Background
Kombie is a new social mobile app, which launched globally in early 2015.
The app is a fun way of mashing your selfies, memes, pics and vines with high quality clips from your favorite music videos, sports, live events, movies, TV shows and whatever is happening now. Choose a clip, add your photo or video and share to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Vine or private messaging. Kombie brings your moments to life.
The challenge
Our brief was to create an engaging brand to encourage Gen Z teens to make Kombie part of their vocabulary and life. In particular, the brand needed to be designed to standout in the digital app and social sharing world.
The brand had to convey a sense of fun and sophistication, yet be simplistic in its execution to stand out from other apps on screen. The brand also had to be able to appeal to music, sports and music fans. It had to be flexible enough to become a valued content creator regardless of the content.
The strategic and design solution
The brand positioning and messaging deliberately encourages Kombie to become a verb, be part the vocabulary of its audience. “Grab. Kombie. Share. Your favorite clips, starring you.”
The brandmark represents the simple idea of two things coming together to form the unique ‘k’, highlighting the functional aspect to the app. A vibrant neon colour palette set against a dark background gives the brand an edgy, youthful feel that appeals to both males and females. The branding within the app is simple and understated to ensure the content is the hero.
Results
Initial feedback for the app are very positive. The brand is already realising its ambition of making Kombie part of the language and life of Gen Zs.
“I’ve been playing with this app for a few weeks now and am having a lot of fun and creating some super exciting content. The switch point between my content and the app content is something I haven’t seen before and it’s always exciting to see what is going to happen when I combine the footage. Now please can I have some more Drake! I like it,” said Rich Odd.
“Super easy, super efficient. I feel like all my clips now look extremely professional with just a couple simple steps. Can’t wait for more updates and more clips to be uploaded onto this app. Overall, the app works pretty well and I feel that many people will be using this app to share videos and pics. Keep em comin, Kombie!!! Great for creative minds,” said Anjerra.
“Truly Deeply were engaged to develop Kombie’s App brand identity, most important of which was the design of our User Interface ( UI) and app icon, the things that every user of Kombie would be presented with every time the opened the app.
When we met with TD, Kombie was in its infancy and while we had a firm understanding of our product market fit we looked to the Truly Deeply team to collate our thoughts and ideas into a cohesive consumer and brand facing identity.
The challenge was making Kombie’s UI shine as a brand but never overwhelm the content of our app which includes the world’s superstars of sport, music and film. Similarly we needed an identity that stood side by side in the market place with our global brand partners who each have spent millions developing their brand ID. In short we needed to create an identity that was immediately recognisable and able to embrace all of our content partners while offering the Kombie user a beautiful, uncluttered and totally immersive and intuitive experience.
Which is exactly what TD helped us achieve. We walked away with a unique app icon, colour scheme, logo and font that to date have received universal approval, including kudos from major brands in the entertainment industry in the US.
Kombie is modern, unisex(y), cool but also importantly, understated. We believe our branding to be the perfect market fit.”
Thank-you TD for a job well done.”
Stuart Berwick & Baz Palmer, Founders of Kombie
How we helped Kombie
Brand positioning, brand identity, mobile app design, website design, investor document.