我手机里的APP们The Apps on My Phone

With nothing to do over lunch, let me share the apps on my phone. I use rather few apps, and my impressions of them run shallow. Just simple categories and introductions; consider it a brick tossed out to draw jade.

Current progress: apps added 18/324, logos added 0/324, app screenshots added 0/324

More being added..

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Flat Art

This category is basically apps that showcase two-dimensional artworks

Artsy

Artsy is a nearly all-purpose art app: news, exhibition listings, artist lookup and artwork lookup, the whole kit is there.

For users who would rather not stuff their phone full of apps, it’s a first-rate choice.

Content-wise, the module I personally use most is ‘Categories.’ The waterfall-flow layout is extraordinarily good at killing time. Also, being an American app, this thing casts its gaze a bit too far across the world. The recommended exhibitions are in Dubai one minute and Milan the next. The likes of us can just look on and feast our eyes.

LAAFA

What’s this one’s full name again? Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art. The app is as the name suggests: the school’s official app. The interactions are slightly odd; just open it and wander, and once you’ve had your fill of paintings in every style you can delete it. Loads quite fast from within China.

DailyArt

This one is a paid app and, as far as I know, has never once gone free-for-a-limited-time. Open the free version and you’re greeted head-on by ‘BUY PRO’ prompts of every description but even that cannot dampen my enthusiasm for strongly recommending it to everyone.

A massive artwork library with large-image browsing, plus thorough background and spec write-ups. Social sharing thrown in on top; what more do you want, a bicycle? Of course, if like me you’re a certified Comrade No-Posing-No-Comfort-sky and happen to need its actually-useless search function and iPad version, feel free to hand the developer 30 kuai and then shelve the app for good.

新建筑

Even someone as silver-tongued as me (big mistake) can’t help sinking into thought for half a second before introducing this app. What I mean to say is: while browsing a near-limitless supply of architecture photos, you also get to savor the thrill of the crashes brought on by its rather fine (read: dreadful) adaptation to iOS 9; it seems one shouldn’t ask too much of the interactions and features either.

Of course it can actually do more than that: a favorites button with no way to review what you’ve saved, and social sharing that quits the app the moment you tap it, are at least nominally provided.

ArtStack

ArtStack is yet another platform for collecting and sharing artworks. Its features are all but indistinguishable from Artsy’s, so I won’t say much. Unlike Artsy, it’s a UGC product with a passable user base, and its hub-style distribution means the likes of us can follow a few big names and keep enjoying fresh content indefinitely. Essential kit for the lazy.

Oh, and it supports large-image browsing too, you know.

ARTAND

ARTAND is the odd one out among these flat-art appreciation apps: most of the artworks you see can be paid for and carried home.

Likewise a U(ser)G(enerated)C(ash) app, it’s fairly rich on the content side, with plenty of up-and-coming artists steadily contributing to the platform. As for interactions: typical HIG style, no particular highlights.

BTW, at sign-up it asks whether you’re just browsing or looking to buy art; tested, and either choice makes zero difference to the experience afterward.

Catch

What sits in the last or second-to-last spot might be the grand finale, or might be merely a small supplement to meet the needs of certain users. This one is an app that finds you a photographer; the interactions and features show a certain measure of integrity, though oversight of the whole service process urgently needs strengthening. Naturally, the fact that I’ve set up a stall there myself is not something I would go around telling people.

Design

Unlike the flat art of the three-dimensional realm above, this category cares about design for the world inside the screen

Design Hunt

This one goes first because, for a light user, having it is as good as having the latest from Dribbble, Wired, Fast Company, Vimeo and a whole pile of other designer sites. No need to belabor the interactions; I strongly recommend downloading it and seeing for yourself.

Behance

The official app of the graphic design community from the goofballs at Adobe.

SVA Design

SVA Design is the dedicated portfolio app for the studints of the School of Visual Arts in New York, though it seems it hasn’t been updated in a while. The content leans toward graphic design. For apps that win on content, I’ll refrain from commenting on their interactions and such.

SVA also offers an iWatch version, by the way. Sigh, how can the gap between one school and another be this wide?

Shotsgram

Dribbble, the rascal, insists on not shipping an app, so its unofficial clients feed a whole crowd of developers (which gives you a sense of just how hot Dribbble is). Shotsgram is not the finest of the third-party Dribbble clients; my recommendation rests on the fact that it manages to load images under every hostile network condition China can offer. Don’t ask me why.

Design Shot

Design Shot is another third-party Dribbble client. Interactions are middling; it wins on being simple, handy, and able to download shot attachments.

P.S. So which one is the finest of the Dribbble clients, then? Find Ur own answer

Deviant Art

Think of it as another Dribbble; the quality of the work is similarly high.

A reason to recommend it? There doesn’t seem to be one; the whole point of apps like this is aimless wandering, isn’t it. One more place to wander is always a good thing.

Captivate.co

Never mind that the app greets you with wall-to-wall video; this is a UI interaction design sharing app through and through.

Mm.. it uses video rather than GIFs to show its demos. It has painstakingly captured the interaction animations of Facebook, Twitter and a raft of other sites, and sorted them into categories with real diligence.

Strongly recommended for novice designers like me; it really grows your know-how.

Exhibitions

In short, this is the category of apps that tell you where there are exhibitions to see

VART

Never mind that VART, from name to icon, oozes American style; it is a bona fide homegrown Chinese app. VART started out supporting museums only in Shanghai, and has now stretched to a dozen-plus cities worldwide.

In VART you can see nearby exhibitions the newest exhibitions exhibitions already ended and it can even buy you tickets to some of them. Most important of all, it supports audio guides supports audio guides supports audio guides. Even if Mr. Wallet won’t sign off on those exhibitions that run into the hundreds and thousands at every turn, listening to a guided tour from under the covers is surely not a bad time.

艺术狗

Seeing this category, what most people think of in the first second is probably 艺术狗. Like every other art-adjacent app in China, it falls short on rationality. However long you use it, the interactions and logic still feel like a jumble; perhaps it’s deliberate. Wandering at random works fine, anyway; precisely finding the nearest exhibition you’re interested in is impossible.

iMuseum

In this age awash in flat design, this one stubbornly keeps an overall style close to skeuomorphism, and willfully carves off a large slice of its every-inch-is-gold bottom navigation to promote its own sibling app, s.

Of course none of that stops it from being a very usable exhibition-finding app. Half-positioned as LBS, it not only has exhibition listings nearly as complete as VART’s but also offers check-ins with photos and a quick way to add exhibitions to the system calendar. When an app has gone this far, there’s nothing left to say.

By the way, its settings screen is hidden inside the app-promotion page, you know.

99艺术网

Beneath that name and icon, reeking of shamate country-town flair, this app actually carries its own modest touch of class. A product that follows the HIG to the letter presumably knows it can’t do anything fancy with interactions, so it has poured all its energy into sifting content. The news it pushes I can usually still be bothered to tap open; it’s not as loftily highbrow as the other apps, nor really lowbrow either. Nothing else to note. Recommendation rating: two stars.

知亦行

This app, crowned with a name so good it seems to come along once in a hundred years, does not betray that good name in either interactions or content. Beneath the minimalist interaction style, not one essential feature has been left out: exhibition selection, venue selection, even each exhibition’s official website, none of it withheld. Toward good apps I have never been stingy with praise, even extravagant praise. The more you use it, the more its details reveal how the people behind 知亦行, with extreme restraint and extreme abandon at once, are packing this tiny vessel with every feature they believe users need. In fact I think they have genuinely pulled it off; the word ‘exquisite’ shows through everywhere in the app.

Go download it.

Objects

Where proper museums and flesh-and-blood dezigners pool their integrity

Design Museum

Design museum is a design museum worthy of the name. Masses of design-minded ‘objects’ are laid before the user, each with details and a video introduction attached.

A pity there is only one picture apiece, and the write-ups run rather plain. But then, a museum’s job is to exhibit, isn’t it?

The app preloads its content each time before opening. Given network conditions in China, that can take a while. Of course, if the design of objects interests you, your wait will not go unrewarded.

To be continued