Apps for the ride
Three fun quirky enriching apps to keep you occupied on the go.
Apps can be used for a variety of purposes, over recent years they’ve become more and more intertwined with our every day lives.
Many apps can be used each and everyday to help enrich our lives and help us to be better human beings and assist in our projects for work or our personal lives. Other times, we just want something to fill our time during the daily commute. These are a few of the apps that I have recently enjoyed and I hope will help you too whether it be to pass the time or enhance your life.
Weird Type
When it comes to typography and digital, they go hand in hand but only ever on a flat plane or canvas. When creating type in the 3D world, this could only be done by designing with physical materials or with the use of animation. Now a designer has been able to turn that idea on its head and designed a way for you to create type in the air.
Augmented reality has become a big phenomenon over the past few years and allows the user to take a flat plane and create a story or scene using QR codes and coding programmes. The app created by Zach Lieberman and his partner Molmol Kuo gives the user the creative freedom to be able to film their own shots and create typographic work that can be seen floating in mid air. Using special programming and mapping software, the type tracks where it has been placed using the camera setting and allows you to build up layers of type in your surroundings.
When creating this app, the main inspiration were the fans themselves. When creating work with this format in mind and posting it to Instagram, they received more and more messages asking them to create an app with this software, and so they did.
Working closely with type foundry, Abc Dinamo, Richard The and other IOS developers, the app allows users to play simply and freely with all creativity handed over to the user. Users can create with several modes including ribbons or text, exploding words and allowing them to take photos using letters.
At 99p, the app allows creatives to be able to see into the creative mind of Zach and the way that he creates his surreal work and gives them the chance to be able to create exactly the same without many years of coding knowledge. As a very affordable app, its well worth a try!
Monument Valley 2
Created by Ustwo Games, Monument valley is an indie puzzles game based in optical illusions and perspectives which closely relate to the work of M.C. Escher. Designed by Ken Wong and developed over the space of ten months, Monument Valley was released in 2017 following a massive hit of the original game in 2013. Boasting 30 million downloads by the end of June 2017, the game has become a huge success and has generated a massive following.
Using the story of a little girl and her mother, the game focuses on themes of family separation and the journey to bring these two characters back together. With the help of other characters such as the Crows, the Totem and the Storyteller, the game leads you on a journey of trials and what it takes to bring a mother and daughter back together. With no dialogue within the game, the designers rely on the use of beautiful music to capture the atmosphere of the gameplay and that moment within the story.
This style of this game allows it to be one of the most visually pleasing games created in recent years. Using the work of M.C. Escsher, the game manipulates what is possible win the real world through physics and perspective to create a puzzle game like nothing else. Twisting parts of the map that would not Normally be able to be connected, the game allows you to create pathways to bring the mother and daughter back together.
The art style, colouring and music used within this game all add up to create a beautiful experience to allow you to drift away on a long journey and get lost within the adventure.
Friendsome
When talking to new people, we have all gone through the struggle of having a highly intellectual conversation and managing to connect with someone on many different levels, to then walk away and cannot even remember their job let alone their name and how to contact them. There is nothing worse than forgetting your friends favourite book or where they went on holiday and having that awkward moment where you pretend to know until you admit defeat and make them repeat it all over again.
Friendsome is an app which aims to combat the problems with social interactions and memory and allows you to enhance yourself by challenging your memory and retaining important facts about the people you connect with.
When connecting with a new person, whether it be a close friend, distant family member etc, the app gives you the opportunity to retain certain information within a profile about that person. The app will then set reminders for you to tell you this information- once a day or once a week. Doing this, information starts to be retained within your memory and allows you to develop the friendships you have, the skills to do so and the chance to be able to better yourself personally and socially, giving you the chance to be able to better your memory and connection skills all within one app.
With a simple layout, user interface and a simple concept, the app is very simple to use and can be used whenever and wherever with your phone making it easier to remember the people you want to connect with.
Leave any comments below if you enjoyed this article or if you have suggestions about apps we should check out!
