To produce the best-in-class iPad and iPhone App for playing slots and table games.
Recently I was involved in conceptualise and leading the UI for a iOS casino App for both iPhone and iPad. I’m not going to detail all design decisions here but walk you through my perspective on why branding for this product is so important and why the decisions made differentiate it enough to stand-out in what is already a fiercely competitive and crowded marketplace.
TL;DR; While the gambling industry continues to boom despite global financial woes, a reliance solely on branding through splash screens has its limitations. This post dives into why your home screen deserves more attention. Showcase promortaionl content, search (as navigation maybe?) and Quick Links as crucial building blocks, including introducing the popular hamburger icon for primary navigation and transform your home screen into landing page(s) into a powerhouse of usability and brand identity.
Next to essentials like food and water, one of the only other industries not effected by the world financial situation is gambling. In fact the industry is booming. There are many UX challenges in designing the perfect game play experience, catering for the green fingered punter all the way through to the seasoned veteran is a difficult balancing act.
Plus, as mentioned, in these more straighten times, to be conscious of not forcing the gambling experience on to the more vulnerable.
Modern smartphone don’t need 2-3 seconds to start up, so the original notion of the start-up or splash screen is now redundant. But brands love to position their logo ‘front of stall’ so for this reason, this screen is important. Keep it simple and remember, if you can’t get your brand message over in 2-3 seconds, think about a re-design.
This is the heart of the application, the place to show off what you have to offer – the ‘showcase‘ if you like. So make it impressive, make it big and try your best to impress.
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Integrated brand identify both help reputation and consumer awareness. I was tasked with conceptualising a strong brand identity for a new Russian hedge fund. This involves developing routes that generated the tone, style and flavor of the brand across a 2D and 3D environment. This includes, but is not limited to;
Here is how I did it;
Working alongside a complete design team can be very rewarding. Like-minded people, working together to inject new meaning into a tired or misleading brand. This project did exactly that.
The brand needed a new visual identity that would sit with the design developed by the interiors team. This is how I did it.
Watch the video here
Taking an existing but tired site, refresh and rebrand it up to modern day standards.
With a focus on readability and execution, the logo has be refined and simplified. This is only an online print so RGB was the primary driver.
This is the challenging part of any marketing brief. You can target your Digital Tribes, whether they be Early Adopters or true Laggards, one sure-fire way is through traditional streams. Using traditional media is a concrete method of new product promotion and should not ignored. Remember: Print is NOT dead.
An effective method fo marketing a product to place a customer into the shoes of a typical user.
"I've got a secret but I can't tell anyone"
This opening statement defines a need state for this privacy service. Then you explain the scenario and how the product can benefit that customer. If you can translate this into an attractive case-study, then you have a winner.
