Designed by Ammunition, the pen is an aluminum stylus that can replace your finger on the iPad screen (Click Image To Enlarge)
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE CLOUD-CONNECTED INTERFACE? HOW ABOUT A SIMPLE PEN AND RULER?
This week, Adobe announced that the Creative Suite was becoming the subscription-based Creative Cloud. It didn’t go so well. But amidst the bad news, we may have lost sight of Adobe’s rationale for pushing the cloud beyond profits. And you can see that rationale hiding inside Project Mighty.
The pen has a pressure-sensitive tip, a button to reveal onscreen menus and a glowing tip to convey modal information (designating if you’re drawing with any particular settings), and that’s it (Click Image To Enlarge)
The three standard pen colors are silver, red and black (Click Image To Enlarge)
"We took the triangular shape--this classic shape that’s easier to grip--and twisted it," Ammution’s Robert Brunner says. "So the point at which your fingers hold it, the pen is at its best." (Click Image To Enlarge)
On one hand, it’s just an aluminum stylus that can replace your finger on the iPad screen. On the other, it’s a cloud-connected pen--or humanity’s single-greatest, simplest creative apparatus, married to the entire world of digital tools and information. Today, Project Mighty allows you to draw an image on your iPad screen, then seamlessly continue drawing that same image on your iPhone screen. Tomorrow, such a tool could draw anywhere--screen or table--while constantly syncing with your creative depository in the cloud.
The Adobe digital ruler allows you to draw straight lines and perfect shapes like circles, triangles and squares with ease (Click Image To Enlarge)
Of course, the greater promise is a series of tools that constantly connect and sync to the cloud (Click Image To Enlarge)
Physical objects that login and transfer files from screen to screen, seamlessly (Click Image To Enlarge)
Now you have to admit, that’s at least a little bit intriguing.
Project Mighty, along with an accompanying “short ruler” codenamed Napoleon, were both designed by Ammunition (and engineered by Mindtribe). Ammunition has been working on various concepts with Adobe for the past five years. These are the first two designs to be made public.
Ammunition Founder Robert Brunner tells Co.Design.
“One of the goals of this was just to make a beautiful, sweet object. The pen in particular is one of those simple, beautiful forms. But it actually has a purpose. We took the triangular shape--this classic shape that’s easier to grip--and twisted it. So the point at which your fingers hold it, the pen is at its best.”
When you consider that vision, it almost makes sense that Adobe wants its users using their cloud-integrated products as soon as possible (Click Image To Enlarge)
As of today, the hardware is only in conceptual prototype stage (Click Image To Enlarge)
But Adobe should release this good idea soon, lest someone else beat them to the punch (Click Image To Enlarge)
The pen has a pressure-sensitive tip, a button to reveal onscreen menus and a glowing tip to convey modal information (designating if you’re drawing with any particular settings), and that’s it. The accompanying ruler is similarly sparse. Six shapes appear on the surface (it’s unclear if these will be actual buttons), a plastic back slides easily on a glass touch screen, and a few capacitive points convey its position to software.
Brunner admits.
“When [Adobe’s VP of experience] first said he had this idea for a digital ruler, to be honest, I was like, 'I don’t know,' As we actually started to work on it and play with it, we realized that it was very smart. You can certainly set up software to draw straight lines and snap to angles, but the simple addition of this other physical thing gives you so much more confidence.”
Even still, why did the team pursue a pen and ruler at all? In the digital world, there are no physical bounds dictating a tip of a pen needs to be connected to a long channel of ink. Couldn’t Project Mighty look like an ergonomic swirly straw, or a creative pair of brass knuckles--any dream device that could reimagine the very core idea of what drawing can be, rather than the old default pen and ruler?
Brunner says.
“It’s simply because they’re extremely familiar. That’s the thing. You can come up with something entirely unique, but the fact is, these two devices, or shapes, are incredibly embedded in our understanding of drawing and creating.”
Adobe frames Project Mighty as a high-tech, borderline magical device that stores your identity and your projects. In reality, the hardware itself is fairly dumb, but its implementation is ingenious.
The pen is just a Bluetooth stick in the simplest of senses. Software spots its unique Bluetooth identifier. That code is associated with you. And you’re associated with the files/settings you’ve stored in the Adobe cloud. In other words, Project Mighty is really just beaming software an alphanumeric string, which logs into your accounts very quickly so you don’t have to. Finding myself fairly proud of piecing this together, I ask Brunner about it.
He says.
“You’re right, it’s an illusion per se. All the pen is doing is IDing you and the app you’re in, and contextually allowing you to do things. But that’s an important idea! Using objects as a conduit to data is a powerful and interesting possibility. But for some reason, in the world of development, there seems to be a hard line between hardware and software.”
This hard line is exactly what Project Mighty is working to erase. It’s a peek into the most basic and powerful interactions that smart design can drive as we approach the Internet of things. This pen doesn’t need to gyroscopically record your movements, save them onto some flash drive, beam them back to the computer, then beam them to the cloud every moment. It just has to be a stick with a button that’s ready to be identified by software.
In other words, there’s nothing inside the hardware that demands the pen remain proprietary. Project Mighty could become popularized for apps living in the walls of Adobe’s own products. With a little modification (maybe an optional real pen tip?) Project Mighty could become the tactile, connective tissue between you and any surface on which you’d like to draw. This semi-smart pen could become the ubiquitous way we interact creatively with the world around us.
Brunner says.
“Something I noticed: I used to always carry a pen. I don’t anymore, whereas my iPhone is always in my pocket. Maybe this thing can bring back the idea that the pen is always with you.”
COMMENTARY: The new Adobe "Project Mighty" cloud-connected stylus pen is a fantastic new device that compliments any tablet, converting it into a platform for creative design and self-expression. I love the fact that the cloud-connecting software has "intelligent" drawing features built into it so that if you were to draw a circle, it comes out perfect everytime, voila. The same for straight lines, squares, triangles, whatever.
In the past stylus drawing systems require a stylus pad and pen. The tablet itself serves as the stylus pad, and you see the results appear on the display immediately, so your eyes never leave the tablet. The ability to move objects imported into the platform or drawn using the pen from one device to another (like a smartphone), is a great way to take all your work with you when you are on-the-go, and don't want to be bothered with a tablet.
I wasn't able to determine the price for the Adobe Project Mighty stylus pen, but in my opinion it's definitely worth whatever they charge.
Courtesy of an article dated May 9, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design
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