Klynt.net

A Brief Introduction to Klynt – Part 3: Where we Stand


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Klynt Editor Graphic Design Revamp Proposal by Brieuc Dupont – september 2010

I remember back in 2007, while working on Journey to The End of Coal i-doc (aka Voyage au bout du charbon), how cool it would be to allow anybody to create his own interactive documentary, and that it would make sense to create a “platform” for that (yeah, well the whole there-is-an-app-for-that-too did not exist yet). I guess this is what we have achieved today. Pushing the whole idea further actually.

What we came up with is kind of something hard to describe in words – excuse my french. The whole app is a mash-up in itself. Both in terms of interface design, features and distribution model.

About the interface

Colors, size, access, we have spent a lot of efforts on ergonomics. With Brieuc Dupont, our lead interface and graphic designer on Klynt, we tried to stay focused on not trying to reinvent the wheel. In other terms, if you know the basics of Final Cut, Photoshop and WordPress (or any blog publishing platform), it takes you about a couple of minutes to see how the interface basically works. I mean, we can certainly improve a lot of things (and we will in the next coming weeks), but let’s say it: the interface is quite user-friendly and fun to play with.

About the features

This is where we have been spending most of our time. The whole concept of mixing video, photo, sound, text and hyperlink editing features in one app is something huge. Still, it has always been clear, Klynt is neither a video editing nor an audio mixing app nor a text editor. It will not replace any of these great tools we already have. Still, it should offer the minimum set of editing to make it powerful and creative enough. It does.

But not only. What makes it unique now is really the mix of such features with external media and platforms like Google Maps, YouTube videos, Flickr images, Facebook and Twitter to start with. We believe it really opens a whole new space of creativity. It is not just about making hypervideo (which is nice enough) but it is about curating the internet. Making something valuable with something else. DIY and Remix culture united.

About our distribution model

Well, as you can read in our pricing section, things are pretty straight forward. What we do now is Premium licensing for organizations. Why? Because it makes sense as we have been historically a production company working on ideas, authors, and users and storytelling altogether and that we want to keep it this way.

To some extent, what we have been doing with WWF, Terre-Net Media, TV5 Monde, EMI or CUEJ (the last two being journalism training schools in France) or L’Equipe is quite similar to what we have been doing and will continue to do with authors and journalists we work with for our own productions. What we do is opening our tool box and know-how and mentoring them in creating their own project, using their own voice, creating their own interactive formula. This is actualy a quite rewarding experience and we still love it so far.

Now, making Klynt available to freelance and students and a broader community of user is only a step away. Stay tuned!