Shapely - Our Fun New Design App

Chris and I are very excited to announce that we're launching an app! Shapely allows you to design custom images using photos, graphics, patterns, text and more. The images are great for making cards, enhancing photos or just making a simple text message a lot more fun. And with Chris' great design eye, it's nearly impossible to make anything ugly (trust me, I've tried) - which is a very great thing for enthusiastic designer wannabe's like myself.

As of approximately 2:00 this morning, Shapely has been submitted to Apple for their approval - a major step a year in the making!

I'll get into the history of the app in a minute, but first I want to give you all a chance to participate with us in the launch process! We have a limited number of spots for people to beta test Shapely - meaning we give you a pre-launch version to play around with while we wait on final approval from Apple to send it live. If you are interested in being a beta tester, email beta(at)shapelyapp(dot)com and we will send you instructions.

Here's a general idea of the sorts of images Shapely can make, but this is only the beginning. Chris and I and a few close friends have been designing with Shapely for the past month or so, but we can't wait for more of you to try it out and show us how else you will use it.

Ok, now more about the origin of Shapely. The big idea came to Chris when we were in Austin for a few days last winter. We both found ourselves overwhelmed by the character that the entire town seemed to ooze. Everything was unique, personalized, stylish and eclectic.

    
I think what most impressed us about Austin was that while our surroundings were very well designed, nothing was pretentious. These were people who appreciated the creative and individual side of making things look cool. No two buildings, stores or streets looked alike. Every place we went seemed a reflection of the people behind it, and we found that immensely charming.

And from there Shapely was born - the app to democratize design. Totally reasonable goal, right? But seriously, our hope is that regular people (like me) can have fun making cool images that demonstrate their interests and personality, and that in the end, these images will look great because the pieces and layouts were hand-picked by my oh-so-talented designer husband.

We have some big, fun launch plans coming up and we will keep you in the know, but for now let us know if you want to test Shapely out, and cross your fingers for us as we walk through the Apple approval process.