‘Paper’ iPad App Partners With Moleskin – Raises $15m
A very interesting article published by Stuart Dredge for The Guardian this afternoon discusses the developers behind the uber popular app, Paper, FiftyThree in which in their latest Series A funding, they raised $15m and ‘explicitly outlined ambitions for “moving beyond touch and into the physical world of accessories” – drawing on its team’s hardware experience within Microsoft (Kinect, Xbox and the never-launched Courier) and Sonos’.
‘In 2013, FiftyThree has been taking Paper’s digital charms into the physical world. Earlier this year, it created a customised version of the app for the Fashion Rules exhibition at Kensington Palace in London, helping visitors design their own dresses while gazing at real royal frocks.
Today, it’s launching another partnership, with Moleskine, whose physical notebooks, journals and other products have been finding similar favour within the design community and beyond to Paper.
Their joint project is called Book, and involves Paper users choosing 15 pages of their sketches to turn into a printed book, with Moleskine handling the production (“handmade in the UK” apparently) and distribution. At $40 per book, they’re not cheap, but that’s no surprise given Moleskine’s brand’ – Stuart went on to say.
You can read the full post here.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.Her journalism, criticism and commentary have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography, Android Magazine, NikonPro, DPReview, Which Digital Camera and Which Camera. She has lectured internationally on photography and mobile art, served as a juror for international photography awards, and exhibited her own photographic work across the UK, Europe, South Korea and the United States.Alongside her editorial work, Joanne's photographic and postgraduate research explores death, grief, memory, representation and social inequality through contemporary photography, participatory practice and visual research methods, with the longer-term aim of developing this work through doctoral research.Through TheAppWhisperer, she continues to publish independent photography journalism spanning contemporary photographic practice, mobile imaging, photographic apps, computational photography and emerging imaging technologies.Joanne is available for editorial commissions, photography projects, judging, curatorial work, speaking engagements, consultancy and selected collaborations.
One Comment
Laurence Zankowski
Joanne,
I was pretty curious about this and evernote’s going into lifestyle / hardware partnerships. This may actually be a bigger trend over the next few months. There is only so far you can take apps with out running into bloat ware ( adobe c.c. ) . When i read that the Adoit jot had sold over a million units, i can see why certain app vendors want to extend their reach into physical markets.
Matter of fact, as I am writing this, I would, if I was a app dev, seriously think of physical markets along with software markets right at the beginning of app creation. There is a lot more to this, just watch.
Be well
Laurence