Together, Matt Patenaude and I built multiple freewares for the Mac and iOS ecosystems.
Our goal was to learn, have fun, and our apps were usually themable using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This has been, for me, one of the first real introductions to web technologies. At the time, CSS3 was still new and had unleashed so many animations and transitions!
Bowtie
Bowtie was a desktop accessory that allows you to see and control your music (iTunes, Spotify, Sonora, or Rdio) with customizable shortcuts, advanced Last.fm support, and hundreds of beautiful themes available to download for free.
In 2010, the Mac already had a few iTunes controllers (some of which I also designed)! Matt and I wanted to build the best music controller out there.
Wanting to best myself, I obviously encountered a creative block 😅. After multiple rounds of mockups and conversations, Matt realized that I needed a way to explore before settling on a final interface. This is when he had the brilliant idea to create a little framework to let me customize my design easily. While still at the beginning of my web development journey, I knew enough HTML and CSS to get started, and all the cool new CSS3 features were really exciting.
Suddenly, many other designers got excited about making their own controller, and so Bowtie, the Themeable iTunes Controller, was born.
Bowtie had an explosion of really cool widgets (called Bowlets, obviously). Some could float above all the windows, while others would be anchored on the desktop, below all other windows. Some were movable; others stuck on the edges and corners of the screen.
You can still browse the theme catalog! Themeability using web technologies ended up being one of the biggest pillars of our apps.
Bluebird
Bluebird was our take on a Twitter client. At the time, there was an explosion of great Twitter clients emerging. Ours, of course, had to be themeable.
Bluebird went through multiple iterations; it was a playground for us to try and adopt new interface elements and design patterns.
Unfortunately, at the time, Twitter was changing (and breaking) their API very often, and ultimately, it was unsustainable for a free product.
Our mobile apps
We also built quite a few mobile apps together, growing out of an itch to learn something, explore a new technology, or save ourselves some time.
We just liked to build cool and polished small apps, I guess 😄
Signals, an app to understand train signals.
Barty, a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) companion
Bowtie Touch, to control the playback on your Mac.
A community
We are still very proud of the community we built around our apps. I remember this era fondly, and I sometimes miss its candor.
I would like to end with a quote from Matt:
Being one half of {13bold} was an incredible gift. At its peak, Bowtie had over 100,000 downloads and a vibrant fanbase on the MacThemes forums. The website that would become Bowtie’s built-in theme “store,” Bowcase, was started by an enthusiastic user. In Bowtie, we built the tool that we wanted, and in doing so, enabled hundreds of others to build the tool they wanted, too.
It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had making apps, and it’s no exaggeration to say that meeting Laurent fundamentally shaped the trajectory of my career in software. (He was willing to design a free icon for my first app; talk about a real gem!)
It’s a rare thing to be able to scratch so many creative itches with such a talented partner—even more so when your work animates a community!
I like to think we left a lasting mark, however small, on the landscape of Mac software. Even if we didn’t, we sure had a blast doing it.
Our products are no longer maintained, but you can still visit the website and browse the archive.
