Screenshot styles
Eleven small worlds for app store posters, each with its own light, its own texture and an invented app living inside it.
In an app store, every screenshot is a poster the size of a thumbprint. It gets less than a second to say who it is.
Here are eleven worlds. Each one has its own light, its own grain, its own way of breathing, and an invented app that lives inside it. Each world gets three posters: the arrival, the main gesture, the goodbye. And the phone never walks in the same way twice. It gets printed, reflected, punched, photographed, peeled, ruled, spun, photocopied, lit. Sometimes it is born from the light of a window blind, sometimes from a drop of ink.
Your device asked for stillness, so the scenes are waiting.
01 Thermal Receipt Minimal Tally
Thermal paper, near-black ink and a single ballpoint blue. The slip feeds out of the printer in stiff little jerks, and the phone is printed row by row until it is torn off at the teeth. Tally rings up every expense like a register, and the barcode burns in one bar at a time.
02 Mirror Selfie Lifestyle Glow
Vanity light in peach, cream and a sunburnt clay. The phone shows up in the mirror first, small and soft, before it is really there; then it is set down in front of its own reflection as the focus finds it. Glow is a skincare ritual for slow mornings, bulbs waking row by row, sun striping the wall.
03 Bold Color Block Pop Punch
Flat slabs of red, lemon, cobalt and tangerine, each one with a hard black edge. The color drops like a blow and the phone takes the hit: an uppercut, a hook from the right, a lob that hangs in the air and slams down. Punch counts rounds, and the timer ticks on every second.
04 Botanical Spa Calm Still
Sage, bone and clay on an afternoon cut by blinds. The phone is born inside the stripes of light, first as bands, then whole, and settles on one long inhale. Nothing springs, nothing hurries: sprigs sway from the stem and Still breathes in four, seven, eight.
05 Magazine Cover Editorial Atelier
Wine, ivory and blush on grainy paper, like a fashion cover. Every cover is a shoot: crop marks trace the empty slot, the phone is laid into it and the flash fires on contact. Once it turns like a page; at the end it arrives face down and is revealed in a burst of three frames. Atelier is a wardrobe with an editor's eye.
06 Cute Sticker Planner Doodle Days
Grid paper, grape, bubblegum pink, butter and mint. The phone is a die-cut sticker, peeled from the sheet by one corner, twirled through the air, slapped down and pinned flat by a strip of washi tape. Doodle Days is the planner of someone who highlights everything and earns a gold star for every bit of homework.
07 Swiss Ultra Minimal Grid
White, black and one red dot. Twelve columns draw themselves across the sheet, every block stops dead on its mark, and the phone is ruled into place, never flown in: construction lines first, then the outline, then the screen, column by column. Grid is a task list that believes in order. The red arrives last.
09 Y2K Chrome Holographic bff.fm
Chrome, jelly pink, lilac and ice blue on holographic foil. The phone is a collectible off a toy shelf: it spins in like a keychain charm and lands with a wobble, flicks open like a flip phone, rises on a turntable and settles like a coin. bff.fm is music shared with friends, a jelly heart at the center of the disc.
10 Brutalist Riso Zine Zine Club
Photocopy paper, flat black and a fluorescent pink that never quite lines up. The copier sweeps its bar of light and the phone comes out in two passes, pink first, then black, slightly off until it snaps into place; the scrap is taped down and stamped. Zine Club keeps the basement shows, admit one.
11 Zen Wabi-Sabi Ma
Washi paper, sumi ink and the vermilion of a seal. The ensō paints itself and the phone condenses out of the same ink, following the brush, a stain drying into form. Words rise out of soft focus, the seal presses down, and Ma keeps one day at a time, with room to spare between them.
12 Neon Night Afterhours
Dark brick, cyan, violet and the amber of bottles held against the light. The phone never moves: it waits on the bar as a silhouette until its edge strikes like a neon tube, and the screen opens from a thin line of light, like an old television. Every sign flickers before it holds, and one letter is always low on gas. Afterhours knows where the night is still open.