WSJ profiles Letterpress creator Loren Brichter, the 'high priest of app design'

Here at TUAW, we're big fans of Loren Brichter, the app developer behind Tweetie (which eventually became the official Twitter app) and the great word game Letterpress. But the Wall Street Journal appears to have just discovered the dev -- in a profile that appeared over the weekend, the paper calls him a "high priest of app design and an increasingly influential tastemaker."

It's true, Brichter and his designs have been lauded by devs, users and even Apple. His Tweetie app originated the "pull to refresh" idea (where you pull a list down off the top of the screen to refresh it from the servers), since implemented by Facebook, Pinterest and Apple itself. Brichter also helped innovate with side menus (as seen in the Facebook app), as well as what the WSJ calls the "cell swipe," where you can swipe across a list item to reveal more controls and buttons.

The WSJ says that Brichter is now working on "an arcade game," something that will require him to build out more of his own technology. In general, it sounds like Brichter's got the freedom (and the willpower) to just take it easy and do what he wants to do -- he freely offers advice to other developers, and even says that he's happy to see other people use features he's designed, "as long as they aren't a d---." As high priests go, we're happy to have Brichter helping lead the cult of Mac.