After brainstorming my idea, I began to look at the details of the digital product, starting with the name. I wanted something short and snappy, but also links back to the aim of the app. With the main idea being a ‘pub crawl’ around Ireland and during my research I found that a common phrase was ‘Sláinte’, meaning cheers in Irish and is often said when people cheers there beers. I felt this would be a suitable name for my app. It was during this I also came up with my catch line. I wanted to keep my tone of voice the same, friendly and familiar, using the language you’d use for day to day life and with friends.
Following this I quickly sketched up a plan of how the app navigation would work. I felt this could be effective whenever I came to design the app screens. My hope was that it would help me create consistency throughout the screens and give it a finished look. As I sketched out ideas, the idea of the Guinness pouring into the top of the ‘I’ was what I decided on as my final name design.
With my name and tagline finalised, I began looking into the logo. Straight away I saw the opportunity of using the fada as a potential Guinness glass. I also explored fonts during this process using Google Fonts and font joy to create pairs that would suit my app. I also quickly considered how I could incorporate the Guinness imagery into the icons of the app, but felt with my line of thinking, that simpler icons maybe more effective.
My next and final step before going digital was to create wireframes of how I wanted to actual app to look. I did struggle with coming up with I design that I felt worked, which led me to redo the design after trying some it out on figma, so I went back to my sketchbook and started to make adjustments. I wanted to challenge myself with this project, so I included some illustrations which isn’t something I have a lot of experience in, but I felt it could add an extra dynamic to the app screens. Moving forward, I am much more pleased with the second design as I feel it creates a more cohesive design. I also included some extra features including the onboarding process as I wanted to be able to visualise the steps the user would go through. This helped me when it came to designing the location screens as I felt I had a more solid idea in my head of how I wanted my app to look.
