Branding & Styling

After some small research on multiple dating websites, I got a wider view and understanding of the flow and feel of branding of some of the dating sites. At first I thought that dating sited where all love themed as colors. By love theme i mean some of the below characteristics:

• Mostly white, red and pink of color.
• Loads of hearts.
• And a lot of rounded edges.

Altough these prejudgements where not false, they where not right either.

Conclusion

I basically came to the conclusion that the colors, branding and overall design really relies on the target audience. The prejudgemental views I had prior to the research about the "Love theme" would only apply to dating sites targeted mostly at people around the 20's and early 30's. So i stared to focus more on websites with similar age target groups.

So what really defines the dating website branding for my user group? What stood out to me was the websites often use all kind of colours. I couldn't really find a clear pattern to it. Although i saw a lot of darker colours and some even left out the traditional red and pink from their styling at all. So after the research i came up with a branding idea.

The Styleguide

To have a clear overview of the design choices I made for the app i put together a styleguide. In the styleguide I specify all kinds of design characteristics. From colours, to fonts, to CTA's.

The logo

With every app or website there has to be a logo, the logo I created for my dating app refers to the one thing that is going to connect the people on there. Art.

I've made the outlines of a painting prominent in the logo since everyone would reconise it. And to make it more clear that this GalleryMatch is in fact a dating website, i've added a heart in the painting.

First Wireframe Drafts

After one of the first courses we had to come up with some first wireframe drafts. So i quickly came up with a scenario about how to add a interesting exposition to your wishlist so that you can find other potential matches to visit that expo. The first initial wireflow can be seen below. Please keep in mind this is v0.5

First feel of the styling combined.

What would the app look like if i'd combine the styleguide, logo and wireframes together? To visualise the feel for myself i've made the profile page in design as a quick reminder on how the app should look like. This is also an early draft

So that's it. The branding of GalleryMatch!

Please see other pages in the wiki for more info and research of the GalleryMatch Dating website!