New app lets you Alaska-fy your text messages

If you've ever yearned to add slick graphics of moose, Permanent Fund dividend cash, a dipnet or other Alaska iconography to your text messages, your day has come.

Alaskanisms, a new app designed by a Palmer company and released last week, adds 30 stickers of Alaska life and sayings ("north to the future," "Lower 48" and an image for "Squarebanks" among them) to your iPhone's texting options.

Kyle Fox is the owner of app and website design company Alopex Interaction Design, which launched Alaskanisms. Zane Ogle, a graphic designer and illustrator at Alopex, created the images.

Alopex made the app "just for fun," Fox said, but he also hopes it might attract new clients as an indicator that Alaska isn't as technologically behind the times as some might think.

"A lot of the time, clients are picking up on technologies or things that are baseline now for businesses; they want a website or things like that," Fox said of the work his company usually does. But he hopes Alaska businesses start picking up on newer ways to get their names out into the world.

Fox also said he wants to talk to Alaska artists in the future about creating sticker packs based on their designs.