Creativity Friday: Coming soon to an iPhone near you….

Yup, the Goddess Tarot is getting it’s own iPhone app! Above are three sneak peeks at it. If everything goes as scheduled, the app will be available from iTunes in late July/early August.

Creating the Goddess Tarot iPhone app has been an interesting process—and I mean “interesting” genuinely, not in an “oh-my-goodness-this-is-complicated-and-distressing” way. This is my first foray into creating an iPhone app, so I’ve had a steep learning curve to climb. I’m fortunate to have had a developer friend to advise me along the way, from everything from creating my first use case spec to non-disclosure agreements; from leads for reputable iPhone developers to the financials involved in hiring one.

(You might be wondering “what’s a use case spec?” I know I did. Short version: It’s a visual map of the application for developer, so they’ll know exacty how the app should behave at any time. You want the use case spec to be as detailed as possible, to cover every possible use of the app. No surprises, but mine ended up looking like an extended book proposal with a ton of graphics. Well, that is what I know best….)

It’s a brave new world for me. Though I’ve created many a website and consider myself fairly comfortable with html, I know my limits. I have no interest in learning Cocoa or Objective C, the programming languages used to write an iPhone app—ultimately, I’m a graphic designer, not a computer person. Plus I want the app to be as good as possible. (Ie: bug-free.) But even though I’ve hired a developer to program it, it’s still been a lot of work for me. Basically, I’m providing the developer with what they call the “creatives”: graphics, text, design—the main course, in other words.

On my end, designing and revising the use case spec took a lot of time. Now that we’re in production mode, I’ve had hundreds of graphics to prepare for the app, so they’ll display correctly on an iPhone. Right now, I’m in the midst of editing the text descriptions for all the cards and goddesses. It’s a lot of work, but also very exciting.

I’ll be posting more about the Goddess Tarot iPhone app as production progresses. If you’d like a heads up on when the app is available from iTunes, I hope you’ll take a moment to sign up for my newsletter. As an added enticement, I’m planning to give subscribers a publication date discount!

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Next week, I have some great posts underway. Monday will finally be my big BEA “state of the industry” post (cross fingers). Wednesday, I’ll review two new self-published goddess decks, the Mythical Goddess Tarot and Affirmations for the Everyday Goddess (left).

Another coup: Pamela Wells, creator of Affirmations for the Everyday Goddess will be interviewed by me regarding her experiences self-publishing her deck. She’s also going to be giving away a Collector’s Edition of it to one lucky commenter. I have a copy of it here, and it’s gorgeous!

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