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My Favorite Metro Apps
In just over a year, the Windows Phone app marketplace has quickly grown from nothing to 50,000 apps. An exciting part of watching the marketplace grow is seeing how app developers and designers have taken on and interpreted Metro for their own apps. While Metro can sometimes be seen as stark or very black and white, the philosophy behind it is to reduce UI chrome so that content can shine through. The best Metro apps on Windows Phone use their unique brand content, colors and imagery to bring their app to life. Over the year I’ve kept an eye out for the apps that I think have done a great job using Metro as a starting point, and below are twelve of my favorites. All of them use the basic Windows Phone grid and controls, and have a Metro style to them, but each have their own distinct voice and personality. They aren’t black and white – they’re all colorful, playful, and vibrant.
One note is that I’m mainly looking at visual design quality in these examples, not the quality of functionality, or even the quality of motion design. This isn’t a “best apps of the WP marketplace” list – These are my favorite when it comes to playing with and extending the Metro design language. There are lots of other really great apps in the marketplace that stay closer to the core Metro style. Also, with 50,000 WP apps out there, I definitely haven’t seen them all. If you have any favorites – let me know.
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