Branding is important for every entity—person or company. In fact, branding is inherent in every person. A lot of men grow up with the brand of masculinity. When they were boys, their fathers would never allow them to go near a doll. It’s the same for girls. When a baby girl is born, a mother takes over the branding—decking her in everything pink.
It’s the same as we grow older. Boys who want to be seen as tough would never cry in public—or maybe ever! Some of them would join gangs to seem even tougher. Some girls, even when they don’t have enough money, try to go shopping with their friends just to become part of the crew. Even if these boys and girls necessarily like what they are doing, they continue to do so because it’s part of their brand.
Do gaming apps need to undergo branding? Absolutely! Remember that you are not just trying to sell the gaming app but also the company that sells it. You want people to remember the company and look after the next project that the company does.
Now you want to show off your branding principles to a prospective client. How should you do it to get ahead of other branding organizations? You have to make it organic and you need to show off your branding principles through a special presentation mechanism: iPhone apps screenshots.
What exactly is an iPhone app screenshot? This is a prototype of sorts of the screenshot of your gaming app. The most obvious reason to use iPhone apps screenshots is because the cellphone is the best platform to show off an app in general. It also works for a great narrative.
Check this out: When a person is in a queue to get their morning coffee, what could they do? They could browse their social media or they could play a game! The former is just about catching up with peers while the latter is the perfect activity to keep you up early in the morning. Playing a game makes you active and it allows you to exercise your brain.
But let’s talk more about how to use screenshots for App Store in your branding strategy. You really have to create a powerful design that will attract people as they scroll through the App Store. Aside from a powerful design, you also want to incorporate a brand’s identity in the design—if at all possible.
You need to make the gaming app a priority, though. You need to create its own identity separate from the brand. However, if there is a way just to make people identify that game as part of the company, then you should. If there isn’t a way, then just let it be. Besides, the game app developer and the company that commissioned it will inevitably be mentioned in other pages of the app.
Now let’s go back to the powerful design. There are different kinds of iPhone apps screenshots and it would be essential that you present different ones just to showcase the different facets of your design, which would be geared toward branding.
The first screenshot would be the icon of the gaming app. Unless the gaming app has been identified by the App Store as something new or something special, then the gaming app will be just among the small icons that people scroll through on the main page of the gaming app. It would be massively helpful if your design can catch the attention of people even if it is just one of the dozens of small rounded squares on the screenshot.
If you are able to make the design of the gaming app pop out among its competition, then what a success your design has been. Of course, this is hard to achieve considering you don’t even know the design of the competition.
While you may have created a powerful and attractive icon design, it is important to note that the design should be cohesive with the game itself. You can’t just create a design to attract people but when they actually get to the game it is entirely different. We have to go back to the basics of branding. There should be an identity that people will be able to detect across all platforms—in this case, across all pages.
Now let’s go to the other iPhone apps screenshots. When you click on the icon of a gaming app, you will be confronted with the main page of the game. The icon will be there along with the name of the app and a brief description of the app. Brief here means a measly five words at most.
Below those articles will be a short video of the game. Then under that will be the description. The actual gaming app will have a lengthy description of the game, but for your screenshot, you only need to show the lead or the first paragraph. Just add the word “more” to indicate that there is a whole article about the product integrated in the app.
If the game developer has its own branding theme, you could probably use it on the lead of the game description. Again, you should only do that if it is possible. If doing so will just lead the entire description astray, then you absolutely can’t go in that direction. Again, we have to emphasize the identity of the gaming app—while it may be part of a brand, it is its own identity.
In a separate screenshot, you can put it in more information about the gaming app including its developer and provider as well as size of the entire app. This is important because gamers would need to know how much capacity the game will take from their mobile phones.
Every principle of branding should still be present in the mobile app screenshot images that you are going to present - whether it is on the main page or not. This is why it is quite important that a branding firm will have a hand in the app presentations to keep the brand’s theme cohesive.
Branding doesn’t stop when the company is already up and running. It continues the entire way. So if the company develops gaming apps, then branding principles must be incorporated. You want customers to remember the brand and look forward to the brand’s other gaming offerings.
READ MORE:
App Store Screenshots Generator: Effective Tips To Consider
What Screenshots For App Store To Highlight
Create App Store Screenshot for Your Digital Product
Reasons Why You Need An App Screenshot Template
App Store iOS Screenshots: The Best Way To Improve Brand Awareness