Booklet – Enjoy your local bookstores
OND & DECS Byounghern Kim, Sungwon Jang, Huisung Lee & Hwang KimBooklet was created to support better communication between customers and small cultural space owners. It provides digital management services to owners and effectively stimulates connections with their fans. Booklet is a digital platform for cultural space managers. At the same time, it functions as a sophisticated platform for book and culture lovers. Booklet helps local bookstores to serve as local culture hubs and allows customers to enjoy their beloved cultural spaces. It is made for spreading culture and connecting individuals to encourage local cultural exchange at local bookstores, which are micro hubs of cultural knowledge.
Idea
Each local bookstore has its characteristics and offers different events with a particular style. The detailed direction for operating a space requires many meticulous actions. A bookstore manager’s tasks are never easy: creating and managing the branding, marketing for the venue, organizing contents, holding events, and recruiting audiences. Meanwhile, local bookstore customers’ expectations have also changed from merely obtaining books to participating in cultural exchanges and social gatherings in a sophisticated atmosphere. Booklet was born to meet these needs of both service providers and service users.
Form
Booklet’s aesthetic direction is inspired by magazines. Booklet uses mono color and serif typefaces for container components, and sans-serif for contents with rich photographic images.
Booklet has a signature visual element, which is a trapezoidal symbol. The trapezoidal element contains perspectives and functions as a metaphor of books and lamps in the bookstore. The design of Booklet’s icons and components has been inspired by these elements.
Yellow highlights across the app deliver the look and feel of analog paper. Booklet’s design was carried out based on in-depth and focus group interviews with bookstore owners and customers.
Function
Using Booklet, bookstore managers can notify users of events, announcements, and news. For quick announcements, managers can use the “Quick-Note” feature. Booklet AI will also help managers deal with general and repeated questions and filter inquiries to save time.
For cultural space lovers, Booklet provides latest news and content from their favorite bookstores. With the “Explore” feature, customers can explore small local cultural spaces and directly jump into the context and contents of the stores. The engaging communication experience will help link bookstore owners and their customers.
Differentiation
Different from its indirect competitors such as major social media platforms, Booklet has unique and dedicated vertical features that serve only for local bookstores and their customers.
The Quick-Note feature is suitable for delivering information through short messages. The well-designed interface displays images that deliver the atmosphere of bookstores. The CMS (contents management system) allows owners to upload content to other social media platforms as well. Moreover, Booklet AI answers general inquiries to minimize the workload of bookstore managers.
With Booklet, customers can explore small local cultural spaces and participate in cultural social gatherings with ease.
Impact
Local bookstores are special spaces that are considered to be important micro-cultural locations where many small yet vibrant events happen. Moreover, local bookstores represent local culture with a sense of locality and strong characteristics.
Booklet reduces the burden of bookstore managers, allowing them to focus on creating and delivering rich cultural experiences.
Booklet connects bookstores and customers more effectively to get better communication. This will eventually lead to their financial stability. At the same time, customers can also participate more actively in cultural and social gatherings, enjoying the sophisticated atmosphere of local bookstores.