Vinh’s company Lascaux had already started working on a Mixel iPhone app and that soon became the sole focus of the company, which announced in August that it was ending support for the iPad app. Less than a week later, Mixel quietly pushed out an iPhone app that was much less complicated and allowed users to automatically create collages and share them from their phone. While the iPad app was more involved and allowed people to cut out images from pictures, manually place and size images and remix other collages, the iPhone app creates simpler collages with less work.

Even without a big press push or marketing campaign, Mixel’s iPhone app has gotten more than 10 times as many downloads as the iPad app. And it’s been featured twice by the Apple App Store, recognition that the iPad app never received. Khoi declined to share download numbers and said Mixel is still not a viral hit a la Instagram. But it’s now on much stronger footing. Here’s some of the lessons he shared with me:

Creative friction kills: The iPad app was impressive to use but it required a level of creative commitment that scared off everyone but the most dedicated users. The iPhone app fixes that by easily allowing people to import pictures and automatically designing a collage for them. Users can shuffle the pictures, pick from several styles, tweak the layout and contribute to friends collages. But they don’t have to do much work to create a finished product.

Sharing is as important as creation: While Mixel originally helped people create more intricate collages, the iPhone app is much more designed around sharing. Vinh said that Instragram’s example showed that while you first want to make something that looks good, you have to make it easy for people to share. And personal sharing is what drives an app like Mixel.

iPad is a hard place to build a social network: Vinh was hoping to build Mixel into a social network for sharing collages. But he found that while iPad users use the Mixel app for long periods at a time, they don’t come back often enough. The iPhone, with its larger base of users and its ability to go everywhere with users, gives Mixel the ability to be more of a daily app for users. Vinh said 18-20 percent of people are coming back to the app week over week, much higher than the iPad app.

Keep it simple: Vinh said he found it was hard to explain the iPad app without providing a demonstration. That was ultimately part of the problem because it was hard for people to grasp what Mixel was all about.

Next up for Mixel is more tools to make better collages. Vinh doesn’t want to include an image search engine like the iPad app had because that made people focus on outside images. But he is looking at including access to stock images to help people tell fuller stories through their collages.

He’s also trying to use location data so people at the same event can contribute to each other’s albums. Mixel also recently added the ability for people to make their post cards and tag friends in an iPhone 5, iOS 6 optimized version of the app.

Vinh said he was “smarting” a little after the iPad app didn’t take off. But he said he’s learned a lot from the experience and feels he’s positioned to do much better with Mixel’s iPhone app.

“There are now legit reasons to bring friends into the app and to generate value for yourself,” he said. “We didn’t have that before.”

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The app, created by former New York Times digital design director Khoi Vinh and Scott Ostler of dump.fm, invites people to make simple photo collages that can be shared easily among friends and remixed into new creations that form a sort of visual conversation. Lascaux also announced it has raised $600,000 in seed funding from Polaris Venture Partners, Betaworks and Allen & Company, bringing its total to $700,000 raised so far.

Making art fun

The free app tries to build a social environment that encourages creativity, sharing and building off the work of others. It’s meant to lower the bar for dabbling in art by tapping friends to help unleash a lot of pent-up creative energy. (Check out the video demonstration below.)

“We’re trying to get people out of the thinking that art is something they can’t do because it’s intimidating or difficult,” Vinh told me. “We want to make it fun and casual like a conversation.”

Users create their own collage, or mixel, by pulling from their own pictures on their iPad or from Facebook. Or they can search through Bing image search for photos. They can then crop, rotate, expand and duplicate images, all with simple touch gestures.

Other iPad apps like Photo Wall also let people make collages. But Mixel is trying to distinguish itself by being social. So users can find their friends on Facebook, see what’s popular and trending among Mixel users, and follow other Mixel users, commenting and liking their stuff. And they can share their creations on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Remix and share

Mixel users can reuse other people’s collages, pulling out single elements or grabbing all the pieces and working them into something new. One of Mixel’s coolest features is that it saves all the elements separately on its servers, so users can pull out one piece that they like and use it to start their own mixel.

Because Mixel saves each element, it also knows where each piece is reused, so it can show users how one element may have been implemented by other people. And it encourages almost a conversation that builds upon images. This kind of reminds me of Chris Poole’s Canvas image board service, which opened to the public recently and encourages people to interact through images. Vinh, who left the New York Times last year, said Canvas is different in that’s it’s used online and it’s good for creating memes while Mixel encourages art with a broad audience. It also has no drawing, paint or text tools to keep it distinct from meme culture.

Vinh said Mixel is looking to build a big audience first before exploring monetization opportunities. Down the line, he said, he might consider in-app purchase, freemium subscriptions or working with brands on brand-safe collages.

Building conversations around images

I like what Mixel is trying to do. I think the iPad has a great opportunity to spur creativity, but while I have used some apps like Brushes and Sketchbook, I haven’t stuck with it, because I don’t have much desire to keep going. But having a way to easily share stuff within a community of people having fun with art makes it more inviting. And being able to deconstruct and riff off other people’s work helps make the process less intimidating. I can see myself playing with this, and I imagine my nieces and nephews would find this extremely enjoyable too.

It’s interesting to see the way that photos and images are becoming a language unto themselves. Instagram has helped to make photos easily sharable, and now apps like Piictu are trying to get people to communicate through photos. This visual culture is starting to flourish, and I think we’re still early in this trend.

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