The

WHYkey
WE to
BUILT
goodITwriting is not that magical glass of Bordeaux, the right kind of
What
tobacco
you need
or thatto write
groovywell
background
is a spartan
music.setting
The keythat
is focus.
allows you to fully concen
trate on your text and nothing but your text. Many professional writers use Simp
leText or Textedit because these are the only writing programs that are totally
distraction
1. CONCENTRATION:
free. When
Unfortunately,
you write atexttexteditors
by hand,
haveyoutheir
haveissues:
a limited number of wo
rds in your field of view. Also, editing handwritten text is messy. Both limitat
ions help you focus on your active sentence. In comparison to hand writing, text
on the screen quickly becomes a labyrinth; we too easily get into a chaotic loo
p of crisscross editing, destroying the voice and the organic structure of our o
riginal thought. Our solution to that problem is called "Focus Mode." Focus mode
2.combines
ORIENTATION:
the bestPageofnumbers
both theworkanalog
welland
forthe
physical
digitalobjects
world.where they have a ph
ysical frameset that you can touch, but they are pretty much meaningless for dig
ital text. We believe that reading time is a more useful measure to assess the q
uantity
3. TYPOGRAPHY:
of digitalWriter
text.comes with a typographic design that works perfectly on t
he iPad. We asked the best type, screen and graphic designers in the industry (s
ee below) to work with us on the design – so you don't need to worry about it. Wit
h Writer
HOW
Writer
IT has
WORKS
allnoyour
graphic
thought
settings
goes orintoformatting
what you features.
write, notIthowavoids
your all
writing
distracting
looks.
glitz in the user interface and puts all the beauty in the shape of the text. I
t uses an interactive logic that helps you concentrate, find your orientation an
d express yourself. For the iPad version we also added Dropbox synchronization,
punctuation
1. FOCUS MODEandcreates
arrow akeys.
noise free writing space. No auto-correction, spelling e
rrors, toolbars, scrolling, editing, cut/copy/paste to distract you moving forwa
rd in your text. Focus Mode blurs out everything except the latest three lines o
f text you were working in. The idea is to activate it when you get stuck, blind
ingGOOD
2. out TYPOGRAPHY
everything is else.
not just pretty to look at. It facilitates the process of
reading. If you look at text as an interface, typography is its usability. Commo
n text editors are typographically weak (small font, tight leading, random measu
re, lack of whitespace). In addition, few people have the professional skills to
design digital text. In Writer, font type, text size, column width, leading and
contrast are carefully set for the best reading experience both in portrait and
(Writer
landscape
usesmode.
a monospaced font called Nitti Light created and optimized for iPad
by the type wizards at Bold Monday. The font transports the provisory character
of drafting and forces you to read slowly and precisely without being tedious t
o look
3. READING
at.)TIME gives you an approximation of how long it will take to read your
4.text.
KEYBOARD
CursorEXTENSIONS
time showsprovides
you in arrow
minuteskeys
andand
seconds
punctuation.
up to where
We disabled
the cursor
smart
is.qu
otes to keep you focused on what you say and not how you type. The suggestion to
get rid of smart quotes is not a nerd's wish, it came from a grandmaster of typ
e (Erik
5. DROPBOX
Spiekermann).
allows web synchronization of your documents from iPad to the cloud,
seamlessly,
WHAT'S
This isNEXT
version
so you
onedon't
dot oh.
haveWetohave
spend
countless
time syncing
ideas onwithhowiTunes.
to improve Writer fur
ther, but we don't have unlimited resources to put them into practice. Unfortuna
tely,
1. NON-ALPHABETIC
there are still
LANGUAGES.
some annoying
You canbugs
enterwenon-alphabetic
couldn't kill text,just yet:
but the layouts
areE-MAIL:
2. not 100%Tooptimized
email text,foryou
allneed
languages.
an active mail-account on iPad, otherwise Wri
ter crashes when you click "Email Text." We're looking into a browser mail integ
3. SCROLLING: With its advanced scrolling engine Writer can sometimes get a litt
ration.
le imprecise. We caught 99% of the scrolling bugs. If in case you still get lost
, press
WHY
In spite
IPAD?lock
of its
andpassive
unlock character,
and things theshould
awkward
be fine
keyboard,
again. the stubborn iOS and it
s many other faults, the iPad has the power to drag you in and make you forget t
he world around you. This is why we decided to start with the iPad even though i
t would
Yes, we are
havealso
beenworking
much easier
on a desktop
to createversion
a desktop
withapp.
an advanced focus mode and ve
ry cool editing features. Subscribe to our newsletter or our twitter feed (@ia)
if you
WHY
The WRITER?
original
want totitle
staywas
up "Writing
to date. Machine." "Writing Machine" is a literal transla
tion of the German "Schreibmaschine" which means "type writer." But, alas, "Writ
ing Machine" is too long for iOS. More importantly, "Writing Machine" suggests t
hat it has some sort of an artificial intelligence that writes for you, which is
exactly the contrary of what a good writing tool does: Helping you to think and
Instead
expressofyourself
giving it
andaforget
fancy brand
what tool
nameyou
(other
are candidates
using. were "Writespace" and
"io") we decided to not brand it and simply call it "Writer." It's a simple appl
ication to write and the most generic name reflects that best. Of course, we cou
ldn't resist creating a nice logo for it. The logo uses a Turkish i (without a d
ot)Aand
1. REFERENCE
puts thatto the
dot "Mechanical
at the end ofTurk,"
the name.
a chess
Themachine
Turkishthat"i" looked
is: like it thi
nks by itself while it was actually operated by an hidden invisible human inside
2.theA HINT:
machine.
Don't get lost in formatting details. To put the dots on your i's of
your text, you will have to use professional formatting software like InDesign (
forget
The period
MS Word!).
at the end
Writer
of the
is for
logocreating
reflects(not
thestyling)
main virtue
text.of the application: I
t pushes
NOT
The HAPPY?news:
good you toWe're
get toopen
thetopoint.
suggestions at http://twitter.com/ia. If you'd like
The
to bad
writenews:
us aDon't
love expect
letter,ussend
to answer
a mail all
to writer@informationarchitects.jp.
mails or tweets. If we sell 100,000
apps we will hire someone to do just that. For now, we'll invest all the money w
e makeTESTERS
CONCEPT
CREDITS
CODE:
BETA Raphael
into
& DESIGN:
improving
&Schaad
CONTRIBUTORS:
Oliver
theReichenstein
product
Erik Spiekermann,
based on yourScott
feedback.
Thomas, Khoi Vinh, Mike Run
dle, Liz Danzico, Aza Raskin, Patrick Algrim, John Boardley, Paul van der Laan,
Vitor Lourenço, Mark Boulton, Om Malik, Marcos Weskamp, Craig Mod, Joshua Brewer,
Antonio Carusone, Aegir Hallmundur, Jürgen Siebert, Indra Kupferschmid, Alan van R
oemburg, Paul Bakaus, Jean Snow, Alexander Limi, Matt Roberts, The Design Observ
er Group, Robin Sloan, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Guido Mingels, Wolfgang Blau, Stefan
Seiz, Giovanni De Mauro, Stephan Seidt, Kari Pätilä, Moritz Zimmer, Edial Dekker, D
aisuke Don Horie, Christian Steinert, Jay Nelson, Nobuyuki Hayashi, Matthew Soll
e, Paul Baron, Dan Oliver, Bodhi Philpot, Anatole Varin, Juho Viitasalo, Michael
Special
Donohoe,thanks
Ben Sekulowicz,
to Yumiko andTakeshi
Akira.Tanaka, and the Legendary Shane Berry.