APP TREND OF THE YEAR

Discover the Storyteller Within

In 2019, these apps helped us express who we truly are.

If you’ve ever tried to express yourself, you know there’s nothing quite as intimidating as the proverbial blank page.

In 2019, a groundswell of apps helped us fill that page with our memories, dreams, images, and voices—and do so with more power and personality than ever. They gave us more than the ability to express ourselves—they knocked down the small barriers we often put up to sharing what’s in our hearts.

This was the year Anchor simplified the process of recording compelling podcasts about our families, lives, and ambitions (and baseball teams and sci-fi movies). The app guided us through every step, from buying the right microphone to asking probing questions to recording the clips. It sprinkled in sound effects, transitions, and background music to make us sound like talk show naturals. Then it broadcast our episodes over the digital airwaves with a tap.

Anchor made creating a podcast (and sharing it with the world) as simple as pressing a purple button.

Wattpad’s community of writers and readers hit more than 80 million a month this year and was instrumental in connecting countless young voices with an audience. Instead of having to publish a magnum opus all at once, we could post chapter by chapter and get instant feedback. Wattpad’s regular writing prompts got our imaginative juices flowing.

And a flurry of design apps transformed our massive photo collections into cohesive visual stories (which looked supercool in our social feeds). They offered ready-made templates for every aesthetic, activity, and brunch. And they helped us find a narrative in what otherwise might have looked like an album of random images.

By integrating design elements like old-school film borders and the occasional strip of masking tape, Unfold helped us create stately stories that felt more like coffee table books, while Steller turned our vacation and landscape images into fully designed travel journals.

Thanks to tools like Unfold’s design templates, our stories looked sharp and classy.

Over and Canva: Stories & Video Maker offered tens of thousands of templates and typographical flourishes—and thoughtfully helped us find the perfect ones. Spark Camera empowered us to build a video story (in 4K, no less) over the course of a day. (If you’ve ever used a camcorder, it’s like that.)

With apps like these, suddenly we were all podcasters, all photographers, all designers, all videographers, all authors. These apps helped us discover our inner creators, in whatever form (or forms!) they took. Most important, they helped us master that blank page.