OUGD504: STUDIO BRIEF 3 - Design for Print & Web // App Proposal Research

As the brief requires I propose for the digital aspects of the branding/design, I'm researching into Apps. Apps are everywhere, they're one of the highest grossing markets of the 21st century. I will look at a range of Apps, to determine how people use them, what they have in common, what hasn't been done before, and what works, and what doesn't.

Recently, Apple updated their iOS to iOS 7, which works slightly differently to iOS6, but what it has also done is pushed the quality of previous Application designers and developers, keeping to the much more sophisticated level of design. The gradients and gloss shines have disappeared, buttons now are clean, simple. Using Apple's signature font for iOS7 Helvetica Neue. Consistent colours, quite a limited amount of which, actually, and clear icons.

App Designs

Nappkin is an app for a german restaurant. It adopts the iOS7 style within it's design. A limited colour palette. Clean, simple design and navigation. Not cluttered in the slightest. I think this app works well because it's clear what it is, you can navigate your way around the app extremely quickly. It contains the opening times, menu and location. Which is exactly what you need in every app in 2013.

Arles Festival. A three colour simply designed app. By removing the clutter, it's made the function clear and usable. Professional, providing a service. Pictograms to communicate the information to make the navigation easier.

The Forq app really shows the scope and diversity which you can include in an app. The consistent range of colour throughout. The colour range in the UI is also fairly limited, mainly working with the blue and the orange. The clean and simple navigation helps find what you need quickly and easily.

Starbucks app, which works with iOS to offer touch-pay, using a top up system and QR-Code scanner. Which is a really modern way of paying, digitising the old physical Starbucks card. It also works on a royalty system, offering points which are stored on the card, which you can cash in for a free drink. It also uses Apple Maps to locate their stores, so their regulars can find the closest store. Finally, there's a menu. The Starbucks App doesn't really fit with the conventions and the theme of iOS 7. It uses the gradients which were common in iOS 6.

Experimental Ipad/Iphone Layouts