Saleforce’s Quip acquires ex-Facebook designer studio Unity&Variety

Saleforce’s Quip acquires ex-Facebook designer studio Unity&Variety. Some ex-Facebook designers will be adding extra pizazz to Salesforce’s word processing company Quip, which today acquired Unity&Variety. Founded in 2015 by Joey Flynn and Drew Hamlin after several years designing products at Facebook, Unity & Variety released a cute mobile game called Pinchworm last year. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but we’re awaiting comment from both companies’ execs. Flynn, Hamlin, and employee Andy Chung posted a short note on their website today saying “Here at Unity&Variety we’ve been cranking on some new productivity tools. But while at Facebook, Flynn and Hamlin worked on the massively succesful 2014 redesign of Messenger, and the standalone Snapchat competitor Slingshot that flopped but pioneered creative tools like variable brush sizes that Facebook later integrated elsewhere Meanwhile, Chung has been developing a sleek iPad design tool called Pattern for rapid prototyping of interface ideas. Together, their ability to reimagine classic functionality for mobile could be a big help to Quip. Quip CEO and fellow former Facebooker Bret Taylor wrote that “Kevin and I are beyond excited to announce that the incredible design team at Unity&Variety is joining Quip to help us build the next generation of productivity tools. Some of the best product designers I have ever worked with. The team could give Quip the style it needs to keep attracting users to its “Microsoft Word for the mobile era”.