To Create Is To Destroy In Wreck This App
Wreck This App ($4.99) by Penguin Group USA is an activity book that provides users with a variety of prompts for creative expression.
Back in 2007, writer and illustrator Keri Smith came up with a new, ultra self-expressive approach to journaling with the release of “Wreck This Journal,” a specialized book filled with destructive prompts. It encouraged users to make messes, make mistakes, and not to hold anything back.
Now “Wreck This Journal” is available on iOS devices. While it’s impossible to rip, tear, and throw glue on your precious device, the app provides plenty of new ways to express yourself creatively.
The app is a coloring and activity e-book, filled with prompts on each page. It opens with instructions encouraging users to follow the prompts, experiment, and play around.
The activities on each page are whimsical and fun. For example, one page instructs you to scribble wildly, violently, with reckless abandon, while another encourages you to take pictures of sticky things, like tape, glue, and gum to make a collage.
Every page has a set of tools, including pencils, paintbrushes, and markers, each with adjustable color, opacity and brush size that can be accessed by tapping the paint palette at the bottom of the screen.
There are also tools for blurring, erasing, adding text, adding photos, and copy/pasting. On some pages there are special tools that can be found in the left corner, that add effects like fingerprints and hole punches.
While I liked the variety available with the tools, the app has a bit of a clunky interface. Changing colors and brush sizes when using the painting tools requires tapping on a paint palette and using sliders. The preset colors are not attractive, in my opinion, and I would like to be able to switch them out or have access to a color wheel, rather than RGB sliders to alter colors.
Some of the tools are less than great, like the drip tool, but other features in the app make up for the shortcomings. The drawing tools are well done, smooth, and easy to use, and the photo collaging tools are equally nice. Adding pictures is quick, and resizing and rotating them is a breeze.
Wreck This App features 54 different pages, each with unique activities that range from drawing and coloring to photography and self-expression. Flipping through the app and doing a page here and there is a great activity, for both adults and children. I had a lot of fun with it, thanks to some creative prompts like writing backwards, sleeping with the app (not a very comfortable experience), and taking pictures of pocket lint.
I am hoping that this app will receive updates in the future to add more content, because while 54 pages is a lot, I did manage to go through them rather quickly.
Plus, this is the kind of app that will need regular updating to stay interesting and useful. Several of these prompts include the use of a camera, and if you have a device without a camera, you may be disappointed.
As a writer, this app greatly appealed to me because I often use prompts and activities to amuse myself, practice, and to get creative juices flowing. Wreck This App is perfect for that, and it’s perfect if you’re just looking to entertain yourself. If you’re in need of creative inspiration, stress relief, or an artistic outlet, you won’t go wrong picking up this app.
