Gail Anderson is an educator, author and graphic designer. She was the senior art director at Rolling Stone, and creative director of design at SpotCo. In addition to the many books she has co-authored with Steven Heller, she writes for imprint, Print Magazine's blog. While on a recent visit to Baltimore to speak at Stevenson University, she stopped by our studio fo a visit. I've admired her work for years, so it was a pleasure to sit down and speak with her.
PrestoBingo is designer eye candy... but it's also smart and kind of addictive.
We've just released a brand new version of PrestoBingo Shapes, our iPhone and iPad app that teaches basic shapes and counting to kids. I'm particularly excited about this version, because it includes 4 new animated and illustrated shape puzzles. It also has a new swipe feature so you can move between puzzles more easily.
Making this app has been a great project to work on, but it's a big app store, and small developers like us have to work hard to get found. We greatly appreciate tweets, ratings or reviews on the app store. And good old-fashioned word of mouth? Best. Ever.
We've been busy working on the next release of PB Shapes. This one is the biggest yet, and we are very excited about it. It features 4 new illustrated puzzles, plus a new swipe feature that lets kids move past a puzzle if they want to. We've been busy the last few weeks tidying up illustrations and making sound effects. If you hear some buzzing bees in the new release, they are courtesy of Emma and Jacob (age 8).
It's been one year since we launched PrestoBingo Shapes. So what's happened during the first year? A lot. For one thing, our little app has travelled the world. Here's a list of the countries we've had sales in:
United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, France, China, Netherlands, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Singapore, Belgium, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Switzerland, Sweden, Thailand, Norway, Finland, Denmark, India, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Czech Republic, Colombia, Taiwan, Austria, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Luxembourg, Latvia, Peru, Dominican Republic, Ukraine, Philippines, Croatia, South Korea, Macau, United, Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Poland, Bulgaria
Not bad for a one year old!
Another thing we've seen is an uptick in educational sales. PrestoBingo Shapes is available at a discount for schools purchasing 20 or more copies, and we are happy to see that so many schools are using our app as a teaching tool.
We have more things planned for the next year, including some new shape puzzles, so stay tuned!
We are excited to be a Cool Mom Tech Pick this week! Here is the full review.
PrestoBingo Shapes is an iPad app that introduces toddlers and preschoolers to basic forms of geometry--circles, ovals, diamonds, semi-circles, squares, trapezoids, triangles and rectangles--all artfully hidden in quirky mod illustrations and animation.
The game is simple enough for toddlers to play, but lovely enough that you’re likely to find mom and dad curled up with it.
You can download PrestoBingo Shapes right here in the App Store. Thanks to the folks at Babble for the honor!
Irene Hoofs and Rachelle of Bloesem Kids included PrestoBingo Shapes in their roundup of great apps. Here's what they say about our app:
...the graphic details in this app are so beautifully done that it looks like you were reading a children’s book or a nursery rhyme.
There are some great apps on the list, so take a moment and check them out!
• Theater I love how Appracadabra consistently incorporates illustration into their apps.
• Press Here: The App by Chronicle Books, this app is a wonderful addition to the book by Hervé Tullet.
• PrestoBingo Shapes Hello there!
• Scribble Press A story creation tool for kids. How cool is that?
• Geom-e-Twee™ A magical tree that responds to touch.
Our latest review, from GiggleApps, is now live! You can read the full review here.
The first thing that adults will find striking about this app is how lovely it is to look at with a wonderful palette of orange, turquoise, green and, other corresponding colors.
The review continues...
I would love to purchase prints of these pages for the walls of my house, and I can imagine parents wanting to hang these images especially in their layette.
Look for art prints soon at Spur Stor.
After months of designing, coding, animating, re-coding and illustrating, we're happy to announce that PrestoBingo Shapes is now available for the iPhone! We're so excited to see our app expanding and we hope to tackle more devices in the future.
You can find it here on the App Store, and if you have the time, please rate and write a review! It helps us know just how we can keep improving our app for you. Thanks!
We have entered the review process for our next upgrade for PrestoBingo Shapes. This upgrade makes PrestoBingo Shapes a universal app, which means it will be available for iPhones as well as iPads! To accomodate the smaller iPhone screen, we added a zoom feature, which turned out to be a lot of fun, both to make and to play.
We'll keep you posted!