Here’s a Guest Post to ArtNewYorkCity.com, one of the very few I’ve published – it’s by Kris Waldherr.

The Art of the App

Unless you’re versed in the programming languages C+ and Cocoa, creating an iPhone app is a mysterious process. Unlike websites, there are no Dreamweaver-like editors out there to construct your app with a click and drag of the mouse. That written, the popularity of the App Store has led to ample resources for those determined to code-or-bust — there’s even an iPhone Application Development for Dummies book available. But what about creating art for an app?

That’s the issue which came up when I set out to develop my first app, The Goddess Tarot.

First things first: My professional background is as an illustrator and designer of books, products and websites. Even with my twenty-plus years of experience, designing for a mobile device was a new world to me.

The Goddess Tarot app would be adapted from my already-published book and deck, which had a combined 300,000 copies in print; they had accompanying websites which I’d designed. One would think this would make my task easier — I could simply reformat materials for the iPhone. Right? Well… yes andno. An iPhone is not a book or a website. But once you have your art in digital format, it’s a matter of translation.

From a technical standpoint, adapting art for an iPhone app is simple. Whether you scan your art or create it digitally, graphics are usually saved as a PNG. The PNG format has similar properties to a GIF, with a limited color palette allowing for transparency. This allows you to silhouette art and overlay graphics to your heart’s content. However, apps are intended to be small programs capable of quick download. This means you need to keep file sizes small; it also helps to create graphics which can be used repeatedly throughout the app.

In this way, the art for the app is not dissimilar from those for a website. However, there’s one major difference: Websites are designed to a minimum screen size of 800 x 600 pixels at 72 dpi resolution (approximately 11 x 8 inches); most are designed larger. The full screen of an iPhone app measures 320 x 480 pixels; that’s without any status bars and such. 480 x 320 doesn’t sound that much smaller, does it? But wait: The resolution on an iPhone is higher at 160 dpi. This gives an artist a total of 2 x 3 inches to design for. Talk about making every pixel count!

As a designer and artist, I was determined to make my app beautiful and accessible on this very small canvas. One resource I consulted in this quest was Apple‘s Human Interface Guidelines (or the HIG for short). The HIG lists minimum button sizes and other criteria to consider to make your app easy to use — and hopefully easily approved by Apple.

Initially, I designed my app using Apple’s standard issue buttons and navigation tools. To make up for their rather utilitarian look, I dressed them up with decorative borders.

In retrospect, I think I was playing it safe — one rule the HIG states is that iPhone apps must look and behave like iPhone apps. But my design seemed fussy, the navigation clunky. From a aesthetic standpoint, it also seemed unrelated to my book and deck. So I decided to redesign and streamline.

Now my app is out and about in the world, sharing its art with whoever downloads it.

Designing for the iPhone brings to mind a story I once read about the PreRaphaelite artist Dante Rossetti. Rossetti became enraged when a printer gave him incorrect dimensions for an illustration; these dimensions were ever so slightly smaller than the final reproduction size. I’m paraphrasing here, but Rossetti’s response was along the lines of, “I could have packed a whole world in that 1/16th of an inch!”

Creating an iPhone app is a bit like this. You can pack in a whole world in a small area — as long as it conforms to Apple’s HIG.