Creative Imaging Services is proud to announce the successful launch of our native Swift app on the App Store. Available on iOS, Mac OS, and Vision Pro, our app is a testament to the power of solopreneurship and the resilience of developers in the face of challenges.

"It has been an exhilarating experience to bring this project to life as a solo-entrepreneur."

— Travis 'Brohvis' Swavely, the creator behind the app

As a self-taught developer, Travis took on the task of developing and launching the app single-handedly, overcoming numerous trials and tribulations along the way and learning the proper tools and methodology to leverage in order to adapt to unique problems.

One of the biggest challenges faced was the process of getting approved and meeting the stringent guidelines set by Apple for the App Store. The journey demanded extensive research, meticulous coding, and persistent efforts to ensure compliance with Apple guidelines while maintaining a course for an excellent user experience and aesthetic design. With unwavering determination, navigating through these obstacles and receiving the green light for launch was an eventuality soon realized.

The Shopify native Swift app brings seamless e-commerce integration to users, enabling them to harness the full capabilities of their device and shop with ease and confidence.

The success of the Shopify native Swift app would not have been possible without the invaluable contributions of the developer community. Travis would like to extend a heartfelt gratitude to the developers who created the dependencies that played a crucial role in the development process. Their dedication and expertise allowed a sustained focus on crafting an exceptional design and delivering an exceptional user experience.

Learn more about the software and services used to create this website, the Creative Shop, and our official app.

• A great deal of work went into procuring the appropriate logos for the below software, and follow their brand guidelines as closely as possible. If you'd like to request a change please use the contact information at the bottom of the page.
• Most of these amazing tools are free to use. Please use our sign up links even for free tools, use them if you are considering signing up with one of our affiliate partners in order to support our development efforts and costs, and theirs! Thank you!

• An amazing starter stack, this blogging template proved immensely useful as both a learning tool and a valuable point of reference. Endless customizations are possible, but, for full control, you may want to stray away from templates - many problems can arise from starting from someone else's code base and it can actually make it more difficult down the line to diagnose and debug problems.

• Netlify was utilized due to a build error that was coming up with the boilerplate on Vercel, and, has been a wonderful development and hosting experience thus far.
• Much of the allure of a "headless" project base is being able to deploy anywhere, and NextJS and Netlify have been perfect.

• Namecheap has been my go to domain provider for years. They have an amazing support team and 24/7 support chat who (in my experience) are always happy to go above and beyond in providing resources and documentation in order to help you on your development journey.
• Because Namecheap offers such a wide variety of services, we implement them for e-mail, hosting and SSL, and domain/subdomain registration. Their CPanel system is perfect for our limited use.

• Next.js is one of the most widely used libraries among the internet - powering websites like ChatGPT, Netflix, Spotify, Twitch, Patreon, Sonos and more.

• React's usability is endless. There is some comfort in componentized designs, since so much of the codebase can be reused with such ease, and adapted for matching into a beautiful UI/UX.

• A design focused developement experience is fantastic for constantly tweaking information, and shuffling back and forth between a CSS document and inline Javascript and HTML isn't nearly as instantaneously rewarding as Tailwind.

• ContentLayer is wicked fast and it's a perfect mesh between defining content types for blog posts and portfolio entries without having to add in and manage a full CMS. CRTV may integrate with Sanity in the future as it's on the ContentLayer roadmap.

• The bread and butter of this site. Being able to use React components inside of Markdown in a blog post is really freeing. Those fancy logos you see? Yup, MDX at work along with everything else.

• GitHub's ability to offer complete control over the Creative code repository online has been truly invaluable. The framework allowed from GitHub webhooks and Netlify previews are what allow us to see exactly what a blog post will look like, built for a production environment, live in multiple browsers, and send it off for feedback if needed.

• Shopify's role in the development of the CRTV shop is immense, because their offerrings are immense. Product management, checkout, payment options, shipping calculations, security, privacy, API's. Shopify handles and offers an extensive backend that powers leading websites like GymShark, Crate&Barrel, and Death Wish Coffee Co.

• Hydrogen and Oxygen are for developers who want to utilize Shopify's backend services but create their own web experience from scratch - allowing for a fully customized user and design experience.

• Our merch shop products would not be possible without Printify - a network of Print on Demand providers that will allow you to upload your designs, view mockups on real models, and use those images to reliabily create real world products to ship out to your customers on your selected blank item. This eliminates extra overhead cost associated with new designs that may not resonate with your customer base, resulting in less waste and promoting reduced energy cost.
• Printify is the technology platform that makes it possible for millions of people around the world to become instant entrepreneurs by selling high-quality customized merchandise online.

• Remix is Shopify's answer to Nextjs and provides a library on top of React to work with and aide in the development experience, this means it is fully compatible out of the box with most React components used for the blog and portfolio on this website.

• React's usability is endless. There is some comfort in componentized designs, since so much of the codebase can be reused with such ease, and adapted for matching into a beautiful UI/UX.

• GitHub's ability to offer complete control over my code repository online has been truly invaluable. The framework allowed from GitHub webhooks and Netlify previews are what allow us to see exactly what a blog post will look like, built for a production environment, live in multiple browsers, and send it off for feedback if needed.

A native app enhances the user experience in profound ways and it's our pleasure to bring the web and app experiences together in a seamless integration.

• Publishing to the App Store is no short feat, and the development sprint to create, release, and maintain an app as a solo endeavor is sort of like being a developer, designer, lawyer, and salesman all at the same time.

• Shopify Mobile Buy SDK for iOS almost makes the cart and checkout processes seamless. The caveat is that in order to support this, web checkout MUST be utilized in order to maintain security and other standards. Thankfully, the Shopify web checkout is a fantastic, high converting masterpiece that allows pretty decent CSS customization.

• DSKit's Design Library made integrating with the Shopify API's and hooking up my store wonderfully painless.

• Swift
• XCode Cloud
• Test Flight
• App Store Review

• GitHub proved once again to be an invaluable asset, even as a solo developer. The retention of code history proves invaluable even when XCode Cloud does all of the heavy lifting.

Please use the approved graphic when mentioning the app or it's launch on the App Store. For customized graphics or to request approval for your custom graphic please send us an e-mail at support@crtv.to

Approved Copy Text:

"Introducing the CRTV Shop app – your one-stop solution for fantastic merch, beautiful recreations of original art and more. Be the first to know about upcoming sales, and get updates right on your home screen. Subscribe to Creative+ to support the development of new features, get beta releases, and app exclusive discounts. With our native app, you can shop with ease and confidence - Shop updates are pushed automatically! No need to go to the App Store every time a product launches."

• Notifications - Get the latest launches and stay up to date with all things Creative!
• In App Purchases - Support the store with custom tip and subscription options with features like exclusive discounts and first dibs at newly launched merch!

To celebrate this milestone and express our appreciation to our early adopters, we are offering an exclusive discount code: APPSTORE20. Simply enter this code during checkout to enjoy a 20% discount on our app.

For more information about our the CRTV Shop app and to take advantage of the limited-time discount code, visit our website at https://crtv.to.

Travis 'Brohvis' Swavely

travis@crtv.to