How can you seriously say this "And we hired a designer on Elance to design an icon. It costs us $50, but absolutely worth the money" and then this:"Icon is super important. Make sure you hired the right talent"?

As a designer I like the design, but 50 bucks? "worth the money"? I have no idea why anyone would want to sell their design for just 50 bucks. Is this designer your friend? One thing I do know for sure: If they ask 50 bucks for an icon they'll be very bussy but out of business within a month.

The $50 icons are done by offshoaring companies. They make their money by turning over designs very quickly, not paying their designers very much, and reusing designs over and over (with small modifications). None of the designs are built from scratch. Most are dreadfully ugly; this is the most attractive Elance icon I've ever seen, and I don't think it's gorgeous by any stretch.

If you want a geniunely good designed icon just go to dribbble, be willing to spend $500+ and you'll get something unique.

as a young startup, it's important to balance between attractiveness and expense, Dribbble is too expensive for me...

Dribble is too expensive for just about any startup ;-) I did my own design (but thats sort of my job). It's no App but the logo involves a camera as well. Doing something/anything with a camera is difficult as everything has been done. Here's my take (upper left): http://royaltyfreemodels.nl/

hmm, upper left has no camera, i think...

Then your argument about hiring the right talent is moot. You went with what you could afford and were fortunate with the result however paying $50 for a logo on eLance isn't great advice for other startups.

I would still suggest trying. If you're not satisfied with what's offered, you can reject it, it does no harm. And Elancer has many options to try.

But if without trying, devs will never be able to make an satisfying icon (at least for me). We cannot stay there waiting for Apples to sentence the app's death.

The danger in "trying" is you'll get something lots of other people might also have (with perhaps a little tweaking). Twitter did this as well back in the day and ended up realy regretting it. You can not protect your corporate identity if it's based upon unorigional work.

Thanks @digitalengineer for this meaningful discussion. Yes we absolutely should build up our own design team. Blindly keep trying woundn't work either.

It's still the art of balancing. Trying various ways in the beginning, and at some time point, we should tight up all kinds of resources and build up our own for key resources. Design is resources with key value.

Compared with criticism about copycat or intentional confusion, I like your constructive suggestion. We're a young startup and Padgram is our baby. We might not be doing well but we've tried the best. And we're sharing what we learned.

You're on HN so I'd say your doing quite well! Keep it up, just keep improving. Heck, just look at twitter now! Theyhad a shutterstock design as well. All in good time...

Get what you pay for.

Considering a good designer will control every interaction between users and your product then $500 is a bargain (I personally wouldn't have touched this project for that much).

If going into interaction details, i would prefer to work face to face as communication would become a problem. And in-house designer would be more than $500, i guess...

This

$50 for an icon is like paying $50 for a simple CMS.

Of course, for $50 they get a stock icon with their name on it (like, click on Edit Text on PS and type the new one)

"Wooden texture is a fashionable design in 2012"

Yes, please, skeuomorphism up to 11 "because it's fashionable"

Hi @raverbashing, i read "Wooden texture is a fashionable design in 2012" somewhere, but i forgot where it was...

what's the full name of "skeuomorphism"? so that i can check it in App Store..

Google "skeuomorphism".

gotcha, thanks,

Thanks @digitalengineer for your comments, yes it's relatively cheep from all the offering's. Actually this is my first try, and the result absolutely exceeds my expectation. i guess it's because the designer is from India, so the cost is kept low. i dont think it's possible in US or EU...

I think you're right. The cheapest possibility would be crowdsurfing something like 99designs.com

From the look of it I think it's a stock template icon with some tweaking?

Think youre right. Here is one thats even nicer: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-78548530/stock-vector-vector...

nice...

Big problem righ here: Restrictions part 2, #15: You may not use these images as part of a trademark or logo... http://www.shutterstock.com/licensing.mhtml

Want to buy it? Just 50 bucks ;-) Or 39 euro's for 5 images if you sign up for shitterstock yourselve.

How do you know whether the increase in downloads is due to "good design" vs. confusion with an official instagram product? The new icon bears a strong resemblance to the instagram icon (particularly at small sizes). Isn't it possible that instead of good design you're simply seeing an increase in conversions by unsophisticated buyers and you're gaining a benefit from that confusion with a well-established brand? It sounds like you're probably not US-based, but it might be worth considering whether there is any legal exposure for trade dress infringement and/or trademark dilution.

If you look at all Instagram apps in the store, you'll find there are many Instagram apps designed with a 'camera' icon. We're definitely not the first one.

Do you know 'Pinstagram'? They just changed the name to "Pictacular", and it's based in the US. I dont want to say you're making discrimination over non US-based companies. And I don't think it's right to infringe Instagram brand. If i am not doing right, i am happy to change immediately.

> "If you look at all Instagram apps in the store, you'll find there are many Instagram apps designed with a 'camera' icon. We're definitely not the first one."

And this is supposed to mean something? The fact that there are other people in the App Store capitalizing off of brand confusion and design mimicry excuses... what exactly?

The new UI is even more like Instagram than the icon is.

Intentionally confusing

Padgram, InstaPin.... --> Instagram...

This is not really creative + the logo which is also copied

hi @JohnCastle, for the top Instagram apps, the names are: - InstaPad - InstaBrowser - InstaMap

And web services: - Webstagram

I think the problem is in nature in what we're doing. It's an Instagram app, how can user recognize you without a perceptive name?

And see what's happening on Twitter is more persuasive. Almost all Twitter apps' icon is a bird, but people still love Tweetbot to death.

I am open to constructive suggestions.

Why is it not creative? I think the logo is just a little common, but not copied.

The icon reminds me of Instagram. Is it possible that something as simple as that did increase the downloads?

Hi @reidrac, i guess you're right. Anyway it's an Instagram iPad app, the simplest way to make user accept an app is make him/her understand what the app does at first glance. The new icon better conveys the info

That was my thought as well.

Great post, and I agree with the idea that good design makes a huge difference, but I would have like to see more conclusive data. Seemed a little superficial and also like you believe the $50 icon was the source all the popularity.

I would have looked at how many people shared the app after the redesign, how many people invited friends, how many more ratings and reviews you got, how often users performed an "action" everyday, how many days elapsed between log-ins (compared to before), the percentage of "active users" vs user base etc.

Keep up the great work!

thanks for the comments, @francov88, i will keep up the work and keep sharing. Up to now, I think Padgram still has potential to grow. Among all the Instagram iPad app, Padgram has relatively good design and distinguishing features. I will share more data as it goes.

I find it a problem when you have 2 UI designers and cannot come up with a great design on day one. Your new design isn't spectacular either. A great resource is to look at the designs of all of your competitors and understand what is great about all of them.

Also $50 for an icon is very cheap. At that price, I'm not sure how it would motivate any good designer to spend even an hour on a design. I usually pay $150-$300 per icon for my apps (smartieants.com) and I find it barely enough to keep the designer motivated.

looking at competitors or parent product (in my case "Instagram") is definitely effective. However, i have to take the copycat name...

Designer is very expensive for sure. Which country are your designers from? Mine is india, so relatively cheap.

My designers are from Europe and South East Asia.

When developing iOS apps, if you cannot hire a designer in your team, then you or someone else in your team should try and learn some basic design skills. In a market like the Apple App Store where there are a huge number of apps, the easiest way to differentiate yourself is with the help of good design.

You are going in the right direction though with the design. Best of luck.

Thank you! It's hard and costly to find a full-time and suitable designer. So a contract or part-time designer is a good idea.

Causation and correlation?

1) You redesigned your entire app

2) You updated your app icon

Downloads go up because of #2?

I did both. I think people are more interested in #2 (because it's outsourced and the icon itself is a 'camera'), but #1 is definitely one of the reasons

Polished everything helps. I think some research was done the other day that shows users look at Icons then Screenshots then Reviews or something like that. Not enough devs/organisations understand the importance of showing the latest design and the impact it has on their customers.

I guess you could make more impacting decisions if you stopped "betting what happens on user side". Anyway thanks for lessons learned post. These are always inspiring.

i definitely upvote this! We have been hesitating on what we did. We're going to make something ourselves are happy with in next version. I will keep sharing. stay tuned

Thanks for the stats share. And the nice app too, :)

Correlation != Causation.

Too many variables.

The title font is horrible imho.

Appreciate for your comments, if you try it and provide more comments, that would be perfect :-)

Personally, I think the "Padgram" font is nice. Didn't work well for "Instapin" - made the "I" look funky - but looks suitable for Padgram. I'd tighten up the space between the "P" and "a", and between the "d" and "g", but that's just my own nitpicking.

Good thinking's, definitely worth trying...

Highlights the need for some basic A/B testing platform within app stores, though I see the complexity that prevents it being a priority.

i dont think Apple would consider this, :-(, that's why i wrote and shared it, as Apple is unlikely to figure out for us...

> Wooden texture is a fashionable design in 2012. It’s said to be good for photo viewing app. Our design combines wooden texture with transparent glass. It has the metaphor that your iPad is a wooden table, you put glass on it and photo over the glass. It’s good, isn’t it?

> It costs us $50, but absolutely worth the money

> Brush Script used as a logo

This is a fucking joke… right?

Hey @89a, can you detail which is the joke? Maybe what we did is stupid. But that's what we genuinely thought, tried and shared. We are serious to develop a good enough Instagram ipad app as we're not satisfied with existing solutions. And that's why people love our app even there are already dozens out there.