Booklet - Enjoy your local bookstores

Booklet is designed to spread culture and wisely connect individuals to promote local cultural exchange at local bookstores, the micro-hubs of cultural knowledge. To facilitate better communication between customers and owners of these small cultural spaces, the app provides owners with digital management services and effectively stimulates connections with their fans. Every local bookstore has its own personality and hosts various events in its own unique style. The detailed direction of space operation requires many meticulous micro-touches from bookstore managers and their tasks are never easy: from creating and managing their branding to marketing their venue, organising contents and events, and recruiting audiences. Meanwhile, the expectations of local bookstore customers have shifted from simply purchasing books to participating in cultural exchanges and social gatherings in a literary setting. Booklet was created to meet the needs of both service providers and service users. In its totality, Booklet is a digital platform for cultural space managers and a sophisticated platform for discerning book and culture lovers at the same time. The app supports local bookstores in serving as local cultural hubs and enables customers to enjoy their favourite emotional spaces. The aesthetic direction of Booklet is inspired by magazines and the entire design process was completed after conducting in-depth interviews and focus group interviews with current bookstore owners and users. The app uses monochrome and serif typefaces for container components, and sans-serif typefaces for content with rich photographic images. A trapezoidal symbol serves as Booklet’s signature visual element. This trapezoidal element contains perspectives and metaphors from books and lamps in the bookstore space, which also inspired the design of Booklet’s icons and components. Yellow highlights throughout the app provide an analogue paper look and feel. Through Booklet, bookstore managers can notify users of events, announcements, and news. The “Quick Note” feature enables managers to make impromptu announcements. Managers will also benefit from the Booklet AI that handles general and repetitive questions, intelligently filtering the questions to make their job easier. Using the “Explore” feature, customers who are cultural lovers can explore small local cultural spaces and directly jump into the context and contents of these stores. The engaging communication experience will definitely help link bookstore owners and customers. Red Dot Award: Design Concept | Concept | Service Design