The 'Shapes of Cities' app is a gamified version of Yoni Alter's successful poster series by the same name. In Alter's 'Shapes of Cities' posters, cities' major, identifiable landmarks are depicted in monochrome translucent slides that overlap with one another to create beautiful, geometrical bursts of color. The new game keeps that aesthetic while also testing users' knowledge of famous architecture.
Part of the charm of the original posters is their sense of scale; every building in the posters is scaled accurately, giving viewers an immediate and lasting impression of just how much taller One World Trade Center is than the Empire State Building.
The Shapes of Cities game capitalizes on this scaling. First, it shows an image of a city's buildings properly scaled. Then, it randomizes those sizes, and users have to drag them back to the correct height.
Why This Trend Is Growing
- Gamification of Educational Tools
- The 'Shapes of Cities' app is an example of using gamification to enhance the learning experience, offering opportunities to develop similar games.
- Transparency in Design
- The monochrome translucent slides in 'Shapes of Cities' poster create a unique layered effect on the image, which can inspire the use of transparency in design to create visually appealing products.
- Visual Learning Techniques
- The use of proper scaling in the 'Shapes of Cities' game can encourage the development of other visual learning techniques to enhance users' understanding of complex ideas or structures.
Industries Being Reshaped
- Mobile App Development
- The release of 'Shapes of Cities' game for iOS devices shows the potential for mobile app developers to create visually striking and interactive educational tools.
- Graphic Design
- The 'Shapes of Cities' poster series demonstrates the potential for graphic designers to use transparency and layering techniques to create visually stimulating designs.
- Education and Training
- The 'Shapes of Cities' game is an example of how educational tools can utilize visual learning techniques to make complex concepts more accessible and understandable.
