2024 was a year of dualities. Analog or digital. Real or fake. Robot or human. Looking back, moving forward.

This year saw the launch of the highly anticipated iA Notebook, while both iA Writer and iA Presenter gained extra shine with new features and updates. Meanwhile, the rest of the world tried to come to terms with the continuing AI stampede. We’ll get to that, but let’s first show you how our year went:

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1. iA Notebook

The iA Notebook started shipping in July, after ten years of design and iteration. To our amazement, the first batch sold out within 24 hours. We’re well into the second batch now and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

New to the Notebook? Start with this delightful snippet, transcribed below:

Fffrrrppppp. “Have a listen to that.” Fffrrrppppp. “Oooh.” Fffrrrppppp. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of 81 GSM premium Araveal white pages being flicked in this beautiful Information Architects Notebook.”

Next, take a look at iA’s redesigned Notebook page, where you’ll find more pics, technical specs, and answers to common questions. For a look behind the scenes, check out this post with pics from the Notebook photoshoot that took place in the beautiful coastal town of Kamakura, south of Tokyo.

Back to analog roots: Rediscover the joy of writing with the iA Notebook.

The Notebook is an homage to iA Writer’s roots, which is why we launched the first iA Awards to celebrate the joy of writing. The winners will be announced in early 2025 and receive their very own Notebooks. If you missed out, don’t worry: We’re planning to run another contest next year, so keep your latest presentation polished and your fountain pen topped up.

2. iA Presenter

Presenter saw more improvements over the course of the year. One highlight is that you can now quickly insert high-quality Unsplash images into your slides without leaving the app. This is a welcome addition, because we all dislike trawling the sea of hyper-polluted stock imagery out there.

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More recently, we released Web Sharing: Use it to upload your presentation (with speaker notes) and share the link with anybody. Getting the layouts just right took a year of design and testing, but it was worth the effort.

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Try it. After you do, the very idea of emailing slide decks will seem repellent. The notion of sharing a janky PDF will hurl you back through time, into a coal-powered backwater where everybody looks sad and wears soup-stained plaid. Web Sharing for Presenter was the future. Now it’s right here.

3. iA Writer

This year’s Winterfest saw the welcome arrival of iA Writer for Windows 2.0, now in beta. The most visible change is that we redesigned the app to fit the Windows 11 aesthetic—and we love the result. You know you’re living in the future when even Windows starts looking good! Strange days indeed.

Aside from applying the Windows polish, much of the work focused on performance improvements—including a turbo boosted startup time. You can find the full list of changes in the version history.

In November we launched the first How-To Guide for Writer, which shows you everything you need to know in seven steps, or 33 minutes (yes, we counted). The How-To Guide for Presenter will follow in the new year.

Finally, both Writer and Presenter icons got a refresh. Check out our post that describes their evolution in detail.

The new icons: The Writer caret is a physical object. Presenter is a light switch. See how they shine.

Watching the bull run

Aside from new arrivals and updates to the growing iA family, we watched as more AI tools jostled for our attention. Like we’ve said before, AI isn’t intrinsically a bad thing. It’s new tech like any other. The trouble is that many AI tools are still being sold with the false promise that we can achieve something for nothing. We’re encouraged to recycle and generate output that we don’t own or even understand.

The year was riddled with AI-related palavers. For example, Figma shared things it really shouldn’t have. Apple’s Writing Tools don’t properly track who wrote what—not yet. Amazon is being flooded with AI-generated books. The web is awash with slop and it will probably stay that way. Perhaps all that junk will sink out of sight and into irrelevance, like marine snow. For those of us skimming the surface, help is at hand: iA’s goal will always help you think more and be more creative (even with AI).

Keep creating

In many ways this was a tough year for human creativity, so we tried to do something about it, be it by sharing Maker’s Knowledge about screenwriting, world building, writing your first novel, or showing you how to deliver a great presentation. Good work comes from hard work, and we want to lend a helping hand in a way that matters. We’ll do more of that in 2025.

But that’s it for now. It has been another busy year for iA, but now it’s time for a break. We’ll be away from December 28 and back on January 6 to give our Support team a much-needed rest.

Until then, thanks for your feedback and continued support. Stay safe. Stay creative. See you in the Year of the Snake.

iA 2025 Year of the Snake