Truth be said, this online space has had no content update for some 18 months now. And while my written musings have been shared in other places, this space has not been left untouched during this time.
In fact, over this period the site has experienced incremental design refinements. Every few months I’d spend a couple of days revisiting the design, adding elements and removing others; the brown paper has experienced age over time, and like me, has a couple more creases and blemishes then it did when the website was first published online; but the most substantial upgrade has been its recent elevation into a more imaginative headspace.
This webspace has become a living canvas with a story that unfolds over time in visual rather than verbal form.
While interesting to think of a website’s design as the narrative, rather than website as an environment for narratives, it is acknowledged that this space engages people mostly with its written content and that it is high time to add new notes on design and creative stuff.
How very timely it was to hear from my inspiring friend at Barcelona based Herraiz Soto & Co about Ommwriter, their new feature-poor, experience-rich text editor.
Yes, as someone who writes mostly in TextEdit or Mail to stir away from distracting, unpredictable word editor user interfaces that ‘know better’ than you what word you supposedly wanted to write, I find minimal, feature-poor text editors very appealing.
Supplementing the minimalist nature of this utility are a set of zen like visuals, ambient soundscapes and smooth interactions, contributing to a sense of intimacy with the writing environment, making this text editor a pure joy to use.
See for yourself..
The Ommwriter designers recognised the significance of the environment that envelopes words and how it contributes to a writing-state-of-mind.
Ommwriter beta version 2 was released yesterday. It’s free. Get it. Use it. Enjoy it. Follow it.
Sander says:
Just found Ommwriter yesterday and loving it! It’s great how suddenly you are not distracted anymore and ideas flow into words on screen. Did you write the text above? Do you think you can use Ommwriter for more than blogging?
Btw, good new content is published here, looking forward to future posts!
19 December 2009Jonathan says:
Hey Sander, yes, the text above was written in Ommwriter.
I definitely think Ommwriter is more than just for blogging. In the past week I’ve been using it to write an outline for a presentation, as soundtrack to sketching on real paper and while cooking.
I believe that most of us don’t think only vertically, even when we work on a contained piece of writing, be it an article, a report or a blog entry. To support a lateral thinking process, I’d love to have the ability to create multiple text boxes within Ommwriter for tangential thoughts and ideas. This would make it a real creative thinking space.
20 December 2009Sander says:
Exactly my thoughts. I’m writing long essay now with Ommwriter then suddenly the textblock seems so narrow to me. I believe it works best for writing short messages/ideas. Good luck and happy holidays!
21 December 2009