Gelic
Gelic is a personal project in which I pursued creating and designing an original application. The outcome should be original, beautifully designed, and have a competitive advantage to others within its market. Overall, this project is a presentation of my skills in design, UX/UI, and creative thought.
First, I created a list of everyday events in effort to find an analog market that has potential to be disrupted into digital. In my list I couldn’t find a specific route to take, however the word “growth” intrigued me. I then made a mind map to explore further possibilities associated with growth. I ended up with several ideas from my mind map having to do with up-cycled clothing, plants, playing the guitar, and mixing paint colors.
Process
Solution
Recreating colors from life and online into paint is a difficult task. It often can be time consuming, resource wasting, and frustrating to get your paint to look exactly how you imagine. What if there was an app where you can find exact ratios to reach your ideal color? The solution should be simple yet competent and beautifully organized for painters of all ages, circumstances, and skillsets.
PROMISE
Provide an easy, less wasteful, and more accurate
way to create the colors you need.
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VALUES
Creativity | Sustainability | Community
Feature Comparison
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Paint mixing ratios
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Color grabber (through image upload)
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Hex colors
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Color wheel
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Filter possible solutions through paints you own
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Random color generator
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Canvas AR tool (preview color on your canvas)
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Favorites (save your color ratios)
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Posting/sharing results
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Blog (community for sharing secret paint recipes and tactics)
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Sustainability (resources for sustainable, upcycled ingredients for paint or painting materials)
Competitors
The strongest competitor (Color Mixer Mix Unmix & Convert) offers ratios from hex colors to create color mixtures. Their design is alright and easy to interpret the results; however, they have very limited features. While advertised to create real world colors, the app doesn’t feel specifically paint focused.
Survey
Audience
OG Olive
Professional painter who has had work sold in galleries.​
Age: 72
Income: $$$
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Loves to paint and knows the deets extensively. She sometimes forgets the exact ratios to colors of paintings she has made in the past and it takes a lot of her time and resources to match those colors.​
​New Navy
New to painting and has so many ideas!
Age: 18
Income: $
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They’re focused on perfecting their craft even if it takes a lifetime. They find it difficult to mix the colors they are inspired by on social media and aren’t totally sure about the specifics of color theory.
To find the perfect name I started listing various terms associated with color, paint, art, and likeliness.​
​Gelic
Like, similar; the same (meaning ‘alike’, not ‘identical’).
I found Gelic to be an interesting word with the perfect connotation. Since the purpose of the app is to create colors as close to digital colors as possible.
Naming
Moodboard
I gained inspiration from the way light and color interacts with each other as well as paint and other forms of layering. The logo should have layers combining to reach a whole much like the act of combining paint to reach a new color.
#55007d
#9c77b5
#c4a6ce
#333333
#ffffff
Color
Purple is often thought of as a rare color in nature. Its rarity is precisely why purple is often associated with royalty and wealth. In fact, the first synthesis for a purple dye was drafted fairly recently in 1856 by William Henry Perkin.
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This long search for the creation of purple, outside of its natural existence, makes it the perfect mascot for a resource promoting the mixing of colors.
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For secondary colors I focused on two lighter tints of the brand color with the intention that the lighter colors when overlay will combine to create the brand color. I included a dark gray and white as grounding colors.
Typography
My type decisions were based off of the roundness of paint dollops contrasted with thick slab serifs. I wanted this contrast of round and edge to show how two different things can combine to create a whole new idea.
Logo Process
Final Logo
The final logo resembles multiple things in painting and layering of color. I utilize circles to resemble dollops of paint overlaying to create new colors and reach the brand color at its core. The juxtaposition of slab serifs and circles show the contrasting combinations that can lead to a full picture much like how two different primary colors combine to create a secondary color.
I drew inspiration from the way adobe handles the organization of color choosing. I also looked into ways people utilize color palettes, sliders, color wheels, and social assets. The UI of Gelic should be simple and straight to the point for a higher usability.
UI Inspiration
User Flow Testing
Individuals were asked to sort features and pages of the app into groupings that felt necessary together.
I drew inspiration from the way adobe handles the organization of color choosing. I also looked into ways people utilize color palettes, sliders, color wheels, and social assets. The UI of Gelic should be simple and straight to the point for a higher usability.
Wireframes
Final Product
As the first page after login, the color selection page is our home. Here is where the bulk of the magic happens at Gelic. The page includes multiple forms of color picking options including sliders, color wheel, hex code, color selection through image, and favorited colors. This is the main feature of the app and where daily users will spend most of their time planning out their ongoing compositions.
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The bottom navigation directs viewers to their profile, blog, VR tool, and resources in sustainable painting. The submit button calculates the optimal paint ratio to achieve the color a viewer has selected and end them off to achieving their desired goal.
Poster
Through poster drafts I came to the conclusion of presenting images of fruit in an unusual color. The unusual colors will be in Gelic’s brand colors and cause the viewer to question why they are presented that way. The copy of the campaign will highlight the unusual color situation and relate it to how sometimes a painter has an idea of the color they want however when they mix the paints it doesn’t quite look how they imagined. Through this combination it brings the viewer in to learn more about the app.
Promo Video
The promo ad is designed in the same sense as the print campaign. The ad focuses on a painter painting an apple resulting in purple, a color not associated with apples. After highlighting the features of the app, the painter is shown again this time painting the apple in red. This is a somewhat comical ad and shows just how the app can improve your painting techniques.
