App Design Part 1: A Background
So as I mentioned in my first blog entry… after the announcement of the iPad, we jettisoned our initial design of a Dark Horse iphone reader app and began anew. And although we were starting over, there were certain design constraints we put into place for first version of the Dark Horse App.
One constraint was that we weren't going to customized the user interface but instead use as much as the standard Apple App interface as we could. This simplified (somewhat) what I needed to do… I used the standard top nav bar and bottom tab bar plus the buttons almost all the other apps use…so I didn't need to spend my time coming up with those designs.
But I also didn't want our App to look or behave like the other reader apps available. After all, this was a Dark Horse App…. it needed to be distinct and not cookie-cutter. But I did have this thing for teak…
This teak design was shot down as fast as I proposed it. EVERYONE HATED IT. It only made me love it more. I even made a run at it using the new Dark Horse branding blue and stained the teak:
I think this was hated even more than the first one. The powers that be probably started reconsidering my suitability for the project! But that's design. Most of the time, your first few proposals are shot down. You've got to have a thick skin to be a graphic designer.
I then tried a few using Liz from BPRD as a background; then Liara from Mass Effect (who now graces our App's start-up image) and then finally settled on a blue textured background. This final background made the most sense because an image of a comic character in the background just competed with the foreground elements (book covers, text, graphics, UI elements.) and it was keeping with our goals for the rebranding for a clean, tight look.
Of course, the background of the App was only a small aspect of the ongoing App design process. Next time I'll discuss icons, layout and usability.
P.S. - Next time you are looking at the App, tap on the Dark Horse logo in the upper left corner and you'll see an easter egg I came up with (no, it's not the teak background!).