Stile Country
Stile was founded by a husband-and-wife team with deep roots in countryside living - one an experienced gun maker and the other with a marketing background in country fashion. Their shared goal was to give rural communities a place to connect, share and trade without the restrictions of mainstream social media.
They came to New Icon looking for a trusted innovation partner to shape their idea into a tangible digital product and help them secure investment for full development.
For countryside communities - from hunting and shooting enthusiasts to rural lifestyle brands - mainstream platforms like Instagram and Facebook present a problem. Content is often restricted or censored, making it difficult for people to share their passions or for businesses to reach their audiences.
But they faced a challenge - limited investment. With a budget of £120,000, they needed a compelling proof of concept to unlock further funding.
New Icon was brought in to define the architecture, shape the vision, and deliver a high-fidelity clickable prototype that could act as both an investor pitch tool and the blueprint for development.
We:
The design challenge was to create an “Instagram for the countryside” - a familiar, intuitive interface that could host content typically restricted on mainstream platforms. The resulting experience mirrored social media conventions such as feeds, likes, comments, direct messaging, and location tagging, but was tailored to rural interests like hunting, farming, equestrianism, and countryside events.
The brand identity drew inspiration from the countryside itself: the name Stile referencing the wooden steps used to climb over fences, paired with a hashtag-style logo to represent connection and community.
Additional concepts included a dual sign-up flow for individuals and businesses, local event listings, and future e-commerce functionality - all demonstrated through a polished Figma prototype that showcased scalability and investment potential.
The Stile prototype provided the founders with a tangible, testable blueprint that captured their vision and gave them the leverage to pursue investment. It brought clarity to what could be achieved with limited resources, ensuring the MVP remained ambitious but attainable.
Beyond design and architecture, New Icon acted as a collaborative partner, helping the founders refine their idea, sharpen their monetisation strategy, and set a roadmap for scaling.
Following the prototype phase, the founders successfully launched Stile as a live app in the App Store, retaining New Icon’s original branding and all of the designed interface.
The app continues to grow its community, with users actively posting content and engaging in the rural social space envisioned at the project’s start. Its core experience and visual identity remain rooted in the work completed during New Icon’s architecture phase.
They took the time to understand our community and vision, and translated it into a prototype that felt real from day one.
Working with New Icon was a genuinely collaborative experience. They took the time to understand our community and vision, and translated it into a prototype that felt real from day one. The process gave us clarity and confidence in what we’re building, and something tangible to share with investors. "
Our experience so far has been fantastic: great communication, and the project is on budget and on time.
When looking for an early build support partner, we wanted someone that not only understood our immediate requirements, but could add value when thinking about future reiterations of the product. We're early on in the process, but our experience so far has been fantastic: great communication, and the project plan we set out, is on budget and on time. "
Their attention to detail and ability to break down complex content into digestible, engaging visuals is exactly what we needed.
Working with the Design team and the wider New Icon team has been a fantastic experience. Their attention to detail and ability to break down complex content into digestible, engaging visuals is exactly what we needed. Every edit exceeded expectations and truly reflected what we had envisioned for the final prototype. Highly recommend! "
Each meeting brought real progress and meaningful change, and the team dynamic was warm, collaborative, and easy to work with.
From the very first interaction, New Icon stood out. Their combination of clear, concise documentation and an explanatory video was genius—it gave us immediate clarity and confidence. The Discovery process, especially the Agile Architecture, felt like a genuine offer to help, not a hard sell. Each meeting brought real progress and meaningful change, and the team dynamic was warm, collaborative, and easy to work with. The use of Figma to showcase their design-led approach was impressive, and the achievable PoC cost made things feel within reach. One of the biggest wins? We retained the IP. That was huge. New Icon didn’t just understand our problems, they explained them back to us better than we could ourselves. That alone gave us massive trust in the team and the process. "
New lcon’s deliverables have exceeded our expectations.
We would like to thank the New Icon team for the work accomplished. OnePRESS will be the first wireless safety critical opportunity that will use a mobile application to go to an In-Service Evaluation with Airbus airline customers. As such, there was no precedent for the Landing Gear Design Office to start from. Newicon quickly understood that their expertise could complement our capability to compile design documentation and adapted their process to suit our needs. New lcon’s deliverables have exceeded our expectations. "
Newicon understood our needs, ensuring solutions were current and future-proofed
Ethicall have worked with Newicon for approximately 10 years. During this time Newicon have worked with us on various projects, but predominantly they have helped us design and build a bespoke telephone fundraising software system which encompasses all the nuanced and niche elements of our business. They really took the time to understand what we needed as a fundraising call centre and then constantly revisited this with us to ensure it was still fit for purpose and future proof. The engineers working on the project have always been mindful of building in stages with regular testing and approval from users – they are also able to communicate in non-technical speak – which is always useful for those of us not from a technical background. Newicon’s recent introduction of project managers has enhanced their services further. "
Newicon consistently exceeds expectations, driving innovation as a seamless extension of our business.
Newicon’s ability to over deliver against our expectations and to help drive our innovation has made them an extension of our own business. The team are excellent to work with, and their passion for our business competes with our own. I would recommend Newicon for both your development and design needs. "
You’ve understood the project quicker and got further with the design in 3 weeks than our previous company did in a year.
I’m very impressed with how you’ve interpreted the brief and interviews!
You have captured the use case and functionality really well. "
You've done an amazing job of taking our concept and actualising it into something much more real!
This process has cemented our concepts into requirements, plans and something much easier to step forward with, both internally and as something we can tell the story to others. We've been particularly impressed with how you've taken a fairly niche topic and run with detailed concepts and clearly understood what we are aiming for! "
We're miles ahead of where I expected us to be at this stage, and we've all really appreciated the effort you've put in.
Everyone is really, really happy and pleased with what you've put together, blown away! We love the simplicity of the prototype. "
The project is well thought through, smartly taking into account every little request we had. Which is amazing, I love that!
I've been using the prototype to pitch the idea with potential clients and the feedback has been really good so far. "
We really love the overall look of this
It's a very clean simple interface which still clearly conveys a lot of really important information, so thank you! "
Very happy with the end results and designs for the new features
New Icons redesigns brought the app layout up to date which was amazing to implement over the last year alongside integrating new products into the app. Meeting face-to-face meant that New Icon could properly understand the requirements and turn them into fully functional designs that added to the overall user experience. Very happy with the end results and designs for the new features. "
Newicon is an exemplar of innovation and freethinking.
Newicon's ideas have pioneered mobile software development within my department. Their solutions are innovative and effective producing results above original expectations. "
Newicon took the time to fully understand our requirements, and the clickable prototype really helped shape our thinking.
It has been a pleasure collaborating with Newicon on this project. Their commitment, attention to detail and passion for their work has enabled us to produce a quality app and seek further investment. Newicon took the time to fully understand our requirements, and the clickable prototype really helped shape our thinking and produced an intuitive UX, whilst also de-risking the development phase. "
Newicon achieved a 35% increase in business. Newicon really understood what we wanted to achieve.
Very commercially aware and versatile software agency - and a great team to boot!
Newicon give us creative input and state of the art technology
Newicon have helped steer our business in directions we had not even considered. "
Newicon are a great company, they are passionate and always provide a second to none service.
From the design stages through to the technical implementation they understand our requirements as a company. We would highly recommend Newicon to anyone who is looking for a friendly, efficient and professional web and software design company. "
If you need bespoke technology, I highly recommend Newicon.
By working with us to build our platform, they helped lay the foundation for our success. Not only did they develop the software; their process also included UX design and prototyping, ensuring that our final product was user-friendly, secure and powerful. If you need bespoke technology to get your start-up into business, I highly recommend Newicon to deliver it for you. "
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