Kapsoft was kind enough to send us a review sample of their famous iPhone Application Sketchbook. What are they, you ask? They’re probably an iPhone application developer’s best tool! Why is that? Because, this very book will help you organize every little app design idea you come up with. Great for developers, don’t you think?
Although, it looks like a pretty basic sketch book, but it was obviously designed for something other than just sketching random stuff. The book itself on the outside is pretty attractive and has a nice cover. It is also spiral-bound, which makes it easy to lay down flat on any page you want.
But getting into the actual contents of the book, we have more. There are 100 pages of blank iPhones on a grid. Anything else? Nope. ! Very simple and clean. All of the pages are the same, having a blank iPhone template in the center, with a gridded background for “other” sketching. At the top of the page, there’s a space for filling in application details such as the name of the application and some notes. There’s also a little blank labelled “Screen Name,” which is probably for different “screens,” or pages. But the best part is, each iPhone template is exactly the same size as the actual device.
With an iPhone template with a blank screen in the center, you have quite a large space to sketch out your ideas and designs on it, making it a very flexible canvas for the iPhone developer. On the grid, you could have other designs or ideas, such as application icons, notes, labels / captions, etc. And on top of all that, the top part will help you keep organized. Very nice book, indeed.
As I had mentioned before, each of the 100 pages in this sketch book are the same. Not even a bit different. But this makes the book a very basic, but helpful idea that has a lot of potential for application developing.
But if you’re thinking that most iPhone developers would normally use a computer to draw concepts and designs for their applications, you’re actually wrong. A recent survey was taken, and it looks like 95% of iPhone developers draw these things using the traditional pencil & paper, rather than some computer software, such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. This sketch book was designed and produced to help with this and organize all the sketches you could imagine.
There was, however, one thing that I would like improved on the sketch book. Having 100 pages of a huge iPhone in the center doesn’t really help when you’re writing a lot of notes, does it? I would like the book even more than I do now if they had added about 10 or 20 blank, or even ruled / gridded pages for further notes or larger-scaled designs for something else, like app icons. But this probably isn’t that big of a deal, since you could just carry around a notebook or some loose-leaf paper. It’d be nice if it were implemented into the book itself, though.
Before I end this review, there’s one thing that I really liked about this company. It can produce custom sketch books in limited quantities to your liking. Isn’t that nice? I could maybe order a few of these with the blank pages that I wanted from above, or anything else I like. Sweet!
Over all, this is a very nice, simple, and helpful idea for iPhone developers. I’d even say that this could be their best tool, next to Xcode. It’s also very inexpensive, at $9.99 per book. If you like it, go grab one today.
However, you can try your luck in our short contest. We’ll be giving away one of these along with a $15 worth iTunes gift card to a lucky winner, courtesy Kapsoft!
To participate, follow us on twitter and tweet the following:
RT @iphonehelp is giving away the awesome iPhone app sketchbook and iTunes gift card! http://bit.ly/3X9345 #kapsoft #giveaway
Contest ends on October 25 at 6 PM GMT. Winner will be informed within 24 hours after the contest ends and must claim the price within the next 24 hours; otherwise another winner will be chosen. Make sure that you follow us as we the winner will be informed via DM.