketch or idea and evolve it individually or collectively as a community.
• The lack of a commenting feature in Mix encourages visual communication and participation.
• iOS technologies include OpenGL ES, C++ and Objective-C, and the web technologies are CoffeeScript, Heroku and Neo4j.
• A Creative Commons policy enables free-flow ideation, a process often encumbered by copyright or ownership.
Comments by FiftyThree, Inc.:
What was the thinking behind the navigation structure? “The idea was to redesign Paper so that users would have a private space in their own journals, but also a common place for everyone to come together. We accomplished that through what we call a Duplex View, which allows you to go from one space to the other by swiping up or down on the iPad. All navigation is custom-coded in iOS, so we get the exact experience we want, and we use very, very few system components.”
