Create Digital Media

The Iterate Podcast

George Hammerton — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:11:34 +0000

Two years ago the folks over at Mobile Nations started one of my very favourite podcasts called ‘Iterate’. This show has quickly become one of my favourite treats and it’s about time more people learnt about it.

On each episode, Marc Edwards, Rene Ritchie, and Seth Clifford are joined by a special guest to discuss the latest news, tools and concepts surrounding mobile user interface and iconography design. The special guests often come from my favourite little boutique development houses and discussion commonly spreads beyond the UI and into alternative interaction models, shared experiences and musings on different approaches taken between the various mobile platforms.

If you’re a UI nerd like I am then be sure to check out the Iterate podcast.

Alan Rogers Bookstore – Version 2

George Hammerton — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:09:23 +0000

In this major revision to the Alan Rogers Bookstore we’ve made no dramatic changes to the overall design, instead we’ve done a lot of work to improve the overall experience. Version two is dramatically faster, we’ve unified the bookstore and bookshelf while simplifying the in-book interface itself.

We’re immensely proud of the new Alan Rogers Bookstore 2, if you’re already a user make sure you’ve downloaded the latest version and for new users there’s never been a better time to start building your collection.

All new code, re-written from the ground up.
Fully retina user interface, taking advantage of every pixel on your retina iPad.
Updated icon making it easier to spot the Bookstore at a glance.
Guides are now smaller in size with dramatically improved image quality.
Listing annotations allow users to simply tap on any area of a review for links, maps and contact information.
Unified bookshelf makes it easier to find your purchased guides and add more to your collection.
Multilingual support continues for English and Dutch language speakers.
Legacy copies of the 2012 guides are still available to previous owners via the new Restore Purchases option.

Download, read, discover, explore!

Drive, now just 69p!

George Hammerton — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:00:27 +0000

We love our Drive app, it’s something that we’re really proud of and we want as many people as possible to enjoy a safe and happy commute every day.

Today we’ve cut the price of Drive from the previous price of £1.49 to just 69p!

We hope this will allow even more people to enjoy their driving experience safely. Pretty great, huh? So if you’re not already using Drive then download it now, what are you waiting for?

Our 2nd Birthday

George Hammerton — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:28:59 +0000

On Saturday we’ll celebrate our 2nd Birthday and I can’t quite believe how quickly the time has passed.

Last year I wrote about how it felt like just the other day we were sat on the floor of our empty studio and so much has changed in that time but most importantly we’re still making good use of Joe, our coffee machine.

Little Joe has now dished out an estimated 8,517 cups of joe and the kettle’s helped to make 2,089 mugs of tea. Create DM is still running on passion, talent and caffeine in equal parts.

I want to take a brief moment to say a massive thank you to all of our wonderful clients, the epic Create DM team, all of our lovely users and the overwhelming love and support from our fans in the online and local community.

To celebrate, our very own Drive app is now half price until the end of the weekend so get out there and drive safe!

Get Drive now for just 69p.

We’ve been ‘Selected’!

George Hammerton — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:58:48 +0000

We received a very special delivery in the post today, our very own copy of Selected C, Graphic Design from Europe. As the name suggests, the book highlights great design from across Europe, every entry is selected by a panel of judges each year and we’ve been selected for inclusion in their third edition.

“The jury is … looking for works that represent the current level of quality and creativity that can be found in today’s European designs.”

It’s always exciting to see our digital work in print and it’s a great credit to Mike and Ryan who helped to bring the website to life a little over a year ago.

You can learn more over at Index Book where you can pick up a copy of your very own.

Drive update adds Music Picker & Google Maps™

Liam Moody — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:28:57 +0000

The latest version of Drive will be released on the App Store any minute now as a free update for existing users and we’ve jam packed it with a whole load of awesome, based on our users’ feedback.

Now with Google Maps™ option

Back in iOS 5 (and before) we all had a lovely time with Google Maps, everything was rosy. Then, along with the release of iOS 6, Apple introduced their new maps service with a mixed reaction—basically, it looked pretty but was buggy and unfinished. Well, I’m excited to announce Drive is one of the very first (if not the first) third party app to re-integrate Google Maps™ back in to an iOS app with the new SDK, released by Google last week.

Now, we’re not taking away the iOS 6 maps—they’ll still be enabled by default—but should you prefer Google’s offerings, simply hop in to Settings, choose Google as your preferred maps provider and viola! Google Maps™.

Music Picker

One of the great things about Drive is it’s gesture driven music player allowing users to play, pause, skip between tracks and adjust volume with just a few simple taps or swipes.

In the latest version, we’ve integrated a brand new built-in media picker allowing users to queue up tracks from their music collection. Simply tap the new playlist button from within the music player (top right) or long-press the player to bring up the brand new media picker. From here you can browse & play your playlists, artists, albums, tracks, audiobooks and even play podcasts right from Apple’s podcasts app, in Drive. Awesome, huh?

Loads of UI updates & goodies including:

- Made the main buttons a bit juicier.
- Updated Settings screen with cleaner user interface.
- You can swipe the map up/down to toggle a larger mapview.
- Track/Artist information text is now clearer over album art.
- Long-press the location bar to pause/un-pause location tracking (this helps to conserve battery).
- Removed the on-load Night Mode suggestion alert.
- Updated ‘Tips & Safety Information’ screen — make sure you read them!

Release Notes for v1.1

★ Google Maps™ — Choose between your favourite maps providers.
★ Music Picker — Launch the new media picker for easy access to music, playlists, podcasts and audiobooks.

❤ Updated UI — Driving has never been sexier.

☂ Performance Improvements — Lightening fast!
☂ Bug fixes ― Squish!

Check the app store’s Updates tab on your iPhone to update the app with these great new features… or if you haven’t got Drive yet, download it from the app store:

Kickfolio Rocks!

George Hammerton — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:24:39 +0000

A constant frustration for any app developer is that you can’t give a real demo of an iPhone app without a physical device in hand. Sure, you can take some sexy screenshots, write an enticing blog post or even produce a killer promo video but users can’t get their hands on it. Well, that was true until now.

Since late last year we’ve been working with the team at Kickfolio testing something pretty special that they’ve been working on.

With the new Kickfolio system we can embed a live simulation of any app right inside a user’s browser, running live from an iOS simulator from the Kickfolio servers. Needless to say, we’re absolutely thrilled!

We’re currently experimenting with our Château le Verdoyer app with a view towards adding more of our apps in the future. Oh, and did I mention they’ve just added iPad support?

Cabel Sasser Interview

George Hammerton — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:13:03 +0000

We’re all big, BIG fans of Panic, we use their software every day but more than just their products and design, we’re massive fans of their perfection focussed ethos. It feels a lot like ours.

Cabel gave a great interview to the guys at &yet which I wanted to share, so if you enjoy a glimpse behind the curtain, click play.

More…

Belle France Brochure 2.0

George Hammerton — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:17:23 +0000

New for 2013, Belle France commissioned a big update to their iPad brochure app which included a full rewrite from the ground up.

Along with a revamped User Interface design, version 2.0 includes full retina iPad and iPad Mini support, dramatically improved performance and the 2013 brochure itself.

One of my favourite little achievements was our ability to reduce the file size of the app substantially. Version 1.1.1 weighed in at over 200MB, with version 2.0 taking up just 33.4MB. This means that the new app takes up just 17% of the space, even though the new app supports that gorgeous high resolution retina display.

Release notes:
• New 2013 Brochure.
• Retina Ready.
• Brand new UI.
• The app is now 83% smaller.
• Rewritten from the ground up.

We released the app update late last night and you can download it now, for free.

Drive 1.0.2 Now Available

Liam Moody — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:50:52 +0000

We’ve just released an update to Drive. This update comes with improved power management, some small tweaks to the user interface and carries a few new features requested by our users.

Drive 1.0.2:

★ Added ability to pause location tracking (helps to improves battery life)
★ Increased font size of artist/track labels for better readability
★ Added expanded map view option — tap/swipe the map
★ Improved seasonal accuracy of automatic night mode suggestion
★ Clock now also in landscape
★ Various UI improvements
★ Various performance enhancements
✔ Updated UserVoice feedback software to v2.0

Download the free update today & keep the feedback coming!