Apple - iMovie

“With iMovie for iOS and macOS, you can enjoy your videos like never before. It’s easy to browse your clips and create Hollywood-style trailers and stunning 4K-resolution movies. You can even start editing on iPhone or iPad, then finish on your Mac. And when you’re ready to premiere your movie on all your devices, iMovie Theater rolls out the red carpet.” (credit: Apple)

Our Role

We were responsible for transitioning iMovie to the new visual language in macOS Yosemite and iOS 7. Along with those major visual transitions, I was also one of the main designers responsible for any major features for a release.

Apple’s approach has always been to make creative tools intuitive and accessible to the widest range of customers. This is why iMovie is designed for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, and available for free to all new customers.

The interaction and visual design of iMovie feels native to each platform, but is fundamentally consistent. Certain interactions are optimized for mouse and keyboard or touch. For example, the playhead is unconstrained on macOS because of the versatility of a cursor-based input method, but on iOS and iPadOS, the playhead position is fixed in the center.

iOS, iPadOS & macOS

iMovie was designed to scale from the most portable iPhone, to the iPad, all the way to the largest desktop devices like the iMac with Retina 5K display.

MacBook Pro with TouchBar

From iMovie to Final Cut Pro X

iMovie’s simplified design and availability on all platforms can be a customer’s first experience with making movies. When the customers are ready to create movies that require more advanced tools and techniques, Final Cut Pro is available on macOS. The three panel layout (organizer, viewer, timeline) will look familiar to those upgrading from iMovie, and a feature is available to upgrade existing iMovie projects to Final Cut Pro.