A community platform built scalable before anything else
A Platform for Passion
Craftlog
When you love what you do, whether it be cooking, woodwork, home improvement, or even sewing you can’t help but want to shout it from the rooftops. Our San Francisco (also Brazilian and Italian) friends at Craftlog make it easy for you to not only share your projects with others, but find new projects to fall in love with. Featuring a flexible user interface, user experience, and well crafted interaction design, we’ve worked hard with our long-term partners-in-craft to make an app that's so easy to use even your mom can make your family recipes live on forever.
Year
2019
Awards & Mentions
Best of 2018 - Food & Cooking
Location
San Francisco
California
United States
Designed for scalability
Finding the right fit
Measure twice, cut once.
Developing a bilingual, neutral identity that married verticals together was paramount.
A breathable means of iteration during every step proved beneficial for a breathable family products.
Sometimes it just doesn't work
The difference between a designer & consumer
After iteration and iteration, we ruled out the elephant concept. Chosen because of the wisdom and memory of an elephant, it meant a lot to our team but just wasn't resonating with our audience.
Speak to a wider audience
Back to the drawing board
We started to shift our crosshairs towards something a bit more universal. At the end of the day, our mission with Craftlog was straightforward: create a platform to share your passion and tell a story.
Representing all verticals
Developing the perfect family mark
Leveraging geometric precision as well as Fibonacci techniques throughout our mark, we set sail in the direction of the play button concept due to its instant recognition as well as scalable geometry.
Finding out what you do not like
Adopting the mark throughout verticals
As with the initial exploration, we chose to explore every dimension we could take with the mark before landing on a final approach.
Go bonkers, then simplify
As well as keeping scalability & personal connection top of mind
And, as usual, we toned it back a bit and infused our vertical marks with our family brandmark to be most safe, which down the road we will learn is a bit more difficult than once thought.
Universal language
And, of course, an illustration style to unite verticals
The most universal language you can execute within your product is illustration. So, we made a language of illustration that not only adopts colors but also adopts the emotion between verticals.
Speak my language
Breathing life into an identity based on emotion
An ever growing set of illustrations was imperative to a successful launch.
Prototypes
Build, test improve
Once we dialed in our initial identity, it was time to set sail and start iterating on prototypes.
Design is an ongoing imperative, and when building products, it’s an indispensable trait to iterate as quickly as possible between design and development.
Follow me into the dark
Design emotionally and provide value in retention
Our goal is not to reinvent the wheel, but design experiences that speak to the users on an emotional level of connection while improving our algorithm and retention in every step.
Show me what you got
Creating emails you’re actually happy to get
This means leaving no stone unturned - including the wonderful world of email notifications. The last thing in our crosshairs was a spammy, mindless email to receive in the morning.
Get smart
Retention based on emotional responses
With the badass team behind Craftlog, we had very smart algorithms that improve upon themselves based on each email you get. In return, the users receive what they want. On top of that, we built a system for the people at Craftlog to build any retentive loop they wanted to measure.
The final frontier
Clear communication between web and mobile application
Dialing in a web interface was paramount to a delightful experience, so we focused on a design for desktop that not only provided its own value to the power users, but provide the same experience to the users who may not be able to download the app.
Pretty pretty pixels
Utilizing the screen space we have and leveraging contrast to entice users
Web is some of our favorite putting greens to experiment in because it does not require a download but offers the same experience.
After nearly 2 years of close-knit design & development, we took all verticals out of beta on the Play Store in November of 2017.
Since launch, we are approaching nearly 1 million downloads per vertical, 2500+ reviews with 4 or more stars.
Now that Craftlog is in the wild, we have more feedback daily to make data-driven decisions to improve the product.
Swift development paired with laser-focused design allows agility in response to feedback.
The story is just beginning.
Only up from here
Craftlog is an ongoing journey to create, indulge, and improve a platform to share unforgettable experiences.
