Aussie play ‘Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’ launches app via Frost’s digital agency The Nest

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TheNest-SO17D-01.jpgFrost’s digital agency The Nest has created a digital publishing app for classic Australian play, ‘Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’. The AIMIA Award winning iPad app charts the 57-year history of the work, considered as the most historically significant play in Australian theatre history.

 

Publisher of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Currency Press, commissioned The Nest to develop an app that would collate archival material from the first production on 28 November 1955 up until the most recent production in 2012, with material sourced from a range of archives and institutions along the east coast of Australia.

TheNest-SO17D-02.jpgThe Nest created a highly interactive app, that is the first of its kind. The multimedia-heavy application offers a curated experience around the full text of play, written by celebrated Australian playwright Ray Lawler, which allows users to explore the piece from a variety of perspectives. The app is intended to be an engaging, immersive and interactive education resource for all readers of the play, from high school students, teachers and educators, undergraduates, theatre practitioners, actors, academics and scholars, to theatre lovers of all ages.

 

Key features of the app include the complete play text, which is fully searchable and comes with the ability to add personal annotations, interviews with Lawler and accomplished theatre practitioners such as director, Neil Armstrong and actor, Susie Porter, a behind-the-scenes look at key productions, a pictorial timeline of the play’s long history and a read a range of viewpoints on the work’s significance.

 

Creating a new category within the digital publishing app market, was an exciting and liberating challenge, says founder and CEO of The Nest, Stuart Buchanan.

 

TheNest-SO17D-03.jpgSays Buchanan: “During our extensive preparatory research, we found no similar apps of this nature, so there were very few touch stones or reference points to play off. The interface design, information architecture and user flow was developed from scratch, exclusively for this app. We relish the creative and technical opportunities that come with true innovation, so we were especially thrilled when the work won at the AIMIA Awards earlier this month”.

 

Toby Leon, digital project manager at Currency Press, sees a big future for digital publishing for the education market.

 

Says Leon: “Our Summer of the Seventeenth Doll app is the first of its kind and one which we see as paving the way for the development of future apps for the education market.  There is a significant disparity between the quality of apps used by the target during their leisure time versus those used in school or university. This app offers a ‘taste of things to come’ for lovers of texts such as this Australian classic”.

 

TheNest-SO17D-04.jpgThe Nest and Currency Press won ‘Best of Tablet -Learning and Education’ for the Summer of the Seventeenth Doll iPad app at the 2014 AIMIA Awards, Australia’s most prestigious digital industry recognition program.

 

The win follows on from a recent accolade The Nest received from the internationally respected Webby Awards, for its work on a smart phone app for AMP. The app, designed as an interaction and navigation platform for AMP’s biannual “Business Innovation & Thought Leadership” event, Amplify, included deep data on sessions and speakers, gamification elements, social media tracking and augmented reality tools. It was selected as an Official Honoree in The 18th Annual Webby Awards.

Produced & Designed by The Nest

Stuart Buchanan, Creative Strategy

Rebecca Hedderly, Producer

Dave Fernandes, Designer

Daniel Ashworth, Developer

 

Published by Currency Press

Project Manager / Cutator, Toby Leon