Developed by
Gianpiero Spinelli
Raffaele Di Somma
Year
2021
Short descriprion
Application designed and conceived by me, developed natively for iOS and Android.
Description
Stories for Letterboxd was born from a deep passion for cinema and for the app/social network dedicated to the seventh art: Letterboxd.
The app has a very simple purpose: given a film, a list of films, a review, or a profile, it generates engaging Instagram stories.
Process and history
Contacting Letterboxd
To obtain permission from Letterboxd to use their image and, most importantly, to gain exclusive access to their APIs, we reached out to them. Letterboxd kindly supported us in developing the product by granting us access to their APIs.
Implementing Instagram
We also worked on integrating the Instagram APIs to create a direct connection with the app, rather than just generating an image to save. This allowed us to design stories with multiple layers.
Designing stories
The core of the app’s design lies in the aesthetic quality of the stories users can share. I focused mainly on the design of stories for review sharing, since they were the most challenging to design due to the wide variation in text length that each review can have.
Not only stories
The in-app editor, although limited in features, was designed to be clean, intuitive, and to clearly present all available options to the user. We worked closely with users to refine this aspect over the course of several versions.
A lovely community
Since this was the first app we published on the store, about five years ago, it was also an opportunity for us to connect with the Letterboxd community and its users. We were very open to feedback and feature requests. For instance, the app was originally developed for iOS only, but we later brought it to Android in response to user demand.
