Typeplace Mixes Social Networking And Typography On Your iPhone
Typeplace ($0.99) by Killbot Collective is an app that caters to all the typography lovers around the world.
Do you like typography? Do you have an eye for it while you're going through with life? What if you turned it into a social game? Well, that's pretty much what you'll get when you use Typeplace.
With Typeplace, you'll need to have an account to use the social aspect of Typeplace. If you have a Twitter account, then you just link it up. Unfortunately, this is the only way to login to Typeplace currently, so for those without Twitter, hopefully the developer can compensate for other login methods in a future update.
Your profile, which will be the same as your Twitter handle, will be where you can view all your Typeplaces and achievements earned, such as badges and certificates.
A new Typeplace can be created with the bottom toolbar button. This allows you to snap a photo or pull one from your device photo album. Once you have the photo, it can be titled and even given a description if needed. After that, you select the font form (at this point it can be a bit technical with typography terms) and classify where you found this type on. Then you upload it to Typeplace and can even tweet your Typeplace.
Your submissions will be displayed in your profile, and you can earn various badges and achievements for the number of uploads to the service. The more you use the service by uploading, the more titles you can get for your profile as well. This makes the game aspect of Typeplace more appealing since it's always cool to have "titles."
But what is a social app without the fun of viewing others from all over the world? You can switch between the Public Feed and your Friend Feed. The Public Feed will simply show the most recently uploaded Typeplaces, and can be refreshed by pulling the screen down. Friend uploads will also be shown by most recent.
A global map is featured so you can see exactly where people have used Typeplace in the world. A Typeplace will be marked by the signature red push pin. Tapping a pin will let you see the title of the Typeplace as well as the ID number of it. The blue arrow will take you to view the photo, and you have the option to "upvote" a submission for the Leaderboard.
If you're the type to see what is "popular" on any social app, there is a section for this in Typeplace. However, it's not what you'd think - this is actually the leaderboard, which only displays the top 5 user submissions. While this is nice for the "game" aspect, I think that a Leaderboard should be different from a Popular section.
Surprisingly, if you want to see if there are any submissions from other users about a certain keyword or topic, there is a search function. It doesn't seem to search by letter though, so you'll have to enter the entire word or search precisely if you want to get any results.
The idea behind Tyeplace is one that I like, but there are several things that are preventing me from giving the app a full recommendation for typography fans.
First, the app can be a bit slow. During refreshing times, the app can take a few moments to load data, which locks it up from doing anything else. This can be a bit irksome and a waste of time - if the app should lockup for refreshes, it should be a second or two, almost unnoticeable. However, I found the app to hang for over five seconds at times, even when I'm on my relatively fast WiFi at home.
There are also crash issues. During my testing, I would pick a photo from my Album, and then change my mind and tap the photo to change it. Doing this will bring up the in-app camera, which will then make the app crash. I reproduced this 3 times with the aforementioned steps.
Leaderboard and Popular should be separate. I would have liked to go to Popular and see a nice, big variety of typography like you would get a bunch of photos in something like Instagram. Leaderboard is usually a separate entity from Popular in most other apps I've used, so I'd like to see this in Typeplace as well.
Currently, I cannot recommend this app. I love the idea, as well as the design and interface of the app, but there are too many problems to make the Tyeplace experience smooth. However, once the developers can improve the bugs & glitches, have more login options (a solo Typeplace login or Facebook Connect), perhaps separate Popular and Leaderboard, and improve the overall speed of the app, then this would be a must-get.
Typography fans, keep this $1 app on your radar.
