These are WIP screenshots for the upcoming App Store submission. The goal is reflecting what makes Clear unique in the space, so hopefully they pop with more personality and simplicity (like no text captions) compared to other apps in our category.
Curious what you all think of this direction, especially putting yourself in the place of someone new to Clear. Would it get you hitting the (free!) download button?
Yes, it would. Minimalist ads let the product speak for itself, especially when compared to the more text-heavy approach of most other AppStore ads. âThink differentâ, as someone once saidâŚ
You could even use a shot of a Clear list, where the list itself made up a sales pitch for the app e.g.
Clear.
Simple.
Colorful.
Playful.
Intuitive.
Awesome.
EtcâŚ
Ps Iâm guessing these are only for illustrative purposes currently, but the hands look too obviously photoshopped in. Freaky! Also aside from the red and black & white first couple of pictures, the rest are very purple/blue/teal-heavy. Iâd suggest you try to include a broader range of colors, with some yellows or greens or pinks to mix things up.
Ahh yeah the hands. They need work⌠a little worried we wonât be able to really nail them, but at the least hopefully we can make them less obviously pasted in.
Good ideas to try here on some different hued scenes and the pitch list!
Looks great to me. Agreed on the hands. Maybe Miami instead of Shangri-La to mix up the blues?
Clear is the colorful addition to someoneâs life. In my opinion, you should keep the backgrounds of the images less noisy, and in complementary (but desaturated) colours. E.g. beach planning can go with an office background, grocery shopping list can go with a messy kitchen background ⌠Clear is the go-to solution, and the sense of escapism is the direction Iâd immediately want the images to sell.
Replace the hands with tiny white bubbles, the kind that show up in the iOS screen recording feature. To suggest gestures, create a series of white bubbles with decreasing opacity towards the end of the gesture path. This way you can get rid of the hands but keep their whole goal in place.
Images 2, 4, 5 all tell the same story. I would think the stories you need to tell are âswipe to completeâ, âpinch to addâ, âfinish a list to see a moment of peaceâ, âarchive to see past listsâ, âcustomize to motivate yourselfâ. All the features anyone needs in a to-do list, and a reminder of whatâs special about this one.
IMO, the customer you want to select for is the one that appreciates beauty and speed in a to-do app. Philosophically, I wouldnât sell the gamification upfront in Image 6, and you might scare away your most fervent customers by having âshopâ as one of the features of the first few images in the app store. The intent of the shop can be better achieved by showing the âcustomizeâ screen with some themes left locked. To the less âgame-yâ customer, theyâll understand they can get more themes through some mechanism, and intuit they can perhaps buy it. Let them download the app, and let the shop speak for itself.
Last image should be in the theme or style of Clear âŚ
All of this is very personal takes, but I love the simplicity and personality of clear. I would hope that thatâs what shines in its advertising.
Appreciate the notes! Let me digest them.
Weâll take a stab at the touch bubble things. And yeah, less scared of showing the unlock popup but we probably should, between the two, showcase personalizing vs. shop upfront, especially when itâs not like monetization gets in the way of using the app.
At some point I will also shoot a quick 30s App Store screen recording video, that will hopefully showcase the speed and some gestures in action etc.
They look great. Personally, I like it when the tiles are more cohesive. It almost encourages you to scroll through as it tells you a little story. And if Apple has taught us anything, itâs storytelling that sells, not features. Additionally, I think at least one of the tiles should be an animation of the basic functions. Because with Clear, seeing really is believing.
I will definitely be shooting at least a simple screen recording video for the App Store page.
And yeah I generally think of our App Store screenshots as a mini picture book or comic story. With this one we tried to ground it in the series of lists and environments to have some arc there, that this is your cozier and more productive life with Clear.
So through the lists in the screens you try out Clear, have a productive day at work, and then some productive relaxing/treating yourself too. But the lists also spell out a fairly mundane story right now, could probably punch it up.
The visual style of multi-screenshot layouts we did try some things, but it did introduce another wrinkle that fights some of the cozy simplicity itâs going for. Going to keep playing around and try some of these ideas, could be a matter of the right choice of them and balance.
BTW I was considering this for the App Store description:
âYou see, in every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and snap! The jobâs a game.â
For the App Store name, probably âClear Listsâ
No subtitle, which should somewhat stick out as well. I have thought way too much about various subtitles/slogans/taglines. Itâs ridiculously hard to try to sum up Clear in a few words!!! I mean it always was. I donât think thatâs a bad thing, and probably one reason it feels different than most âX for/meets Yâ apps.
I love the styling options with colon and space - what about including those in one of the screenshots? Takes away from the simplicityâŚ
I also like using Emojis in my to-do list items
Thatâs a good reminder to make sure those are highlighted in the final onboarding or a reward for using the feature.
I think itâs too wordy. The first sentence and the third are both trying to say the same thing.
I would suspect that you can combine both into âFind the game in your jobs/chores/etc.â or âTurn it all into a gameâ. Some variation of this.
If you are intentionally being wordy because itâs a description not a tag line, then I would reconsider the âyou seeâ to begin the sentence. Maybe a âwe believeâ. Then I would make either sentence 2 less vague, or re-write sentence 3 to be more philosophical like âWhen the jobâs a game ⌠how quickly can you set a high score?â
Or you can lean into your gaming announcer side if you want to highlight the gamey-ness? âYour job is to find the game hidden within your job. You are given two thumbs, and a few rectanglesâ. 
Just spitballing ideas, maybe you can play off of something here for the descriptionâs identity.
On a much more serious note ⌠whenâs the release?!
Honestly it is how it is because itâs a straight quote from Mary Poppins haha. (The start of A Spoonful of Sugar.) I wish we could license this track for the trailer. It would include the quotation marks in the App Store description.
But yeah thatâs interesting, I hadnât seriously considered it from the perspective of someone who doesnât have that context.
Release â well, weâre hoping to submit something around the end of next week! (Really the only must-have final piece is finishing data migration for people updating / beta testers back to final, but obviously this is something we donât want to rush and mess up.)
If approved, we will likely hold over Christmas/New Years break for the team + some time to prep for marketing etc. then launch early January.
Aha, whoops! Sorry, my first language isnât english, so I have a huge cultural blind-eye for that kind of thing. If itâs an incredibly recognizable quote, then itâs clever and fun!
Just in time for new yearâs resolutions, then!
I hope you all have a happy holidays/christmas break then! 
