Contacts
Listings App
Contacts is a book produced by Spotlight, the number one name in casting studios in the UK, based in Leicester Square, London.
The Service
Part of the industry is knowing people with the right skills sets, this is where ‘Contacts’ comes in. ‘Contacts’ is a book produced by Spotlight that has listings of over 5,000 companies, services and individuals across the entertainment industry.
The Project: Move to app
Spotlight was to digitise the book into a digital publication for iOS and Android. A web presence already existed as a listing, but wasn’t close to the book. The new digitised book would need to live alongside the printed material in terms of structure and style so that people who were regular customers could make the transition and still feel comfortable.
Information architecture
The book contained listings, advertisements and also advice and industry insight in the form off additional information pages. The book was structured using A to Z listing of categories, followed by sub categories and then the listings of contacts. This all needed to be aligned in the digital version we were creating.
Design challenge
The thing about listings is that everything on the page was clickable, I made the choice early on to not follow convention and make the clickable items a strong colour, this would have led to colour overload. Instead I went completely in the other direction and made everything the same colour and concentrated on font weight and style to indicate what should catch the attention more and then therefor be clicked.
Motion design
The overall feel was kept purposefully very simple so that the information could be consumed without any over designed elements getting in the way. To keep the app feeling nice, slick and modern I gave movement as much consideration as the look. Going for very fluid and satisfying transitions as you move through the information.
Motion design coming soon
Fast to find
The controls on the page where positioned and sized for thumbs being used to flick between sections. The A-Z allowed fast navigation to the contacts. If the name of the contact is known then the user has the ability to search.
1947
Year established
65k
Contacts members
100+
Editions of the historic book
Learnings
It’s one thing to work on an existing app but when you take something that was a book and launch an app for the first time then everyone is on a learning curve and journey together. In this instance its worth building more time and set time aside for educating the client. There was some additional training in there around in app ad creation and general all staff education about the app.