Who is Copper Pi?
Copper Pi is a small app development firm based in Utah. Our primary goal is to create applications for the iPad, iPhone, and possibly other devices in the future, which are innovative, intuitive and exploratory. We achieve this end through the production of children’s books and other creative apps meant to inspire, delight, and help enhance the user experience through this magical medium.
The function of our company is two-fold. First, Copper Pi is a publishing house for children’s book authors who have a story and are struggling to navigate the labyrinth that is the publishing industry. What we offer is an opportunity to have your book professionally designed and illustrated and “published” to a global audience, something few publishing houses can offer!
For details on submission requirements and pricing, please visit the Publishing page.
The other side of Copper Pi is our commitment to exploring and embracing the revolution of touch media. Our highly creative and skilled team is constantly working on developing a line of applications that use this new medium not just as a vehicle for accessing existing content or familiar experiences, such as internet browsing or porting games to the devices, but rather for creating an entirely new experience. These devices are not merely tools for delivering content, but an opportunity to open the mind for exploration, quality entertainment, learning, delighting and inspiring!
The Pi Team
Kory Fluckiger
Creative Director
Kory is an award-winning fine artist, illustrator and designer. His works include fine art paintings, children’s book illustrations, graphic arts, medical illustrations, and much more.
As Creative Director at Copper Pi, his role is to create and/or direct the creation of the illustrations and artistic visual and UI elements that make Copper Pi’s apps stand out among the hundreds of thousands of app on the AppStore.
Kory’s independently developed apps include:
FreeSong FreeSongBamboo
FreeSongKoto RainSong
His fine art, prints, books, illustrations and other artwork can be seen on his website: www.koryfluckiger.com.
Jerome Broekhuijsen
Software Development Director
Jerome’s experience in software development includes academic research, architecture, user interface and interaction design and implementation, and project leadership and management. His programming experience spans various languages, frameworks, and multi-tiered architectures. Jerome has been formally educated in computer science, chemical engineering, and computational mathematics. His technical background is rounded out with an infusion of classical and jazz music, as well as visual, culinary, and performing arts. This diverse background enables him to approach software creation opportunities with a fusion of traditional and non-traditional perspectives and techniques, resulting in a portfolio of innovative technologies and solutions.
As a user first and engineer second, his greatest professional fulfillment comes from understanding user goals and problems, and then designing, implementing, and delivering solutions which put smiles on users' faces.
Peter Johnson
Software Engineer
Peter is an experienced software engineer specializing in bringing the various parts of a program into perfect communication with one another.
Mike Warren
Marketing Director
Mike is a mature educator and marketer. With over 30 years experience in a wide variety of ventures ranging from printing t-shirts to distributing snack foods, to the high tech world of VOIP communications and advanced materials sciences. He pays attention to emerging trends while keeping grounded in proven methods and techniques.
Mike is also a fine artist and contributor to the creative direction of Copper Pi.
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One Copper Pi Story
My name is Kory Fluckiger. I am a fine artist, graphic designer and illustrator. I also write children’s books and it has been a lifelong dream of mine to be a published children’s book author and illustrator. As many know, it is not exactly an easy field to break into. I have never been able to completely illustrate one of my own books because I can’t pay me to do it, and can’t justify the time otherwise.
I explored self-publishing (not the same as print-on-demand) but couldn’t afford to have hundreds or thousands of books printed and then have to find a way to distribute and market the inventory. The other option was print-on-demand. No inventory. But, also, no marketing, as well as no respect from conventional publishing houses who wouldn’t touch a book that had been self-published through a print-on-demand shop.
When the iPad came out, I was immediately taken by the possibilities of multi-media children’s stories. What a magical medium to use to bring to life these fanciful stories! As I don’t have a programming bone in my body, I began to contact development firms for bids on producing one of my stories. Now, bear in mind that this was assuming that I was responsible for the story, 100% of the illustrations, 100% of the graphic work and interface elements (buttons, menus, etc.), and would end up with a product that I essentially had to market for myself.
The firms I contacted returned with bids ranging from $15,000 to a whopping $50,000. Obviously not feasible for a self-funded project.
I decided it was time to strike out on my own. Through various contacts, I assembled a team (see right column) and together we created a system for creating and developing beautiful, interactive, children’s book apps. With Copper Pi, we don’t act as a giant firm swindling hard working authors out of their stories or starving illustrators out of their drawings. We form a relationship with the author. Even a partnership. In a partnership, both parties are invested in the process as well as in obtaining results. The way our system works is that the author pays a development fee (a fraction of the going rate) and works with Copper Pi to create the product. Copper Pi then releases the app through the iTunes AppStore. Then Copper Pi works to market and promote the “book.” I am truly excited to be working with authors in this way. There are some really bad programs showing up out there wherein the author can plug into a generic template and customize his text and post his book.
Copper Pi is able to go so far beyond that, that using one of those programs is actually laughable! (And trust me, I have looked and considered them! If they were actually worth the time I would never have needed a development team and my life would be much easier!) But they all fall short. So short!
I can’t wait to work on our upcoming projects and share them with the world. More than that, help the authors to share them with the world and hopefully, complete some of mine in the process.
