Makkan

the problem

Makkan needed an identity and storefront ready for a competitive app market — the kind of polish that earns the install before the feature list does.

An app storefront gives you a few seconds and a handful of assets to overcome the reasonable assumption that an unknown app is not worth the space on someone's phone. The icon, the first screenshot and the name carry almost all of the persuasion, and they are judged next to competitors with years of polish. Everything after the install is a different problem entirely.

strategy

Treat the brand and the app surface as one product. A confident identity, a UI direction that scales, and a launch site that does the selling.

We refused to treat the brand and the product as separate workstreams. An identity that is not designed with the interface in mind produces an app that feels like two companies made it — a marketing surface with one personality and a product with another — and users read that inconsistency as immaturity even when they cannot name it.

execution

Brand identity, app UI direction, a marketing website tuned for App Store / Play Store traffic, and a launch content kit for social and PR.

Identity and UI direction were developed together so type, colour and spacing behave the same in a screenshot as in the app itself. The marketing site was tuned for traffic arriving from the App Store and Play Store — where the visitor has already seen the storefront and is looking for a reason to trust it — and the launch content kit gave social and PR a consistent set of assets from day one rather than assembling them under pressure.

creative process

We designed the icon first and let it set the register. It is the smallest, most repeated and least forgiving element in the system, and resolving it early meant the rest of the brand had a fixed point to be consistent with. Screenshots were art-directed as a sequence that tells a story in order rather than six unrelated captures, because on a storefront that sequence is the pitch.

result

An app launch with the polish to compete on the storefront and convert the first visit. It reached 2,000 installs in its first month.

lessons

For an app, the brand and the interface are the same product. Design them apart and users will feel the seam long before they can explain what is wrong.