“Paper” is a reasonably simple and free drawing app for the iPad. To leave it at that wouldn’t do justice to the quality of this piece of software and it’s interesting business model though.

Fifty Three, the company behind Paper are ex-microsoft devs who used worked on the ill-fated “Courier” concept tablet. In coming over to the iOS eco system they appear to have sided with Apple’s design principles and produced something slick, simple and refined.

“Paper” comes with a single pen. That pen is amazing! I must’ve sketched dozens of pages, playing with its faux-pressure effect – the lines are thicker if you draw faster. It’s a really, really nice pen.

At this point I was beginning to wish I had a thicker “fill” effect to add shading to my pen outlines. This is where the business model kicks in – The app and the pen is free, everything else is an in-app purchase. I gladly forked over the $1.99 AUD for the “colour” tool. It too was as refined and intuitive as the pen tool, and mimics a watercolour effect.

Fifty Three have included a few more tools to buy but are throwing their development back to the community, allowing them to “vote up” the next tool or feature on the company website. It’s quite clever .. only things people want will be developed, and in doing so, the most possible revenue can be generated through in-app purchases.

Like the 7 million other people sharing their #madewithpaper sketches on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter I’ve been sketching and sharing quite a lot. So much so, I’ve illustrated many of the 60 odd slides I’ve developed for an upcoming talk I’m giving.

I’ll include a few here .. I’m no artist but I’d like to think I have some sense of it as a designer. Let me know what you think in the comments. If you’d like to try “Paper” click here for Fifty Three‘s website.

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