Earth, A Primer is nominally an interactive science textbook application, but it feels more likely playing SimCity. (Makes sense; the designer, Chaim Gingold, worked under the creator of SimCity, Will Wright, before coming to this project).
It sometimes feels like science textbook, other times a part simulation game, other times a sandbox, but always pure joy. The art, the gameplay, and the polish is truly incredible and the app has been featured on everything from the Apple Store to WIRED to Popular Science to KQED to HackerNews to Architecture Magazines. It’s something I wish I had as a kid; learning through this interactive app makes turning 2-D pages seem arcane. I wonder why there isn’t more like it already (I personally want one for the human body!).
In the words of the Earth, A Primer team, “a key motivation behind the creation of Earth Primer is to model a new genre for other designers to borrow from, helping our culture reimagine the possibilities inherent to simulations and interactive books.”
When you see stuff like this, you can’t help but think how much more great stuff we have ahead of us on the internet and on our devices. And, that the way we consume information will always, always be evolving in lockstep with technology.
Some screenshots:
More to buzz about
Before Earth, A Primer, Chaim Gingold worked on the original Spore game.
The project started as a geomorphology simulation, but Bret Victor had the idea to transform it into an interactive book. Bret is now working on a massively ambitious project called “Real Talk” at Dynamicland which I will write about in another post.