#6 Mobile UI Trend: Product Branding moving to Bottom Navigation

One of the primary concerns in a mobile app is the constraint of space. While branding is extremely important, it is also important to acknowledge the space that’s available for the content that’s important to your users.

Brands can use a combination of colours, gradients, type, unique components & styles to stay fizzy and differentiate themselves from the competition.

However, prominent branding comes at the cost of losing screen estate for the content that would rather be the highlight of your app instead of seeing your brand everywhere. One of the reasons why a Splash Screen/ Launch Screen is used for branding purposes.

As a popular trend discovered by Michael Horton — Complexion Reduction (very complex name!) continues to flourish, we are noticing simplification of the User Interface by reduction of the colours, gradients and greater effort in how content is shown with beautification with type and richer images.

In this world of UX/UI where Content is King, where can products find themselves showcasing their brand?

A popular pattern I’m seeing in products is on the Bottom Navigation. No, not the entire bottom navigation but a single destination.

Meetup chose their first destination to showcase meet-ups that you follow and the popular ones nearby you.

Lifesum uses their first destination for the diary which is signified by the logo that is also their icon for Android. Good job implementing the Bottom Navigation Destination animations correctly :)

The home page of the app, or whatever is shown first to the user is styled to accommodate the logo of the app for easy identification. This also avoids cases where if a user shares a screenshot of the app, it’s easy to identify which app it is from the logo instead of aimlessly asking forums/ communities to identify it.

It makes sense, since it is the home of that app, so ideally styling it is similar to the web based behaviour of clicking the logo on the top left to go to homepage. Similarly, tapping on the logo on the bottom navigation destination takes you to the Home Destination.

AirbnbEng chooses the centre destination to place the logo to feature their “Trips” destination. This is a shift from their previous choice which was the first tab.

I personally love this change in branding instead of simply seeing the name of the app on the Toolbar. I’ve missed the logo of the product/brand in Android apps for quite a while since Holo design.

What are your thoughts?