Over the last several years we’ve seen a continuing effort to re-implement traditional desktop applications in the browser. By now you can find plenty of word processors, spreadsheets, and drawing programs that run in any modern browsers. Now formatpixel has entered the fray with a new site that you could see as an attempt to bring desktop publishing to the web.
After a painless sign-up process, it takes only a single click to create your first project in formatpixel. This brings up their Flash-based editor in a new browser window, with a familiar page-on-desktop layout metaphor that will be familiar to users of any desktop publishing application. You can insert text objects, media objects (graphics or movies), or shapes, and then move them around position them, and change their properties – all pretty standard fare in the desktop publishing world.
You can build up your own library of media within your formatpixel account, create multi-page projects, add links to other parts of the web, and do a certain amount of image customization. When you’re happy with your work, you can publish the project to the formatpixel site, which makes it available on their directory page for playback in their custom Flash-based viewer by anyone.
Viewed as a desktop publishing application, formatpixel is fairly anemic. You won’t find libraries of image filters, or even such basics as flowing text from one text object to another. But from another angle, this is an interesting tool. Given the ubiquity of Flash, a reasonably skilled graphic artist should be able to sit down at just about any computer and create a decently attractive publication mockup; a few minutes of poking around in the directory will show you that some people are indeed using the tool for everything from photography exhibitions to portfolios of their design work.
There’s essentially no learning curve here, and I could see firing up formatpixel while at the coffee shop with a potential new client to toss around a few design ideas without the overhead of a “real” design tool.
Anyone can sign up and work with a single project for free. Paid plans start at £15 per year and add additional projects, additional storage, and access to a few extra features including export to your computer.
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