App Design Matters

There are over 2 million IOS Apps and 3.8 million Android Apps to choose from. So an excellent App design is critical. 

It only takes 3 taps for a User to delete your App. That happens if the User gets frustrated or has no emotional connection to the App. The bottom line is that users fall for an App because of the design and how easy it is to use. Features and proper coding alone will not sell an App.

Today just a few developers are able to crank out remarkable Apps. But the key for developers is to think like designers. Programmers are famous for brushing aside Design. They care about the beauty of their code and the number of their features. 

Color is critical. Developers need to stop and think like Designers. Designers think about colors and typography. They learn about the emotions of colors.

Josef Albers, a famous painter, and educator came from the German Bauhaus. He wrote Interaction of Color in 1963. This writing has remained the Art Design Bible for designers; a terrific resource. And there is an Interaction of Color app that teaches this stuff. Developers should play with this App and learn to think like a designer. 

The next fundamental of design is typography. How do you select the best fonts for both form and function? How do you choose fonts that work together? The right fonts will make your App or website attractive, easy to read and functional. 

Color Mood

Red sells energy, intensity, love. 

Yellow sells joy, happiness, and intellect. This is an attention-grabbing color. This is a good color for App screenshots in the App stores.

Green sells safety, food, and growth. Use these colors in food and health Apps. 

Blue sells stability, serenity, and trust. Medical Apps use Blue. So to make your App more trustworthy use Blue

Purple sells feminity, royalty and wealth. Money Apps use this color.

 

To combine colors, grab a color wheel. With the color wheel, you can select adjacent colors that are harmonious or opposite colors that are complimentary. Color wheels are also useful for picking split colors and triadic colors (not a fan). Monochromatic colors are also in use today. All these schemes are possible with a color palette. 

But an even easier approach is to use a coolors.co that builds color schemes based on a primary color. Browse for the scheme that makes the most sense for your App.  Use colors that look and feel good together. Hunt for the best or popular schemes that might work for your App. Another useful website is ColorHunt. 

One of the most popular color palettes in modern Apps can be found on FlatUIColors. You would be surprised how many Apps use the FlatUIColors.

Typography

With so many fonts, how do you pick the right fonts for your App? Does it matter?

The two most important families of fonts are the Serif and Sans Serif. The image below shows the difference. Serif is an older font and has small feet. They were derived from stone carvings. Sans Serif is better for modern and contemporary. 

Serif fonts are organized into Oldy Style, Transitional, Modern, Slab Serif, Script, and Decorative. 

Slab Serif was developed for newspaper printing because of the poor quality of the old paper. 

Sans Serif fonts

These are the more modern fonts and they are also divided into categories.

News Gothic, Grotesque, Helvetica, Neo-Grotesque, Arial, Humanist and Geometric. 

So why does all this matter? It's about the styling, but it is also about the readability. So let's get to the meat.

The common rules of fonts. 

1. Sarif Heading Fonts with Sans Serif Body Fonts make a good design. You can also go the other way around and still be ok. Just don't combine a Serif Heading with a Serif Body or a Sans Serif Heading with a Sans Serif Body. This is a poor design. 

2. Too many fonts are bad. Try not to exceed three fonts on a page. 

3. Just like colors, fonts sell a mood. So do not mix together different typeface moods. It is confusing to the brain. Keep the fonts that are displayed together in the same time era. 

4. Use font weight (like bold) for contrast. But don't clutter with multiple weights. 

5. Never use these fonts: Comic Sans, Viner, Kristen, Papyrus, Curlz. 

Like colors, there are tools to help you select fonts. Grab WhatFont for Chrome or Firefox. This little browser extension or the App version will let you find out about the fonts you see on web pages. So if you see a website with a beautiful look and easy to read fonts, use WhatFont to find out what those great fonts are. Then use them in your own App or Web. 

A great website that has free fonts for commercial use is Font Squirrel. 

Another tool for grabbing and testing fonts in your Apps is Sky Fonts. This lets you test drive fronts from many font repositories such as Google, Fonts.Com, Monotype, and MyFonts. 

Thanks for reading. 

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