Apple Design Awards

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the 2018 Apple Design Awards. Please, welcome your host, Senior Director of Evangelism, John Geleynse.

Well, hello. It is great to be back here with the Design Awards on the main stage. And this evening we've got a great evening for you. So, thank you for coming out and joining us in this afternoon and celebration of the winners that we're going to announce, soon.

We're here to honor developers who have done excellent work and with technology adoption, with innovation, making their apps unique.

And in my role at Apple and in my team's role at Apple we've worked with so many of you over the years, helping you to create great apps. Apps that are engaging and apps that are compelling. Apps that are high performance and apps that are, honestly, really great. And so, it's an honor for me to be here and to be able to lead this award ceremony and honor these developers, tonight.

The work that is done by you, as the developer committee, speaks to the heart of Apple.

And that heart is, as we all know, creativity. In all of its forms, we believe that creativity has always been humanity's greatest super power. And when it combines with technology great things come to life. Incredible things come to life.

And that's why we feel deeply that you, as developers, are amazingly creative. Like a paintbrush to an artist, chords to a composer, words to an author, code is an even more advanced creative tool. Because it can really do and create so much. As developers, you're developing on the canvas of the entire world causing great new groundbreaking apps and ideas to take shape.

And each year new and transformative apps are introduced bases on those ideas.

And each time this happens you take creativity to new levels. For example, take a look at the last three years of Apple Design Award winners. There are incredible games here.

Powerful design tools. New workflow solution, new video workflow solutions.

Innovative photography tools.

Apps that empower health and fitness.

Music creation and DJing tools. And apps to better understand human anatomy.

As well as everyday tools that help you to get things done and make a, truly make a difference in this world. The developers of these apps and so many more over the years have amazed us with their excellent work.

Now, we all understand the incredible hard work that goes into the design and development of great apps like these and others.

We're all too familiar with the long nights, long hours, technical hurdles, design challenges, and honestly, often, a really hard to find bugs. But that's why we're here tonight.

To honor and celebrate that hard work. Today's winners set a new benchmark in creativity and they demonstrate the mark of brilliance that makes something truly great. Okay. We've got something to do here, tonight, which is to give out a bunch of awards. And we're going to do that in a very large room. So, if you hear your name called, if you hear your app's name called, you need to make it up here fast.

Because we want to move this along and it's a big room.

There are two sets of stairs here on either side of me. So, just head towards me, you'll find a set of stairs, you'll make it onto the stage, and we'll move on from there. So, let's get started. Identifying the audience for your app and developing something that's perfectly suited for them and their needs is really important.

The developer of our first winner today built an app that's perfectly tuned for children and the way that they learn. Join me in congratulating Bandimal by Yatatoy.

All right.

So, Bandimal is a fun and intuitive music composer app. It lets kids explore music and be the maestro of their own animal band.

And the key to this app is its focus on creativity.

There are no rules, no notes, no chords, no scores.

Let's take a look. Andrea. Thanks, John. Let's dive right in. I'll tap on the plus here to start a new composition. And the music gets started right away, which we should hear, soon.

There we go. But we're going to need to add some notes. The app has this adorable cast of animal characters. Each one makes a different sound. I'm going to swipe through them till I find one that I like, which I guess, I'm going to go with this buffalo, here. I'll tap down here with my finger to add some notes. And you can see each note comes with its own special dance move. Now, I'm going to speed up the tempo by turning this dial. And, maybe, after I do that I decide I want to give my buffalo a nice rest every other beat. There we go. Now, I need a nice lead singer to complement my buffalo bass, so I'm going to tap here, swipe through my options.

There we go. This chicken looks like she'll be a star. Tap down here.

And I'm going to speed up her tempo to match my buffalo bass. And, maybe, I'll do a call and response type thing so they can interact with each other. Now, I need one more animal to spice things up. So, I'm going to tap here. I happen to know there's a particularly funky jellyfish here. So, let's give this one a go. Now, let's listen.

Sounds good. So, as kids create these compositions they're building their sense of rhythm and musicality, very playfully and naturally, without need for any prior musical knowledge. And the beauty of the app is any combination of notes is going to sound good, because it's all playing in pentatonic scale. So, there's always a feeling of success. Let's check out this percussion section, up here. So, I'm going to add some high hat there. Layer in some snare drum and some more percussion, here. And lastly, my bass drum. All of these sounds, percussion and animals, were recorded in the studio using real instruments to get the music and natural sounds. I can even add a sound effect by tapping on these mountains. That's going to give my chicken an echo. So, let's check out this reverberating chicken. So, you can see there's all sorts of fun to be had with sound in this app. And it's a great way for kids to get creative with music and feel their ear and their intuition for the rhythms and sounds that they like to hear together. The Yatatoy team of three spent two years developing this app using Swift, Sprite Kit, and Core Audio. They were working remotely between Helsinki and Vienna. And they were doing this in the afterhours from their day jobs. It's all culminated in an app that's really magical. So, congratulations.

Thanks, Andrea. That's Bandimal. All right. Next up in an app developed by a team of two biologists; a physicist, and a chemist.

Both are long time Indie Mac developers and one of them is, actually, a four-time Apple Design Award winner. These guys teamed up to develop our next app, which is Agenda by Momenta B.V. out of the Netherlands. So, Agenda takes a clever new approach to note taking on the Mac and now, on iOS, as well. By combining notes, calendars, and tasks in unique ways and with really powerful relationships.

And as well, it's got a great clean design. And we'd like to show it to you, now. So, I'm going to hand it over to Chris.

Agenda is a simple and fresh way to keep yourself organized. It combines a To-Do list and a note taking app with a