Show HN: Make your iPhone app look beautiful | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Make your iPhone app look beautiful

uipsd.co

119 pointsniico60 comments

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"No design skills required!" is not something you should read when making design decisions for your app. Period.

"No design skills required!" is not something you should read when making design decisions for your app. Period.

So what's your alternative? Either investing a load of time in learning, or a load of money in hiring a designer?

If you don't have the time/money/talent, this solves a very real problem.

Until more than one person uses this template, and you have many apps that look identical.

Until more than one person uses this template, and you have many apps that look identical.

Which, as Bootstrap proves on a daily basis, is a non-problem for the majority of the world.

Bootstrap has the added benefit of being free though.

Well, I don't know about you but I'm a bit bored of the Bootstrap design. There are so many sites using it that now the ones it looks shallow...

...Unless they customize it heavily, but then again it's designer work.

That's the point, though. Most people aren't bored of Bootstrap, because most people don't care what CSS framework is being used for a website. HN is very much a niche in that regard.

Given the choices

(A) Learn the obviously important skill (because if it was unimportant, there would be zero market for things like this)

(B) Hire a designer (which isn't always a "load of money")

I'd pretty much do them in that order. If this was a free product, I'd be all for it. It would be awesome to see more free iOS native app templates.

But it's not free and that's an issue. Assuming this becomes successful, this will be the Bootstrap of iOS themes and half the apps out there will look identical. The brave ones will be a different color. I think Bootstrap is okay because it can be used as a stepping stone (or the basis for a more comprehensive (custom) design). I use it on a project when I have every intention of redesigning or having it redesigned later after the proof of concept is fleshed out.

People are not going to spend $130 on a theme and redesign it 6 months later. There will be no iteration or redesign because the fact that there is a price associated with this means it's "good enough."

You can get a skilled art student or brand new contractor to design a custom interface for 10x this or less. Hell, you can crowd source this on a site like 99designs for $600.

I'm all for making money and I hope the OP is successful. This looks well designed and I'm sure there is a market for it. That doesn't mean that it's the best option, or even a particularly good one, if you have the slightest bit of talent or money. And if you're really so broke that you're considering a $130 theme, I don't see why $600 for a custom theme that much worse. Wait two more months and save the extra money. We have plenty of apps in the meantime.

Except compared to the other two 130$ is practically free. Psychologically free is awesome but 90% cheaper vs 100% cheaper is no great reason to pick the other options.

Also, just because people pay for shoes is no great reason to become a cobbler, speculation has a lot of value.

I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that if you can spend $130 on an interface for an iOS app, you can just as easily spend $600 a few months from now on a better one.

> "Either investing a load of time in learning, or a load of money in hiring a designer?"

Yes.

The app store era has significantly raised the stakes - it's no longer enough to ship something functional, people demand that it also be beautiful and usable.

For every product niche worth tackling, there is a competing app that has had the proper love of a designer. And it will win.

The success of a modern iOS app hinges heavily on ranking and featuring - go to the App Store right now and look at any of the featured lists. Are there any lazily-designed apps there?

So in short, there is no alternative. Proper design is not optional for success in the app store. The only exception here is if your app has some functionality that is so powerful, so utterly necessary for your users, and so exclusive no one else can meaningfully copy it, that your users will live with your crappy out-of-box UI.

I'd say you're witnessing the rise of what seems to be WooThemes for iOS and calling it useless.

It's probably not for you, but I would be surprised if this isn't highly valuable to a lot of people.

As someone who's running a marketplace with hundreds of iOS components and templates, I can certainly say that there's a need for these kind of templates.

A lot of people will use these templates as a good base to get started and release a MVP, much like people use github bootstrap or a wordpress theme and customize it to reach the market faster.

Bullshit

For every AAA app out there, there is a niche "Organizer for Real Estate Agents" that uses default UI components to okay effect and makes decent enough sales for there to be a V2.

This is a replacement for THOSE people. It isn't a replacement for the next funded startup. It's a replacement for the MVP for the unfunded startup with the guy who can barely do iOS code

Yes, that should throw all the same flags that, "No programming skills required" would if you were looking at something that promised you could build an amazing iOS app. It's marketing bullshit. Either the skills are required or it's not amazing.

Looks great. I'm quite tempted to buy this. But I have a few questions:

1) Is a tab bar included?

2) What other iOS controls have you styled and included in the kit?

3) I see some icons depicted in the screenshots. Are those included? If so, what other icons are available?

4) Any plans to target iPad?

+1 on all 4 points.

Use the 'hackernews' promo code to get a 29$ off on the Full UI + xCode project pack.

Looks awesome! Just bought the Full UI + xCode and started to play with it.

It seems to be missing a "Sharing" folder in "xCode Project/"

Thanks for the heads up! I will email you that right away!

Mine's missing the same folder!

Danny, just emailed you. Thanks so much!

detailed screenshots needed. can you email me at hi at davidkatz dot me?

I too would like more screen shots before I make a purchase. Thanks

Updated! Check out all the screens now here: www.uipsd.co/circles Thanks guys!

+1 for quick iteration!

How easy is it to change aspects like the colour in the Xcode project?

I'm interested in seeing the source, do you offer a refund if I don't find it satisfactory?

promo code to get a 29$ off

I find it weird to offer $29 off, rather than $30 off. The whole point of having a price end in 9 like $29 is to take advantage of people thinking "It's like $20" (cheap!) rather than "It's like $30" (expensive). But, since this is a discount you want to make it look as high as possible, not as low as possible.

Love the look of the site. A few remarks/questions:

* Is there a possibility to get PNGs in addition to PSDs?

* It's Xcode, not xCode.

* What exactly is in the Xcode project already? A storyboard? Any functionality?

I don't know the answer to number 1, since I haven't purchased, but expecting that everything is properly layered and labeled, Slicy [0] would be a good thing to have around. It really makes communicating with Photoshop a ton easier for both designers and developers. (Not affiliated with MacRabbit, but I love Slicy)

[0] http://macrabbit.com/slicy/

Kind of like Twitter Bootstrap but you have to pay for it.

This is much nicer than bootstrap.

Actually it's not, it's just different and less common (for now).

Makes me want to create an open source, but free version of nice Xcode UI templates with documentation.

There is nothing wrong with someone charging for work that took them time and skills to do.

And there is nothing wrong with you doing the same and open sourcing it.

> beautiful

For some values of beautiful that is.

If you can't get the capitalization of Xcode's name right, can I trust your code?

You're right, that is definitely an indicator that his code is absolutely horrible. He should have spent more time obsessing over which letter to capitalize.

An important part about design is the attention to detail. Missing a fairly easily-caught detail that will be glaringly obvious to his target audience that he missed it isn't showing the proper attention to detail, and it makes it less likely that his target audience is going to use his product.

I'm using Chrome on Windows and I'm noticing that when I have my Chrome window on one half of the screen, the responsive design breaks a bit. Basically, if I try to scroll to the right, about 1/4th of the "Ready-to-Code XCode" is cut off.

See: http://imgur.com/JnOp2CE

I'm not quite understanding this. How does getting handed a .psd template help me make the app? Is this simply one possible alternative to the stock UIKit skin that's been packaged up as an idea to reuse? (Like Bootstrap, if Bootstrap was just a Photoshop document instead of usable CSS/HTML?)

A followup on the marketing effect of this post regarding visitors, sales, etc. would be useful.

Kind of remind me of App Design Vault: http://www.appdesignvault.com/

Not associated to that site, simply got a few existing templates a few months back when there was a super promo discount.

I'd like to see a site that matches designers and artists up with mobile developers.

So now the app store is going to be flooded with apps with all the same design. :-P

The hamburger menu is a pretty bad anti-pattern in iOS design.

Worse, in the screen shot, there are only five items. They could fit in a conventional iOS tab bar, which is significantly less clunky to navigate.

This looks very much like the capital one mobile app...

This is actually pretty nice. Considering buying xcode version. Would be better with a video overview of working xcode project.

This looks great. I love the flat design of the site. And I love the UI design. It looks very clean and minimal to me.

This is really cool- I'd love to see a lot of different templates to choose from!

As this first test was quite successful, I will be releasing new UI templates soon. Also will be working on different platforms such as Android and iPad.

That sounds awesome! Looking forward to it

How about an Android version?

Sure, I wanted to "test the waters" before releasing other versions. But definitely will release an android version!

When I buy the Xcode project and you release the new templates, will I have to buy the new templates again? iPad, etc?

Have you considered creating this as a Xamarin theme component? http://components.xamarin.com/ It could be an easy way to get the theme in front of more buyers.

Looks cool. What exactly does the Xcode project consists of though?

anyone who has purchased: care to comment on code quality?

Buyer beware. I bought the PSD and the font is Gotham Bold. Gotham isn't on iOS and doesn't have an interactive/UI licence so it's not even an option to buy it.

The developer's response: use Helvetica.

Xcode. Not xCode.

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