This Software As A Service (SAAS), Fluid, helps groups and individuals – designers and programers – to mock up their app ideas before executing development. This is a time saver and steps beyond simple flowcharts. Don’t get me wrong – flowcharts are awesome. I personally use flowcharts all the time before starting a huge project. These are not simply mock-ups, however. Fluid lets you actually do some low-level prototyping.
Unlike a lot of other prototyping SAAS sites, they actually have a free plan. It lets you really stretch your legs and work on small projects – and the plans they have let you step up as necessary in very affordable fashion. Prototype models for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, Windows Phone, Android, Windows OS and Mac OS are there, with lots of other little gizmos (yeah, that’s a technical term) you can utilize for basic interactivity. It’s like a flowchart that is made of movies instead of flat images.
This deceptively simple illustration was created by Ng in a matter of seconds using his Paper Simple app. The same illustration would have taken 5-10 minutes for someone experienced with Adobe Illustrator to accomplish.
William Ng has created a cool piece of software I have fantasized about for some time. In addition to being a geek who is into blinking lights, sci-fi and shiny metal objects, I’m also into marketing and vector illustrations. If you’ve ever used Adobe Flash to create an animation, then Ng’s illustration tool will not look foreign to you. He has taken the simplicity of what resides inside of a fairly complex and expensive software package and put it into a stand-alone app.
He’s already got a working version available for Android and has launched a Kickstarter to finance the improvement of the app, as well as to make it available for iOS and for Windows.
The illustrations you create can be exported to vector formats which can be used in Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Microsoft Vizio, Inkscape and others.
There are only 12 days to go on this Kickstarter and it’s not doing so well – for only a couple of reasons, I believe. It’s a great looking product. Look at the video below and if you’ve ever needed to create a quick and dirty illustration, you will be impressed. Firstly – the name of this product makes no sense. The name should be Easy Vector or Vector Simple or something like that. The marketing is all wrong. The other big flaw is lack of support for Mac OS. While Windows users outnumber Mac users 10:1, those who use Adobe Illustrator professionally on Mac significantly outnumber those that are on Windows. Walk into any advertising agency of note – their creative team is on Macs – period. This app is screaming for Mac support. I hope Ng will hear the cry of Mac users and take a crack at this on the Mac platform. If this was featured in the Mac App store – it would sell like hotcakes. There are a few vector programs out there for Mac on the cheap – but not one with the simplistic tools of Paper Simple. For me, personally, I would buy this in an instant if it was on the Mac platform and start cranking out simple illustrations to add to my iStockphoto portfolio.
This re-make of the Google logo was done by the creator of this software in 52 seconds. There is no way you could pull that off that fast in Adobe Illustrator. Really cool software.
Before Macromedia bought Flash from FutureWave for $1 million, a lot of people didn’t get it. Macromedia got it and got a crazy insane bargain with Flash… which was called Splash at the time. Later, Adobe bought Macromedia for $1 billion, including Flash – which was really the big thing they wanted in addition to Dreamweaver. I’m not saying Ng has a million dollar product here – but I’m saying that his marketing in this campaign (or lack thereof) is why it’s not doing well. It is really an insanely cool product – but not everyone is going to “get it.” I’d like to see Ng launch this again one day – after supporting Mac OS – and have some really nice videos – having seasoned illustrators give demos and testimonials on video – and the product needs a name change. In a world where ‘Google’ is a word people take seriously, things certainly can have goofy names – but Paper Simple makes zero sense. This whole shooting match needs a new logo, a new name and a new video to get people to dive in. Everyone has a DVR today – but TiVo had commercials for TEN YEARS before most people comprehended what the heck the TiVo did. Paper Simple (or whatever its future name will be – hopefully something more intuitive) should have its own Facebook page and an Instagram account. This product only suffers for a lack of proper naming, marketing and use of social media. The product is there, but this is a product that needs the whole package to get off the ground properly.
If you’re one of those rare geeks who does vector illustrations on Windows, this is really worthy of your attention. While it’s possible I might use a touch app for iOS to create an illustration, there are so many apps out there to create cute sketches (even though they don’t export as a vector format), that I just don’t see this app having a practical application on that platform. Disagree? Agree? I’d love it if you illustrators would share your comments below.
You can follow Paper Simple on Twitter and their website.
This Software As A Service (SAAS), Fluid, helps groups and individuals – designers and programers – to mock up their app ideas before executing development. This is a time saver and steps beyond simple flowcharts. Don’t get me wrong – flowcharts are awesome. I personally use flowcharts all the time before starting a huge project. These are not simply mock-ups, however. Fluid lets you actually do some low-level prototyping.
