“I've worked with Warren for over a decade now, he's always been very creative, and the app designs just keep on getting better and better."
Chris Smith | CEO | CloseComms
Client
CloseComms Ltd, Newport, South Wales, UK
Industry
Software as a Service
Identity
CloseComms
I joined Chris Smith at Close Communications in 2014, even before this I had worked for him in a freelance capacity for a few years already. After just one year a new company was formed; CloseComms – I was appointed Creative Director and the staff were reduced to just me and Chris! But with investment in the bag from the late great Mike Dawson, we were able to grow the team.
So a new name calls for a new logo, I experimented with quite a few styles before we settled on the “Squiggle” – a stylised “C” which also doubled as a stylised “Wi-Fi Symbol”. The logotype is made from a revised Canaro font.
21:32
The 21:32 identity and brand was created by Future Kings, after a 12 week MVP programme with myself, our COO at the time Alys Parsons and my CEO Chris Smith. They are experts at defining the problem, and finding your uniqueness in your solution. The name, the colour, the redaction treatment, even one of the fonts all came from us, but we had no idea we wanted them before the process, it was a great experience, and reminded me of my days in the ad agency at JWT.
21:32 Website
Obviously there once was a CloseComms site, but to be honest it had no clear direction, we weren’t sure ourselves who we were, we needed Future Kings to help us with that message.
The original 21:32 website was created by Future Kings, the version I have made has slightly different layouts, added animations, new imagery and some more sections and pages. We chose to recreate the site as we needed more customisation options, but it still very much resembles Future King’s version, and closely adheres to the brand guidelines they laid out for us.
App Design
We made apps for lots of different people in the early days, some successful and some not, some screens from some of these can be seen below, from order-ahead apps like Q-Jumper to full-on restaurant booking apps like The Natural Kitchen.
However, within a coupe of years an opportunity to pilot a consumer engagement version of one of our apps with Subway in California had come about. So the 21:32 app (originally the QSR app) soon became our top priority.
Various Apps inc. QSR
QSR (21:32) App
The QSR app was designed to help brands increase footfall at their locations via the use of perfectly timed offers, great deals, competitions, games and other engagement.
The app was a great success with huge ROI’s being seen for our customers, and a cost of acquisition per customer way below the industry standard, learn more here.
One Size Fits All
Initially the app was slightly redesigned for each new client, but this led to development issues. So the decision was made to formalise the app, but allow a different CSS and logo sheet to be drawn in for each client, resulting in a cleaner app with day and night versions, but with enough individual styling for each brand to shine through. We have also added the new EV map functionality to the 21:32 QSR app.
Here’s how it works:
We monetise the Wi-Fi nearly all restaurants already provide to their customers for free. Our patented app becomes the passport to the Wi-Fi, using this method the customer doesn’t have to fill in any forms or supply any personal information, they simply download the app to join the Wi-Fi, this opens a method of engagement between the establishment and the user, who has to keep the app on their phone if they want continued access to the Wi-Fi. Anonymous AI Machine Learning is then used to match deals with end users.
Blank QSR App
Subway Flavour
Dunkin’ Flavour
Dashboard
Just like the QSR/21:32 app, the dashboard that accompanies it has gone through many versions, both in style and functionality. The dash is the heart of the operation, it has amazing functions that help our QSR’s market to their customers, sending the right deals at the right times, collecting valuable anonymised data that the system can use to predict the outcomes of campaigns in advance of sending them out, allowing fine tuning of all campaigns.
It can even automatically send offers to users who are near a specified competitor to entice them away. Or drop an offer on a POI or GEO group with a simple drag and drop command. But the app and dash can do a whole lot more; from polls to competitions to video to in-store quiz shows and more! To learn more check out our 21:32 site.
In order to fully populate a dashboard A LOT of icons are needed, and for us they all had to follow the 21:32 style, and as Future Kings had supplied 6 icons for us, I had something to work with. Some of the icons are shown here in full colour, but for the actual dash we went with white and grey shade to give it a more “techy” feel.
If you would like a demo of this powerful software please get in touch with us via the 21:32 website and we’ll get back to you very soon.
