davemcnally.net

I’m talking about Aviary, a collection of online tools created by Worth1000. Describing what exactly it is that these tools or applications do could be a bit of a lengthy process as nothing like this has been done before and the idea may be hard to grasp.

So rather than trying to explain things, I’ll let the people at Aviary do it for me and start with the description they use themselves. Do read on, you’ll be glad you did!

The following is how the set of tools/applications are described on the Aviary site:

“Aviary is a suite of rich internet applications geared for artists of all genres. From image editing to typography to music to 3D to video, we have a tool for everything. At Worth1000, we are creating a complex ecosystem for artists and providing the world with free, capable collaborative tools and an approach to collaboration and rights management that will turn the marketplace for online art on its head.”

That just about sums it up but doesn’t do it justice. Tools like these could really change the way we work on daily basis and could drastically alter and improve workflow for yourself and your company.

At the moment, there’s an invitation only beta available with just a couple of tools to test out but already I can really see the potential of what these people are doing and the possibilities of what can be done. Rather than run through all of the tools here, I suggest you take a look at them online as there a quite a few. Instead, I’ll take a look at one that is available at the moment and the one that as a designer, interested me the most and that is Phoenix.

Loading up the application looks similar to the way it’s desktop counterparts load, except the fact that it’s in your browser. The current toolset looks quite similar to that of Photoshop with a lot of the expected tools being right where you expect to see them. Where Phoenix gets interesting is with the amount of features they’ve managed to include.

Layer blending modes and filters are even there too. They may not as comprehensive as those provided by Photoshop but the main thing to remember is, this is NOT Photoshop. It’s an online graphics editor and it happens to be free. I could see this application being very handy for collaboration with other designers and even though, in its current state it won’t be replacing Photoshop in my workflow, I was definitely interested in seeing what it had to offer and I think it could be used quite effectively as a tool for rapid prototyping and wireframes.

I was particularly interested in looking at the typographic tools available in Phoenix and was glad to see they are not too bad at all. The standard font styling tools are there as are a couple of extras including letter spacing. The font range is a bit limited at the moment but for a beta version, I’m more than happy with it.

Sound interesting to you? Let me know then, I have 4 invites left at the moment and will hand them out as requested in comments on a first reply, first given basis!