Apps: Apple hands out design awards – WWF Together, Yahoo! Weather and Letterpress among winners

By Trevor Mogg June 11, 2013

Following Apple’s WWDC keynote Monday, the tech giant announced the results of its annual Apple Design Awards, throwing the spotlight on a selection of the best iPhone, iPad and Mac apps released in the last 12 months.

Eleven apps were picked out by the Cupertino company judges, with each one “raising the bar in design, technology, and innovation.”

Here’s a quick rundown of the award winners, some you’ll recognize, some you may not:

WWF Together for iPad (free) / World Wildlife Fund – Describing it as “an exquisite iPad app that lets you experience the world’s most amazing animals by bringing you closer to the stories of giant pandas, tigers, polar bears, and many other fascinating endangered species,” Apple picked this one out for its “outstanding attention to detail, beautiful aesthetic, wonderful sound design and music score, engaging writing, high resolution photography, rich typography, and inventive interaction.”

Procreate for iPad ($4.99) /Savage Interactive Pty Ltd – A “complete art studio at your fingertips”, this feature-rich app for artists features everything “from true-to-life sets of pencils, inks, and brushes, to advanced layer compositing, to unique digital tools.”

Badland for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch ($3.99) / Frogmind – According to the judges, Badland’s “excellent production values and brilliant execution” combine to create “a luscious, sidescrolling atmospheric action adventure platformer taking place in a seemingly idyllic forest.”

Yahoo! Weather for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (free) / Yahoo! – Described by DT’s Andrew Kalinchuk as “flawless”, Yahoo’s beautifully designed offering does everything you’d expect of a weather app, with gorgeous images pulled from Flickr’s Project Weather crowd-sourcing program which launched last year. The judges praised it for its “great layout and typography, compelling animations, fast image processing, and clear iconography.”

Letterpress for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (free) / atebits – Played this one? The judges love Letterpress for its “beautifully understated game interface, simple gestures, subtle animations, and restrained sound design.” With the slew of word game apps out there, it can be mighty hard to get noticed, so well done Letterpress.

Ridiculous Fishing for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch ($2.99) / Vlambeer – This “expertly crafted” game about fishing with weapons caught the judges’ attention for its engaging physics-based gameplay and humor.

Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Mac ($4.99) / Atypical Games – According to the judges, this WWII arcade-style combat game looks “awesome” on a Mac and features “a wide variety of single and multiplayer options and a large inventory of accurately-rendered aircraft” as well as a huge array of special effects. If you fancy a dogfight from the comfort of your sofa, it sounds like Sky Gamblers will deliver.

Coda 2 for Mac / Panic, Inc. ($74.99) – This “incredibly innovative all-in-one” web development studio comes with a ton of features for editing your Web code, with the judges praising it for “making the task of Web coding enjoyable.”

Evernote for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Mac (free) / Evernote Corporation – The latest version (for Mac) of this popular note-taking app impressed the judging panel for the way it “uses every relevant OS X technology including iCloud, Notification Center, Reminders, QuickLook, Secure Keychain, Disk encryption, Core Location, Full-screen, Accessibility, and In App Purchase.”

Finish for iPhone and iPod Touch (99c) / Ryan Orbuch and Michael Hansen – Finish is one of two winners of the student award. This neatly designed task manager was inspired by procrastinating students during finals week, and uses “numerous iOS technologies, integrates with Facebook and Twitter to share tasks with other students, and looks great on the Retina Display.”

mosaic.io for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch (free) / Ishaan Gulrajani, Alex List, and Zain Shah – The second of the two student awards, this intriguing app “magically creates a gorgeous photo mosaic across two or more iOS device screens with a simple swipe of a finger” as a way to connect two or more iOS devices around a single image.

[Image: iQoncept / Shutterstock]

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