This morning I received an email from Zoopla, asking me to download their new iPhone app. And when I saw the cutesy little ‘Z’ logo-come-button-type-app-favicon thing, it reminded me just how many letter based app logos there are in the App Store.
Creating a button icon for your identity is a common requirement for all things these days, but the sheer volume of ‘first letter of brand name as logo’ icons out there, suggest that it’s nearly always an after thought.
Seriously, do you have any idea what the ‘T’ is?
It’s a boring and lazy approach that ONLY REALLY works if you have an iconic logotype that is recognisable by just a single letter. I’m thinking Skype, Shazam, Facebook here. Further still, when you’re running 6-7 pages of apps, something needs to punch through the noise. Again, we’re back to identity 101.
Not that I ride the old skool branding train, being a man of 1s and 0s. It’s all about the interaction you see. Yeah man.
The issue is exacerbated further when you make use of the ‘folders’ option available in OS4. Not only are your apps reduced to 32×32 px icons, they are then stuffed into a folder and need to be legible at 3×3 px image
Anyway, I downloaded a bunch. Which ones do you have?
July 20, 2010
Experience Design, Technology