Question

Can anyone recommend a good resource for learning how to build iPhone apps out of non-standard UI elements? I am an experienced web designer and I am getting comfortable with Objective-C. I would really love to gain some insight on the link between photoshop and Xcode.

As an example, I really love the slick design of the WordsWithFriends lobby interface. Unique, but not too far from the standard apple libraries. Really just want to put my own imprint on my app. Thanks.

Answer 1

You can stay within the common controls to leverage their implementation and still have a custom look.

For example, table views are very useful and common experiences on iOS:

http://www.galloway.me.uk/tutorials/custom-uitableviewcell/

http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/04/easy-custom-uitableview-drawing.html

You can customize the appearance of UINav bars and UITabBars with the UIAppearance proxies:

Custom UITabBar background image not working in iOS 5 and later

UINavigationBar and new iOS 5+ appearance API – how to supply two background images?

If you want completely customized views, you can subclass UIView:

http://www.raywenderlich.com/1768/how-to-make-a-custom-uiview-a-5-star-rating-view

If it’s a simple view like the 5 star view above, it’s pretty trivial – creating something like your own completely custom tables is alot of work – leverage and customize the existing controls where possible. Users also understand those access patterns as well.

As far as where Photoshop comes in, you’ll want to create yourimage.png & [e-mail] (retina) with these pixels & ppi

(640) × (960) pixels at 326 ppi
(320) × (480) pixels at 163 ppi

Hope that helps.