Moleskine Studio
p/actions
Sketch. Think. Create.
Iam J
Flow by Moleskine Studio — Capture, create and share ideas in a digital Moleskine
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Draw, sketch, and take notes in a digital Moleskine notebook. With sophisticated tools that are simple to use, Flow gets ideas out of your head and brings your ideas to life.
From the makers of Timepage and Actions.
Replies
Ryan Hoover
You don't see many companies that produce physical products expand into software. Did you hire an entirely new team to take this on or did you have the right people in-house to build this, @hamey?
Ben Hamey
@rrhoover There is a story behind that! Our company Bonobo created Timepage in partnership with Moleskine a few years ago, and it's been a great success. As a result we created a new joint venture company with Moleskine called Moleskine Digital Studio which is responsible for this suite of apps (Timepage, Actions, Flow). We're a small team (<10) and everything is done entirely in house (design, development, marketing, support..the lot!). It's really interesting working at the intersection of analogue and digital. We see it as a continuum and want to help people be productive and creative in any way that suits them best.
Ben Hamey
@rrhoover @samsabri Much appreciated Sam. Often people assume we are some massive team when we are certainly still modestly sized!
Ben Hamey
Thanks for the post @htnawsaj ! We've been working on Flow for more than 2 years and are so excited to finally launch. Our drawing engine is entirely built from scratch and the design process to get Flow where it is today has been huge. Questions very welcome!
Alex MacGregor
Looks good! Continuing the moleskin aesthetic into digital could be tricky but from the looks of this they've pulled it off.
Ben Hamey
@ajmcgr Thanks Alex, it's certainly a fun design challenge!
Fraser Smith
Not denying that it's a nice app, as are all of Moleskin's apps. However, it's entering a pretty crowded marketplace and the subscription model does seem a bit costly compared to the competition. What is the thinking behind choosing subscription over pay once and will Moleskin ever consider a single subscription for all their apps?
Ben Hamey
@frassmith Hi Fraser, we think we've struck a unique experience in Flow which has come out of a multi-year design exercise with creative pros. We fully expect customers will use Flow alongside the many other great creative apps available. All of our products are subscription because it's the best way to support our customers – we release updates for everything on average every 2 weeks. It also is the only reasonable way to cover our ongoing infrastructure. Regarding a single subscription for all apps, yes this is absolutely something we want to do. Right now the only reason we don't is because the way App Store purchases work prevents us from being able to cross-grade customers who have multiple existing subscriptions with us.
Francesco D'Alessio
HUGE congrats on the launch! Exciting!
Ben Hamey
@francescod_ales Thanks so much Francesco! We've put a lot of sweat into this one 😅
Andreas Duess
I am sure this is a great product - but it's not for me. I have always been an early tech adopter, with large parts of my career spent in tech that was table stakes, but for note taking and related tasks I've never found anything that was better than pen on paper. Part of that is due to my love of nice pens, I am sure, but there's something deeply satisfying about filling a notebook, skimming back over thoughts and ideas, reorganizing writing that I could never duplicate on a glass screen.
Jose Niño Pérez
@andreasduess Same here. I love Moleskine products but I've tried every sketch app out there and always come back to my pencils. Maybe the fact that I can't "erase" with a tap/click puts me on a deeper state of connection with my thoughts. Anyhow, beautiful looking app by Moleskine, a success, I'm sure.
Ben Hamey
@andreasduess @jaironpz Hi Andreas / Jose – one of our design goals for this product was to emulate the joy of the "pen and paper" experience. In fact our working title for the app was actually "pen and paper"! This is why we put so much effort into making the interface gestures customisable so it can stay out of the way as much as possible. For example, you can tap and hold the screen to activate the eraser without having to go to a menu. We also used the pen and paper inspiration for our tools which are setup like a virtual pencil case so you don't have to change colour/size etc every time, you can just have your own tool set ready like their analogue counterparts. Anyway - just a bit of background, many thanks for your thoughts!
Andreas Duess
@jaironpz @hamey for sure. In no way was I trying to imply that my personal preferences should be seen as a criticism of an app that looks beautifully done.
Ben Hamey
@jaironpz @andreasduess Thanks Andreas! Absolutely :-)
Lyondhür Picciarelli
Okay. I cannot see myself ever paying that much -- every year -- being a one-fee only Notability and Affinity Photo/Designer user..
Ben Hamey
@lyondhur Hi Lyondhur – that's the wonderful thing about the App Store - there are so many amazing apps available and we're glad to be part of those options. We absolutely believe we have a unique combination of features and it's something we've spent years developing with many creative professionals.
Janet Alexandersson
I love this! I went straight to download. I very much would like this to be my new go to app for sketching and note keeping. The tool dock is genius. The only thing making me hesitant is that there seems to be no support for automatic straight lines or shapes. Is this included in the road map? Great work!
Ben Hamey
@janet_alexandersson Hi Janet – thanks for the kind words. The tool dock is something we put a lot of thought into. The line/shape feature is something we are actively looking into. We have a feature request board where it's listed – your comments/vote for it are very welcome! https://bonobo.canny.io/flow Thanks again.
Joseph Wood
I was really waiting for a note taking app for the Moleskine suite of apps. I’m a huge Timepage user and am starting to use Actions more too. I was hoping it would be a text/typing note taking app. This is awesome, but on my iPhone, drawing and writing is quite annoying. On the iPad it’s a dream. This definitely seems more iPad focused. Is there a plan to add text in the style that Paper has?
Ben Hamey
@iamjmw Hey Joseph, thanks for the kind words we really appreciate it! We've worked really hard on our suite of apps. We have an update pending approval with Apple now that fixes an issue with finger input on some iPhones - that will be live shortly so will hopefully make things better for you! We have more iPhone-specific optimisation planned too. We investigated text input but couldn't find a way to make it good enough. It's something we will continue to experiment with though. Mind if I ask what you'd use text input for generally? Would it be annotating drawings or list making or bigger document creation? Thanks again!
Joseph Wood
@hamey - Sorry for the late response. I'm not sure if you are still reading these, but I figured I would still answer. I really was just hoping for a note taking app in the visual style of the TimePage and Actions app so I was excited when I saw this. This app looks amazing, but seeing as I don't really use my iPad as much (until I get the new iPad Pro, lol) it just currently doesn't have a place on my phone until Apple allows the Apple Pencil to work on the iPhone (now that the iPad mini allows Apple Pencil we could see the Pencil working on the iPhone soon!) So since I mainly use my iPhone and a stylus input isn't great on the iPhone, I just don't have a need for this app. But if I used the iPad Pro this app would be amazing, which hopefully I will get a new Pro soon to use it.
Daniel Roger Casanova
Can we get a pay once pricing?
Ben Hamey
@danirogerc Hey Daniel - it's something we've considered, but it would have to be quite expensive compared with the annual price. Long term it just doesn't help us support our customers.
Vova Kondriianenko
Like it. I have Timepage and Actions installed on my iPad and yesterday I added Flow to this collection. Overall the app is fantastic. It has a cool UI and some unique functions like a dock, infinite canvas, and tools customization. But compared to other players Flow lacks some important functions like straight lines, auto shapes and maybe layers. Flow also has one really annoying issue with rendering thick lines. I discovered this yesterday with all the tools. I wish this issue will be resolved. At this moment I’ll stay with my current toolset but will check Flow a bit later. Oh, and one more thing. Please add integration between Flow and Actions (now I can add a sketch to Timepage). This will be a fantastic functionality!
Ben Hamey
@vladimir_kondriianenko Hi Vladimir, thanks for the comments! We are working on a fix for the line rendering right now so there should be a fix available shortly. Thanks for the suggestions - please feel free to vote for these/discuss on our feature request board (http://bonobo.canny.io/flow).
John
Looks great! Are you planning to make an android version too?
Ben Hamey
@pregenun Thanks John – no plans at the moment but we'll see in the future 👍🏻
Tom
Looks great. Not excited by pricing. This means adding a further subscription to the load which I find hard to justify. Would much rather buy once.
Mete Polat
@hellotom Agree. Not sure why I would pay for this if I can get a more powerful Notability for a one-time payment that's 3x+ lower than the yearly sub to this.
Ben Hamey
@hellotom Hi Tom, thanks for the comment. All of our products are subscription and we've found customers really value our long term commitment and regular updates. We wouldn't want to release something we couldn't confidently support for a very long time. We have considered a "forever" price but it would have to be a significant multiple of the annual in order to make it work. Just out of interest, do you subscribe to many apps? Subscription "fatigue" is something we wish we could help with, unfortunately because of the way the App Store handles cross-grading we can't offer a good bundle option at the moment.
Tom
@hamey Ben, thanks for your response. As much as I appreciate Moleskine notebooks as well as your interest in apps I find it a challenge to see the value. As @mete_polat mentioned, Notability is a very viable and interesting alternative. At around $1 to $5 for a one-off payment an app should be good to use for 2 to 3 years before an upgrade becomes an enticing opportunity. Your long term commitment to your apps is essentially taken for granted, which is commonplace looking at a range of competitors. I can see a distinction between iPhone, iPad and desktop, each enabling a different set of opportunities. Perhaps there are more opportunities in looking at how you approach your idea of an eco-system.
Ben Hamey
@mete_polat @hellotom Doing once-off paid upgrades has never been an option for us because the App Store fundamentally doesn't support it. Some apps work around this but it means creating an entirely new SKU, migrating customers and juggling support of the old versions which is too expensive and ultimately gives the customer a worse experience. We'd rather release more often and have all of our customers get the latest features for all of their different devices. One thing we want to be able to do is offer bundle subscriptions for our apps but the constraints of the App Store prevent us from doing it, there is no way to cross-grade our existing customers who have multiple subscriptions to a new bundle subscription whilst refunding them what they are owed for the difference.
Tom
@hamey this has been a useful prompt to check out your competitors and discover the brilliant of amongst others Procreate, Sketches Pro and Paper. https://www.producthunt.com/post... https://www.producthunt.com/post... https://www.producthunt.com/post... Your rationale seems somewhat flawed—you are using app store policies as a way to excuse your strategy rather than vice versa. There could be some mileage in such pricing policies if there were sufficient value in your product but that still seems a bit of a stretch. Rather than taking this opportunity to open up your thinking to potential users you seem to prefer using it to justify your approach. — Still not convinced. Much looking forward to the in-depth competitor analysis.
jlozano

This product was very useful for me.

Pros:

It's a good idea, good product! very useful! good luck! 👍😀

Cons:

Nothing to say

Nikiara Purmambietova
I like it. I drew my first sketch without any difficulties using just my finger:) I believe I can achieve more results if I will use special pen. Can you please recommend what kind of tools are more productive to use this app? I am eager to start drowning my first clothing line
Ben Hamey
@nikjara Great! We recommend Apple Pencil for the best experience on iPad. We're also looking into support for other styluses.
Tim Richards
very cool idea!
Ben Hamey
@tim_richards Thanks Tim! 🙂
Mansi Abnave
ohh that's great!
Qiu Wubing
Hi Bem, I would like to ask if the app allow the user to export their art as a vector that can be use in Adobe Illustrator?
Ben Hamey
@wubing80 Hi Qiu! We currently don't have this feature but it's something we are considering. The underlying vector data would be fairly straightforward for us to add an export, but the raster (stroke style) wouldn't be able to come in, so we need to experiment with how useful it would be (your drawing could end up looking quite strange when they are without their pen styles, but could still be useful).
Ben Hamey
@wubing80 No problem! :)
Gil Hou
I'm not clear on how (and if ) handwritten notes work in Flow, is OCR an option and can you search notes and organize them. The Moleskine studio site doesn't provide details.
Fabien C
After a complete adoption of timepage, I can’t wait to try this one :) Congrats to all involved!
Ben Hamey
@fczls Thanks for your support Fabien! Flow is integrated with Timepage (you can drag docs from Flow to the day screen in Timepage) and we have some more interesting features on the roadmap which expand on that too.