When Justin Boreta meshed his lifelong obsession with symmetry and his newfound obsession with photo editing apps, he helped develop a mobile sketch pad that has become a creative outlet for him and more than 320,000 users.
“I’ve always been obsessed with symmetry since I was young,” Boreta said. “There’s something about the way you can take an everyday image and, when symmetry is applied, it takes on a whole new life.”
Boreta, a member of the Los Angeles-based electronic music band The Glitch Mob, partnered with Tom Giles, founder and chief executive officer of social commerce engine StageBloc, which was founded in Milwaukee but is now based in Chicago. Boreta collaborated with Giles’ team at StageBloc to develop and design Mirrorgram, a mobile app that enables users to mirror or create symmetrical art from photos on their iPhones, iPads and iPod touches and share them anywhere online.
StageBloc, which created The Glitch Mob’s website, handled the development and design of the app while Boreta was instrumental in the original conception of it.
“I wanted to make a simple way to create symmetrical images on my iPhone and allow others to do the same,” Boreta said. “It’s a fun and easy way to create some really cool art.”
The app, an endeavor that took four weeks to both develop and design, launched in October this past year with the help of the Apple iTunes store, which featured Mirrorgram as a “new and noteworthy” app for Apple device owners.
While Mirrorgram primarily functions as a vehicle to vertically, horizontally and diagonally mirror photos into masterpieces of art, it also includes capabilities that enable users to add artistic filters like three-dimensional and color manipulation effects.
Besides allowing users to edit and remix existing photos, Mirrorgram has a live preview tool in which users can take new photos with the mirroring effects in place as they capture their shot.
“One of my favorite things about Mirrorgram is the live preview, so you can actually walk around and preview the world around you flipped,” Giles said.
The majority of app users share their mirrorgrams in the social network Instagram where users can tag their creations “#mirrorgram” to join the community of Mirrorgram images.
“We really just filled a need that already existed,” Giles said. “There were already communities of people doing this.”
While these communities created mirrored images using Photoshop or by hacking other apps with simple mirroring effects, Mirrorgram differentiates itself in that its specific intention focuses on mirroring images.
And while the app has largely served users as an outlet for artistic ingenuity, Giles has also discovered use of it in more professional spheres to promote brand identity.
In addition to professional photographers remixing their photos using Mirrorgram, fashion brands like Louis Verdad and Belle N. Matisse took advantage of Mirrorgram to leverage their brands during this year’s LA Fashion Week and promote the entire fashion week.
“When you start recognizing that (Mirrorgram) can be used for brands and for these other opportunities – a lot of which is primarily related to exposure and remixing the world around you – that’s when it gets very exciting,” Giles said.
Beyond an app, Mirrorgram has evolved into a concept all its own, Giles said.
Before the app even launched, people were already referring to mirrored art in general – videos, physical paintings and other artistic mediums – as “mirrorgrams,” thanks to beta users sharing their Mirrorgram creations from the app online.
“At the end of the day, Mirrorgram is much more than an app,” Giles said. “It’s the concept of creating mirrored art.”
Mirrorgram will likely roll out an app update in January to extend the entire Mirrorgram experience.
While the app can be downloaded in Apple’s iTunes store for free, Mirrorgram profits off app purchases of premier mirrors and filters. These supplementary features, which include the three-dimensional filter, a “rerezzed” mirror and a “shredder” mirror, enhance user experience for 99 cents each. More than half of all Mirrogram users invest in these options, Giles said.
As the app continues to gain popularity, Giles said he is amazed at the diverse demographic of users – from small kids to high school and college students to moms.
“It’s a very simple, fun app,” Giles said. “Really we just wanted to make something that’s fun and not super complex.” n
