With a name like Koko you’d expect these guys to be a bit nuts about coconuts, but the love they have for this plant goes way beyond their name.
A family-owned company that takes great care of their coconuts, growing them the way nature intended and packing them within hours of being picked – always by human hands – to guarantee, freshness, ripeness, and the highest quality.
With a range of delicious milk alternatives already in the market, Koko wanted to offer something more to their growing audience… a vitamin enriched coconut milk which contains enhanced nutritional benefits for both physical and emotional well-being.
Having worked together on previous Koko products, Episode Two were asked to bring this exciting new product to life.
“We wanted the packaging design to really champion the unique ‘natural goodness’ proposition” says Creative Director Mark Stubbington “and help elevate the Koko brand credentials.”
“While it was also important to stay true to the core range look and feel” adds Creative Strategist Rikki Payne.
And the result? Bursting with 11 vitamins and minerals, Koko Life! helps support the immune system, brighten the mind and look after skin – don’t you feel happy just looking at it?
“This was a tricky brief. We needed our new product to fit with the existing Koko range, but demonstrate the additional nutritional benefits and energy delivered by a product fortified with vitamins. The outcome speaks for itself, with a striking visual identity that perfectly balances the Koko brand with an elevated lifestyle proposition.” Heather Lewis. Senior Marketing Manager
Facebook rebrand? Say what?
Facebook, one of the most used products in history has announced its rebrand to Meta and there is a huge splash on social media with online users sharing the news and having conflicting opinions. Perhaps there is a slight confusion of what is actually happening.
Facebook, the social media platform isn’t getting a rebrand as such, however, the company that owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, is.
Meaning Meta will be the Parent Brand for the social media apps, including Facebook, and any new products and services that may be completely irrelevant to social media.
The misconception
Facebook is indeed an iconic media brand however they claim that they want to be and do more than that. Drifting away from the misconception of Facebook being the social media platform only.
Having one of the social media apps being called the same name as the parent company creates confusion and lessens flexibility, meaning not being able to move forward and grow. It doesn’t encompass everything they do today and especially their future plans.
I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps,” he said. “I think it’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that. Mark Zuckerger
https://www.theverge.com/22749919/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-meta-company-rebrand
Meta solves the issue
Moving forward Meta wants the business to focus on two different segments. One for the social apps and one for future platforms. A new company brand to encompass everything they do and build.
Mark Zuckerberg states that the mission remains the same: bringing people together, still the company that designs technology around people. ‘Connection is evolving and so are we’.
Meta, derived from the Greek word beyond, symbolising that there is more to build.
A new brand system is applied
Creating a brand system that is able to hold under the different segments. The social media products such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, as well as any new products and future platforms.
Each product has a unique purpose and appeals to different audiences, based on culture, age, region, lifestyle, profession, et al. Therefore it is important that they are differentiated between them.
The image below illustrates some of the brands Meta currently holds and how they will probably be divided.
Brand architecture
Brand architecture is the way a company structures and presents its products to the target audience. It’s the relationship between brands within an organization and how they interact with one another.
Companies grow and target various audiences through different acquisitions and product lines, brand architecture is articulating a key structural system, helping each type of product to connect with the right audience and form perception.
It creates clarity by having a structure that achieves a robust system achieving flexibility and a system that can align and support any future plans; new lines of products, services.
There are a few strategies and methods applied to create brand architecture, each one serves a different purpose. See below.
Branded house (monolithic):
A single master brand, using one visual system. Sub-brands are differentiated by descriptors, not logos. Usually, they are easier to manage and consumers choose based on loyalty. However, it is harder to target a specific audience and their needs.
House of brands (pluralistic):
The house of brands is basically the opposite of the branded house. It detaches the master brand from any of its products. The parent company is irrelevant and ‘invisible’ to the individual products that it distributes, enabling them to even compete with each other. If one of the brands is under a crisis, the others would not be affected. With this method is easier to target desired audiences, yet it can be the most costly one.
Hybrid (endorsed):
This category allows products to be associated or disassociated (to any level) with the parent company. Usually to benefit from the visibility of the company’s parent. It can also be used in the reversed way; when a product should not be linked with another one or the company parent at all. It is the most flexible approach yet hard to comprehend and manage.
Leading independent brand and creative agency Mr B & Friends is celebrating its 16th birthday with a significant senior appointment as it embarks on an ambitious five-year growth plan.
Ellie Wilson will join the business as Managing Partner, bringing her expertise in managing high performance agency teams and building long term client relationships to Mr B & Friends.
Wilson is moving from Taxi Studios, where she worked for eight years, most recently holding the role of Operations Director. At Mr B & Friends she will join the senior leadership team and will be working with Client Services, Operations and Finance to ensure the business is in optimum shape as it eyes expansion.
Wilson’s appointment is crucial as the agency seeks to expand its presence at home and abroad to accelerate the growth of the business. Over the last 18 months, Mr B & Friends has seen a rapid increase in activity across existing client business, while securing a number of new clients including OVO, Britvic, Marsh and BMT. Increasingly working with more international clients, such as InterContinental Hotels Group and Sofidel, has ignited the agency’s ambitions to further its reach in a number of key cities.
With a host of clients already based in London, a new office there is a natural progression. This will be followed by a base in West Coast US close to the HQ of its sister company Noble, while a further presence in SE Asia is planned for 2025 to complete the trio.
Back in the South West, Mr B & Friends is due to move into a new HQ at Whitefriars in Bristol in July, offering more space for its growing Bristol team. The agency team across all departments will be offered the chance of secondments and relocation to the new locations as they are established.
The plans coincide with the agency celebrating 16 years in business. Still focused on delivering brand expertise, Mr B & Friends has attracted an enviable client roster of consumer and B2B brands seeking brand strategy, identity, communications, internal communications and creative services across some high growth vertical markets. The growth plans will see head count within the business more than double to 70 employees by 2026.
Founder and CEO Simon Barbato says, “This has to be the most exciting phase in Mr B & Friends history. We have engineered our business to deliver superb brand consultancy with creativity for ambitious clients while delivering a sustainable business model to encourage future growth. I am delighted that Ellie is joining us and will help spearhead the expansion of the business. She brings a huge amount of talent and experience in all levels of agency management, which will enable me to focus on our growth plans. The future is something we’re all excited about.”
Managing Partner Ellie Wilson added, “I’m thrilled to be joining Mr B & Friends at such a pivotal point. My conversations so far have confirmed that we’ve got an outstanding team and firm foundations in place to take on the expansion. I’m looking forward to playing my part and ensuring we all enjoy the journey.”
Rita will talk about how she has found brand thinking not just fundamental to successful businesses of all shapes, sizes and stages, but also how you can apply it to yourself to ensure that you are as valued and influential as you can be. She will:
Tickets are priced at £50+VAT for BCI members and £75+VAT for non-members which includes a buffet lunch so there’ll be plenty of opportunity to catch up with old friends and make some new connections too.
If you’d like to join the BCI network, read all about becoming a BCI member here.
As a high-profile business leader, acclaimed brand guru and sustainability champion, Rita is able to inspire organisations of all kinds to find new ways to succeed in an uncertain world.
She has been called ‘Brand guru’ by the Financial Times and ‘The doyenne of branding’ by Campaign magazine. Retail Week commented that she is ‘A fabulous ambassador for business’. Alongside her board chairing and non-executive roles, Rita is a writer, keynote speaker, conference chair & practitioner on all aspects of brands, branding and business leadership.
Her career has included being a Vice Chair and Strategy Director at Saatchi & Saatchi, as London CEO and Chair at the global brand consultancy Interbrand and as co-founder of BrandCap. She is now a portfolio chair and non-executive director on the board of businesses including John Lewis Partnership, Nationwide Building Society and Ascential plc. Previous boards have included ASOS, Dixons Retail plc, Emap, Bupa and Populus Group. Her non-profit boards have included WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature), the UK Sustainable Development Commission and Green Alliance. She was recently appointed Chair at Forum for the Future, the leading international sustainability organisation. In the 2014 New Year’s Honours List, Rita was awarded a CBE for services to the creative industries.
Rita is a regular columnist and media commentator, as well as author of ‘The Future of Brands’ and two editions of The Economist book ‘Brands and Branding’. Her new book on leadership ‘Love your imposter’ was launched by Kogan Page in September 2020.
Bristol-based brand consultancy, Mr B & Friends, has unveiled a vibrant new look for cyber security and Cloud IT specialist Kocho, bringing the two established businesses together under one name.
Kocho is the company formed from managed services provider TIG, and identity and cyber security experts, ThirdSpace. Backed by the private equity house, BGF, they’ve come together to harness the benefits of their separate strengths, making them a leading provider specialist for Microsoft Security and Cloud Technology. The distinct combination of expertise will enable Kocho to help grow ambitious companies in a truly sustainable and secure manner.
The brand has been designed with transformation front of mind, and the name ‘Kocho’ comes from the Japanese word for butterfly. The logo features a crest-like butterfly symbol with a star symbolising the transformation and protection the new business provides its clients. The brand positioning is anchored by an organising thought of ‘Become greater’, demonstrating how Kocho enables every client, colleague, and partner to flourish.
The sector that Kocho operates is crowded, so it was vital to develop a brand that was distinctive and had clarity at its core. The entire branding system, including iconography, type, colour, photography and moving image, all ladder back to the strategy. The design system features a series of illustrated patterns and ever-changing shapes that suggest the fluid motion of wings. The tone of voice shows the humility and confidence in Kocho’s ability to deliver greatness and commercial impact at both enterprise and mid-market level businesses in the UK and beyond.
Steve Richardson, Executive Creative Director at Mr B & Friends says, “From our workshops with the client team ‘Becoming greater’ was our statement of intent. The identity and tone of the brand had to represent this, but also had to stand apart from its competitive set. What client doesn’t want to be greater today than yesterday? Huge thanks to the brave client team, who embraced this bold approach from the off.”
As part of the brand relaunch, Mr B & Friends worked on a light art launch film with Sola Lightbombing. This used Pixel stick light typography combined with real-time generation of light art both in a studio and in cityscapes. The light trails tell the story of transformation and innovation, creating a fresh way to build the Kocho narrative.
Gareth Rees Jones, Director of Marketing at Kocho says, “Mr B & Friends really captured the vision that we were trying to achieve. The new brand celebrates our people, our expertise and the outcomes that we achieve for our clients. We’re delighted to be launching our new combined business under the Kocho brand.”
Mr B & Friends has welcomed Charlotte Hoare to the team as an Account Director to bring her client services expertise to some of its newest accounts.
Having spent over a decade in London consultancies, from BBH to VMLY&R to Isobel, Charlotte brings a wealth of experience to the agency. She’s led campaigns across a range of sectors for clients such as Virgin Media, Silent Pool Gin, MS Society and Petplan, and has honed her skills in seamlessly bringing client’s visions to life. Among the notable projects Charlotte’s worked on is RSPB’s ‘Give nature a home’ five-year strategic campaign to shift the charity from solely focused on birds to a wider approach to whole nature preservation. She was part of the team for the Savills ‘With us it’s personal’ advertising campaign, designed to reposition the estate agency with a warmer approach increasing appeal to a wider audience and BrewDog’s ‘Rate Beer’ OOH activity across central and wider London.
Mr B & Friends stood out to Charlotte because of its no jargon, no bluff, no added nonsense approach. She says that she got a sense that while an efficient outfit, there was a great sense of culture at the agency and the focus on relationships appealed to her.
Charlotte says, “I came across Mr B & Friends and felt the values reflected mine, and the agency just seemed to be a great fit generally. I’m really enjoying getting stuck in.”
Based in Totnes and working predominantly remotely, Charlotte enjoys throwing ceramics and spending lots of time outdoors when she’s not at her desk. On top of effortlessly juggling multiple projects at work, Charlotte is also organising her spring wedding and daughter’s first birthday celebrations.
Simon Barbato, CEO of Mr B & Friends, says “We’re delighted to welcome Charlotte to our growing team. We’ve had a really positive start to the new year, and I have no doubt that Charlotte will help to contribute to that momentum.”
AgencyUK have announced the launch of the latest NHS public campaign which is designed to encourage people to call ‘111’ rather than ‘999’ when they have non- emergency minor conditions.
The campaign activity is aimed at high risk groups in deprived areas, those with poorer access to GP care, or people with small children, young adults or older youth, who live close to emergency departments or far from urgent care centers and without easy access to transport.
Although national awareness of the existing ‘111 help us help you’ campaign is high (of those surveyed, 98% were aware and 72% had used 111) there is still a requirement to continue encouraging consumer behaviour to change, particularly in these deprived areas.
The figures in Bristol (61% used) and 80% in North Somerset and South Gloucester is lower. NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucester CCG (BNSSG) also have targets to increase these numbers by a further 10%.
Taking a more direct, harder hitting approach is unlikely to work, and this was demonstrated following a programme of qualitative research conducted with people in these target audience groups. The agency and NHS team have developed a proposition and creative campaign that is clear and simple, showing the benefits of dialing 111 through illustrations.
“The campaign is simple in encouraging people to use 111 by showing how the service provides immediate advice and guidance for those who need help right away. The graphics can be easily understood and have been brought to life in the digital and outdoor elements created by AgencyUK.” says Dominic Moody, head of communications at NHS.
The integrated campaign leverages social media as well as traditional (OOH) and digital out of home (DOOH) formats such as buses, posters and interactive display screens.
Sammy Mansourpour, managing director, AgencyUK says “Working with the NHS is always a privilege, and as a leading brand communications agency our team have always felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility when it comes to helping improve our national services. We’ve been pleased with the media selection and KPI’s being applied to this campaign and look forward to seeing the impact it will make. The message is clear. Think 111 first.”
AgencyUK are an independent brand communications agency. The company has demonstrated significant growth over the past 12-months, contributed by the rapid expansion of their life science and healthcare portfolio. NHS is the latest major account win for the agency in the past 12-months.
It’s hard to think of a brand subject to as much controversy as BrewDog lately. A recent BBC documentary brought a fresh raft of accusations against the company – off the back of which, it has emerged, boss James Watt hired private investigators to scrutinize former employees. Here, AgencyUK’s Sammy Mansourpour digs into what brands can learn – good and bad – from BrewDog’s stratospheric rise and tumultuous second phase.
There’s only one thing that makes a brand brilliant and that is meaningful difference – meeting consumers’ needs while successfully standing out from the crowd.
Kantar and Millward Brown have been testing this out for over a decade and the numbers are in. Brands with a quantifiable meaningful difference can grow 207% faster than the rest.
Never has this been so brilliantly showcased than by BrewDog, the punk beer brand imploding in front of our eyes. But let’s look beyond James Watt, the sometimes-ridiculed book he wrote and all the reasons why BrewDog is in such a pickle. Let’s look first at what made BrewDog so brilliant.
No one can say building BrewDog was just blind luck. Look at BrewDog’s ability to define itself precisely, then talk about it. The core of its image is ‘punk’. You might think building out an anti-establishment vision based on troublemaking would be easy, but the alcoholic drinks market is highly regulated and getting a foot in the door is expensive. To dodge those rules you need to know them – particularly the ones you intend to break.
To build an establishment-challenging brand, you need mass and movement. BrewDog delivered both in spades. It quickly grew a following into a sizable community.
BrewDog seized on every challenge it faced, using them to talk about how industry titans (and regulators) leveraged legislation, introduced red tape and increased cost. This messaging made the small but growing BrewDog community feel duped and enraged. This galvanized them around the BrewDog brand and started to distance them from other beers.
With social media in hand, Watt (and co-founder Martin Dickie) were able to start a revolution, then get their revolutionaries to pay for it. Their crowdfunding investment gathered millions before private equity got involved and these investors are the same folks buying the beer.
If you read Watt’s book, you’d believe this would never end. But for anyone with a grasp of social media and a flair for stunts, this is where the lesson begins.
Harry McCann famously said that advertising is “truth well told”. But did BrewDog always stick to the truth? Some of its social media marketing has been called out as false or misleading. The promotions team pledged to plant trees for every investor and drinker of Planet Pale Ale. The land they bought reportedly remains empty and an application by BrewDog for a Scottish grant to pay for the trees has now been made public.
And with all the attacks on beer brands and the need to fight the good fight – even blowing up cans of rival products on Facebook Live – it turns out Watt invested in Heineken.
Oh, and did anyone mention the reported non-disclosure of banned additives present in BrewDog beer that may have rendered some shipments illegally imported into the US?
Through all of BrewDog’s punk rule-breaking, no one asked why the rules and regulations existed until they came crashing down around them. If they did, the media gave them little airtime.
No one seemed to adequately explain the reasons behind regulating a market and constraining companies from acting so freely. BrewDog stuck with its belief that the consequences were always minor when compared to the commercial advantages of a breach – until it was no longer possible to keep telling that story.
Building a brand that is meaningfully different is the key to success and that success can only be realized for the long term if you’re not lying about it. So perhaps authenticity is what makes a brand brilliant. But who wants an authentic brand that nobody wants?
Sammy Mansourpour is co-founder and managing director of AgencyUK.
In today’s climate, breaking out as a new brand in any industry is no easy feat – you’re often competing with hundreds or thousands of products already on the market.
And unless you’re doing something wildly innovative and out of this world – the difference between all those products (to the consumer at least) is often minimal.
Truth is, the best selling brands don’t often produce the best product, but they do usually have the best brand story.
Very quickly:
A brand story is a narrative that encompasses the history, purpose, values and vision of a brand.
Good brand stories are written with a target persona in mind and addresses all the things which matter to the customer.
By crafting a story that extends beyond the actual product, the colour of the packaging and the commercials – brands are able to build an emotional connection with customers, meaning they’re more likely to purchase from the brand and are more likely to become loyal brand advocates with a big lifetime customer values.
In fact, Harvard Business Review tells us that 64% of consumers cite shared values as the primary reason they have a relationship with a brand. And the reason they even know about these ‘shared values’ in the first place, is because of the brand’s story.
Hopefully, by now I’ve done a good job of defining a brand story and convincing you to have one both in equal measure – so here’s how to go about developing your own.
In this first step, think about what you believe in, what your big vision for the business is and how your brand might behave or make people feel if it were a person.
At this stage, you’re defining the philosophy of your brand. You obviously want to make a product that tastes great and makes people feel good, but (hopefully) there’s something running a little deeper than this, which in the branding world, we call your ‘why’.
Just like if you would pitch to an investor, allowing your customers to understand the long term value in your business and what makes your winery, distillery or brewery different, better and more special than the rest, means customers are more likely to support you for the long-term.
The most important thing to remember here is to be authentic. Consumers can sniff out a phony a mile away, so make sure you’re being realistic and accurate about what it is you’re about.
If you haven’t yet defined who your ideal customer is, then this is the obvious first step to take, before you can think about what matters to them.
There are a few ways to do this either through personas, archetypes or ideal customer avatars, and it doesn’t matter which avenue you take, as long as you answer these questions:
It all seems pretty basic, but understanding (and recording) this makes it easy to identify your customer’s pain points and the emotional factors influencing their buying behaviour.
It’s important to treat this step as a very brief and objective one. Try not to get bogged down or disheartened by what your competitors might be doing or how brilliant your aspirational brands might be.
Instead, try to pluck out common trends or themes between them. What is it about their messaging and positioning that makes them noticeable?
Do their Instagram posts make you laugh? Are their cocktail recipes perfectly non-fussy? Or do you wonder at their brilliant sustainability program every time you visit their website? These are all examples of a brand story in play and depending on your and your customer’s values can be a nice source of inspiration for step number four…
It can be helpful to start with an imaginary Venn diagram. Placing your answers from step one in one circle, and your answers from step two in the other – and the magic overlap between the two, is the backbone of your brand story – your shared values.
Cross-reference the answers between the two and piece together the commonalities between your business and your customers. Use your dot point answers to define the key elements of the brand story.
Documenting your brand story will help you, your employees and your business partners tell the story more effectively and successfully.
As a business owner, telling your brand story might be easy and come naturally to you, but as you expand and your team grows, it’s important that your employees are singing from the same hymn sheet.
By recording your brand story and encouraging your stakeholders to read it, you reduce the chance of the story being mistold and your brand misrepresented.
As every interaction with your business is an opportunity to tell your brand story, documented guidelines are a good way to make sure that this remains consistent. This is especially important if you outsource elements of your business operations to freelancers or contractors.
Now you’ve written your brand story, it’s time to tell it and how you deliver your message is just as important as the message itself, so make sure you consider which platforms/media you’re going to use. Or a better way of looking at it – which platforms and media do your ideal customers use.
In addition to advertising and digital marketing, remember to think outside the box. As mentioned earlier, every interaction a customer has with your brand is an opportunity to apply your brand story.
Think about the staff uniforms for your tasting room, the tone of voice in your returns policy on your website or the experience of your retail store. Keep this in mind for product development, too. Ensure your products align with your brand and assist each other, rather than fighting for attention or shelf space.
And while you may be the author of your story, it doesn’t mean you’re the only one who can tell it. Your employees and customers are the two most powerful advocates for your brand, so harness their storytelling power and encourage them to share your brand story.
Incorporate your brand guidelines into your employee onboarding and encourage them to understand the story, so they can share it with your customers.
Customers are often your biggest fans. Engage them by asking them to share their brand story: their experience with your brand and your drinks – this authentic user-generated content will attract like-minded customers who have seen you know how to address their pain points.
7 – Be Consistent
And finally, be consistent. If your message is inconsistent, it becomes diluted and less impactful.
That’s why the best and most effective brand stories are communicated consistently, across every channel in order to resonate with your target audience.
As a brand strategist + designer, crafting a client’s brand story is the very first step of my process. It ensures that any design or creative decision that follows is intentional, purposeful and connects with the target audience.
While building a brand story can take a little more time, it’s such an important part of the branding process and is often the difference between the success and failure of a brand design.
This article was written to give you all the guidelines, prompts and processes required to craft your brand story, but if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed or have any questions. Get in touch and I’d be delighted to help.
Jemma Adams
I’m a brand strategist, website designer and digital marketer serving unique and passionate businesses and entrepreneurs in the food, drink and design space tinybrand.co
Trends often get a bad wrap for being time-bound, fleeting designs with no substance and a short shelf-life. And while often true, it’s not always the case.
I’ve researched six growing trends in website design that are backed by strategy, science and best practices.
These trends will help you connect with your users, increase conversions and create a lasting, memorable impression that will have them coming back for more.
Whether you’re launching a brand new site or thinking about an overhaul of your current website situation, consider these six popular trends and cross-reference them with the needs of your users to see if your site can deliver them even more value.
Multilayered content is an ideal way to achieve a visually complex and interesting design while still achieving coveted minimalist, clean and simple style.
While conversion goals may differ from site to site, there are always a few common ones; to generate leads, sell products or capture data. And, in order for a website to achieve these goals, it needs to keep the user engaged and interested long enough for that to happen.
An easy way to engage a user is to add complexity and interest to the visual components of the design. By layering images, text and graphic elements, you’re not only creating an engaging page design, but you’re also able to showcase more content within a smaller space (like a phone screen, for example.)
Delights are a staple of good user experience (UX) and they come in two forms; Surface & Deep. In essence, a ‘delight’ is an element or interaction which adds to the overall experience of a website.
Surface Delights could include animations, movements, gestures, sounds or even snippets of micro-copy to inject personality, humour and interactivity into the user experience to make it more memorable.
While Deep Delight is holistic. It’s the overall experience of the site and is only achieved once all the users’ needs are met. Think about the feeling of flowing through a website, finding exactly what you’re looking for and then checking out with a few simple clicks — that’s Deep Delight.
We’re all now such experienced website users, that we expect such delights without even realising it. And so, as designers and website owners, we’ve reached a point where delights (both surface and deep) are now necessary to meet users’ needs and habits.
Perhaps it’s wrong to call this one a trend. As a core element of good user experience, delights really will become integral to all and all good website design, in 2022 and evermore.
If your brand can handle it, then consider elevating your website design with bold, dominant typography.
Also known as brutalist typography, this statement trend can elevate a minimalist design to a feeling of prominence, strength and ruggedness. Coupled with a simple, but strong colour palette, bold typography can exude an urban-like, metropolitan or masculine vibe.
Users connect with visual design and are able to draw conclusions about a brand from how their website looks and feels (and ultimately, makes them feel). A trend or technique like this can be a great way for brands to assert confidence in their offering and connect with their users on an emotional level, without obnoxious copy or cringe-worthy brand statements.
Two years into the pandemic, life still feels uncertain and divisive. From fashion to interiors, wherever creativity is concerned, people are seeking comfortable and familiar experiences as an opportunity to escape the chaos. Website design that feels a little more analogue and more retro can feel comfortable, relatable and nostalgic — offering soft reminders of the good old days
A big trend for imagery and typography — designers are making their websites feel nostalgic and familiar with subtle elements like retro fonts, grainy or textural filters, soft lighting or imagery with a film aesthetic.
Be sure to approach this one with caution. There’s a fine line between the beauty of nostalgia and the dagginess of dated design.
For reasons similar to those used to unpack Trend №3 — websites with bold, contrasting colour palettes are in favour. When it comes to design, colour is arguably one of the most powerful elements used to create an emotional connection, so for brands and products with emotional baggage, this can be a great way to connect with your target customers.
Not for the faint-hearted, or faint-intended, this style typically packs neon colours, deep blacks, colourful gradients and grunge-acid shapes designed to connect with millennials and Gen Z users. A bold trend which certainly isn’t for everyone, consider whether strong contrasting colours is going to inspire or stress your users.
A design element as old as advertising itself, kinetic typography (or animated text) is now flaunted by some of the best websites across the globe. While this can be a relatively simple design inclusion, the impact kinetic typography has on the user experience is strong and long-lasting.
Historically relying on animations, graphics or video to tell brand stories, website designers can now use the power of animated text to engage users and convey meaningful messages in a variety of forms.
Not just an aesthetic, this trend is great for engaging users and increasing valuable site metrics like Read Time, Page Views and Scroll Length. Kinetic text can grab the users attention and guide them through the page while drawing attention to important details or creating a fun/playful tone.
Although we’ve just discovered a handful of shiny, exciting and attractive possibilities for your new website, remember to be mindful of your design choices.
Great design is intentional — whether you’re animating text or layering images, always remember to think about Deep Delight and the overall experience of using your website.
Be selective about which trends (if any) you introduce into your business and make sure you’re adding value, rather than creating friction or cluttering the user experience.
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