Press

Everything on this page is free to use in coverage without asking first. If something is missing, write and it will be sent.

Facts

Name

Ordinary. Capital O, never all caps, never “Ordinary Camera”.

What it is

A camera app for iPhone. One exposure per press, film looks set before the shot.

Platform

iPhone, iOS 17 or later. Android planned after the iPhone version is finished.

Status

Open beta on TestFlight.

Release

September 2026, App Store.

Made by

Tom Zahradka, designer and illustrator, Prague. Working alone: no company, no team, no funding.

Data

No account, no server, nothing uploaded. Photographs stay on the phone.

Website

ordinarycamera.com

Contact

hello@ordinarycamera.com

What it belongs to

Ordinary is one result of a long inquiry into tools that leave the decision with the person holding them. In 1968 David Pye gave the idea a name: the workmanship of risk: work whose outcome is not settled in advance and depends, at every moment, on the judgement of whoever is doing it. Its opposite is the workmanship of certainty, where a jig or a machine guarantees the result before the work begins.

A phone camera is workmanship of certainty. Nine frames and an algorithm settle the picture before the shutter moves. Ordinary puts the risk back.

The inquiry runs in more than one material. MONOCLELENS is the same question in optics: a single optical element, recovered from used single-use cameras and built into finished lenses, colour filters and DIY kits. One element is how the first cameras saw: one focal length, one aperture, and the photographer deciding the rest. Each round leaves something behind. This one is an app.

Press release

The full release, written to be quoted from directly.

• Markdown
• Plain text
• The whole kit, as one archive

Logos

Both are drawn by hand, not set in a typeface. The mark is the letter o with its tail; the wordmark is the whole word. Each comes in black for light backgrounds and off-white for dark ones.

Please don’t recolour them, redraw them or stretch them.

Colours

Type

This site is set in Literata. The app interface uses the system typeface, SF Pro. The wordmark is handwriting, not a font.

Writing about it

• The app is Ordinary. There is no company, so no “Ordinary Inc.” and no “the Ordinary team”.
• The looks are film simulations or emulsions. Not filters: a filter is applied to a finished picture, and these are applied as the picture is made.
• Sample photographs may be reproduced with the credit Shot on Ordinary.
• Quotable, attributable to Tom Zahradka: “I named it Ordinary because I did nothing unusual. I switched a few things off.”