Branding Specifications for your App and Space

This support article will go into detail on the different assets that you will need to create a Branded Space or app. We’ve outlined the specific design elements needed to create your app. While this document shows the iPhone view of an app, we use the same elements to design for the iPad and Android versions of your app (which will have a different layout to conform to screen size and hardware specs).

Before Getting Started

• We recommend submitting your app at least two weeks prior to your ideal promotion date to ensure you have enough time for your submission to be approved.
• It is important that you finalize these elements prior to app store submission.
• Once you submit the app, you cannot make any changes until it has been approved by the app store.
• Once your app is live, you can resubmit any changes you want. 
• While app elements need to undergo app store approval, you can edit the content of any guide within your app in real-time.
• In order to host your Branded app in the App Store, you must enrol in the Apple Developer Program as an organization. To learn more about the enrollment process you may view our documentation.

Basic Requirements

App Store Listing Text

• App Full Name (30 characters max, including spaces)
• Preview Description (50 characters max, including spaces)
• Full Description (4,000 characters max)
• Product Feature Bullets (500 characters max)
• Keywords (100 characters total)

App Graphics

• App Icon (1024px by 1024px .PNG or .JPEG)
• Splash Screen (1150px by 2732px image on a background of 2048px by 2732px .PNG or .JPEG)
• App Home Logo (1024px by 1024px .PNG or .JPEG)
• Promotional Image (1920px by 1186px .PNG or .JPEG)

Theme

• Base
• App Background
• Main Text
• Navbar Background
• Navbar Text
• Navbar Icon

Additional Information

• App Types
• App/Guide Privacy
• Guide Customization & Icons
• Screenshots

App Store Listing Text

App Full Name

 (30 characters max, including spaces)

This will be the title of your app as displayed in each of the app stores. The shorter the better.

A typical name is about 15-20 characters long. It’s helpful to think in terms of what users might search for in the app store. For example, “ABC Corp Events” or “ABC Summit”.

App Short Name

 (20 characters max, including spaces, 11-14 characters recommended)

This is the name of your app that shows up underneath the icon on the device’s home screen. Special characters (@, +, etc.) are not permitted.

While the technical limit is twenty characters, we encourage you to use no more than 11–14 characters. If you use more than that your short name will be truncated. For instance, “Example Short Name” which is eighteen characters in length, will be displayed as “ExampleSho…”.

Preview description

 (50 characters max, including spaces)

Google Play requires a shorter app description. This serves as a preview to users viewing your app listing. After seeing this they can tap or click to view more information.

A preview description is very brief, e.g. “This is the official app for XYZ’s Event.”

Full description

 (4,000 characters max, including spaces)

This is the description people will see when they search for your guide in the various app stores. It should describe the purpose and/or value of the app to the prospective user. It must describe the app’s functionality and what information is available within your app at the time of submission.

You can introduce your university or event and highlight some key features that you would like the user to know about. Using keywords in your description is a good idea as the Google Play store will use this information to determine your place in their search results.

Keywords

 (100 characters max)

• Keywords that can be used to find your app on Apple's App Store. Separate keywords with commas
• The words in total, including commas and spaces, cannot exceed 100 characters
• Example: XYZ University, XYZ Campus Events, XYZ Mascot Name, XYZ Student Affairs

Google Play does not use the submitted keywords; instead, it has its own algorithms for determining keywords relevant to the app. To ensure that your app ranks as highly as possible, please use the keywords in your app description.

App Graphics

App Icon

This is the icon which represents your app on the home screen of a users phone.

Square-aspect icon

• .PNG or .JPEG format
• Do not round corners
• Dimensions: 1024px by 1024px

Adaptive App Icon (Android-only)

Adaptive icons change how an Android app icon is displayed based on the following use cases: 

• Different shapes - adaptive icons can be displayed in a variety of shapes. The most common being a square, circle, or squircle.
• Visual effects - adaptive icons support visual effects when a user places or moves the icons around the screen.
• User theming - adaptive icons can take on the user-selected theme. (Guidebook does not currently support user-selected themes.)

Square-aspect icon

• .PNG format
• Dimensions: 1024px by 1024px, must have a transparent background 

Adaptive icons can be configured from your Space dashboard. Click on App Management, then click on Images. Scroll down past the App Icon at the top and you'll see a toggle to enable Adaptive Icons.

Upload adaptive icon image: Use the “Adaptive icon” image picker to upload the prepared app icon image

Select background color: Use the “App icon background color” color picker to select the adaptive icon background color.

Preview adaptive icon: A preview of your uploaded icon image as an adaptive icon will be displayed for your review.

Save Changes: Once reviewed save the changes via the “Save” button.

Submit app for Guidebook approval: The app needs to be reviewed by Guidebook and submitted to stores before changes go into effect.

Adaptive icons can be toggled off/on at any time. However, for the change to go into effect, the app will need to be resubmitted and approved.

When adaptive icons are enabled users will be required to upload a separate icon image using the “Adaptive icon” image picker. This icon image will only be used for Android devices. The existing icon image uploaded via the “App icon” image picker is the icon that will be used for iOS devices. Adaptive icons require a transparent background, and Apple will reject apps with a transparent background.

Splash Screen

This is the screen that appears as the app is loading, usually 1–3 seconds.

• This image fills the entire splash screen
• Format: .PNG or .JPEG
• Dimensions: 2048px by 2732px
• Safe area to avoid horizontal cropping: 1150px wide

Please constrain any important text or logos to the 1150px wide area, while ensuring that background colors, graphics, or images span the full width and height of the canvas.

Home Logo

This displays in the app’s guide discovery as the featured logo image. Make sure the image looks good as a circle—it will be cropped by the Builder website.

• Dimensions: 1024px by 1024px
• Format: .PNG or .JPEG
• The Home Logo is also used on the app’s log-in screen.

Feature Image

You can think of this image as a “banner advertisement” that is used for promotion in Google Play. You can use your company logo or any other representative image.

• Dimensions: 1920px by 1186px
• Format: .PNG or .JPEG

Landing Page

A simplified promotion website link that directs users to your app or space. This is very useful when you need to provide someone with access to your app or space only. 

Landing Page Name

(30 characters max, including spaces)

This is typically the same as the title of your app or space, but can be different if you prefer. The shorter the better.

A typical name is about 15-20 characters long for example, “ABC Corp Events” or “ABC Conference”.

Landing Page Short Name

 (20 characters max, including spaces, 11-14 characters recommended)

This is the title that shows up in the web link, for example, if you set your short name to "abccon", the web link would show  "www.guidebook.com/app/abccon/." Special characters (@, +, etc.) are not permitted.

Once set and saved your landing page would look similar to this example created from your theme and app graphics:

Theme

Each app is composed of six core colors. Let’s have a look and see where they are applied:

In order to make sure that all elements of the app are visible and legible, ensure that your theme provides sufficient contrast in the following areas.

• “Navbar Text” and “Navbar Icon” should provide contrast from “Navbar Background”
• “Main Text” and “Base” should provide contrast from “Space Background”

Additional Information

App Types

There are two formats for apps available on our platform:

• Single-guide app: your app automatically opens to your guide content.
• Multi-guide app: users will first see the app’s home screen, then they’ll select the guide they’d like to view.

If your app has one guide attached (public or invite-only) when submitted, we will submit it as a single-guide app by default. 

If your app has more than one guide attached or the only guide is passphrase protected we will submit your app as a multi-guide app.

After initially submitting your app, switching from one app format to another will require resubmission. 

With a multi-guide app, the privacy setting of the guides within your app are set on a per-guide basis. These changes will happen when you make public updates to the guide, no app resubmission is required.

Screenshots

We are required to submit a minimum of two screenshots of your app to the iOS App Store and three to Google Play. If you would like to upload your own screenshots, you will have the option of doing so through the app dashboard.