Websites. PowerPoints. Banner ads. We think we know how they’re supposed to look and what they’re supposed to do. But just like technology, design is marching on and changing the way we consume content. Our creative team has mastered the latest trends and can share the most important ones with you.
Responsive Design
People are visiting websites, digesting social content, and reading documents on multiple devices, making it harder for organizations to ensure a great experience across all these platforms. The key is responsive design, which allows content to change based on the size, resolution, and capabilities of the device upon which it’s being viewed, whether it’s an iPad or an Android phone or a Kindle Fire. Responsive design ensures that reading and navigating is easy on every platform.
A good example is Vogue magazine, which looks exactly as it does on an iPhone as it does on a laptop. There’s no sense of “Oh, this is just the mobile version; What am I missing from the full site?” This type of design even responds to how you’re holding your device — ever turn your iPhone and have a web page suddenly become unreadable? I’ve found that responsive design often results in text and photos separated vertically, so that images fill the screen when viewed on a mobile phone. This makes them easier to view on a small device and easier to tap with a thumb.
There’s one casualty with this innovation — mobile versions of sites, with URLs like “m.mywebsite.com.” Responsive design works on every device, so there’s no need for a separate mobile version.
Vogue’s mobile site; a duplicate of its desktop version.
PowerPoints with Power
I think it’s time to update the 20-year-old PowerPoint slide show that relies on white screens, black text, and royalty-free clip art. (You may be as sick as I am of the faceless alien that shows up in virtually every PowerPoint from Corporate Communications.) Two ways to do this are Prezi and ScrollDeck, which add motion and animation to presentations, making them much more interactive and compelling.
I’ve found some plug-ins and add-ons which can shake up the traditional speaker-and-audience relationship that make some slide shows so dull. A good one is YawnBuster, which lets you create quizzes, polls, games, and group activities that are sure to keep your viewers from, well, yawning. It’s aimed at keeping students’ attention in class, but adults can become just as bored as children. Going one step further, you actually don’t ever have to use PowerPoint to create a presentation again. New apps like Haiku Deck let you produce beautiful decks, with great stock images, right on your iPad.
A slide from HaikuDeck
Enhanced Banner Ads
People want to visit websites. They are often voluntary participants in polls, presentations and surveys. But most people aren’t big fan of banner ads. Sure, they’ve evolved from static text images to include flashing colors and primitive animation, but they’re still routinely ignored, with a click-through rate of less than 1%.
Interactive designers have accepted the challenge of making banner ads irresistible. FedEx turned their banner ad into a clever clock that displays the user’s current time in FedEx boxes. Volkswagen’s ads featured a blank space before “like a Rabbit,” and whatever the user types in that blank, the car does. Gatorade let users play with a push toy, while Brastemp water purifiers made users put their cursor into the an animated water stream to see the company’s (funny) message. As with presentations and websites, the key is interactivity: responding to user’s situations, letting them play with their online content, and using video or animation to take any message beyond simple, static text. Brastemp’s and Volkswagen’s banner ads also included audio, from the trickling of water to a love song between two enamored Rabbits.
New Faces and Designs
Another change in design is in the people featured in photos and videos. I’m seeing a lot more diversity, including older, “natural” women (i.e., not models) and dads playing with their kinds instead of working at the office. I’m seeing all different races and ages, and people with disabilities.
I’ve also noticed design starting to reflect the personal, homemade look of Instagram and Vine — photos with lens flare, intentionally imperfect pictures of food, hand-drawn sketches instead of faceless-alien stock images.
Lastly, I see that mobile devices have just about driven designers away from the shadows and color gradients that used to give websites a three-dimensional look. Instead, everything has a “flat” look, with nothing floating above or peeking out from below the page. While I miss some of that clever design, it did make for harder reading and navigation on a phone.
A hand-drawn chart
Takeaways
So what can you do to make sure your design and content is as compelling as possible?
– Your content should be responsive to user’s needs, device, and location. If they want to view your PowerPoint on their Samsung phone, they should be able to — with no loss of quality.
– It should also be interactive, to keep users engaged. Banner ads are easy to ignore. Slide shows are easy to sleep through. The more people feel they’re part of the conversation, or if they’re required to act to keep the action moving, they’ll absorb more of your message.
– Everything is important. Volkswagen didn’t have to create a crazy game with lots of animation to sell cars. Look at every piece of content, from a tweet to a homepage, as an opportunity to surprise and impress your audience
Need help navigating the new frontier of web design? Brandemix can help.
Jody Ordioni is President of Brandemix.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Ordioni is the author of “The Talent Brand.” In her role as Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, she leads the firm in creating brand-aligned talent communications that connect employees to cultures, companies, and business goals. She engages with HR professionals and corporate teams on how to build and promote talent brands, and implement best-practice talent acquisition and engagement strategies across all media and platforms. She has been named a "recruitment thought leader to follow" and her mission is to integrate marketing, human resources, internal communications, and social media to foster a seamless brand experience through the employee lifecycle.
