If you haven’t opened Twitter for a couple of days, we invite you to do so now: just log onto the webpage, and look in the upper left corner. If you’re seeing the new logo for the first time, sit with it for a moment. 

This is the new phase of Twitter, one that’s moving forward without its eponymous blue bird. 

For twelve years, Twitter has been the place where people went to talk. Then Jack Dorsey left, Elon Musk took over, and the new vision for Twitter has been in play since then. A little over one year into his tenure as Twitter CEO, the first of some massive, divisive changes have rolled out – and it started before the blue bird’s departure. 

Here’s what it means for your business, and what we’re looking at for the future. 

Twitter: A Timeline

Let’s go back to the beginning. 

2006: Twitter launches and CEO Jack Dorsey sends the first tweet. 

2007: The South by Southwest conference sees a ballooning of Tweets from 20,000 per day to 60,000 per day, starting a period of cascading growth. 

2008: Hashtags are officially supported. 

2010: Twitter launches ‘promoted tweets’, kicking off its potential as an advertising platform, though it never quite catches on. 

2011: Twitter overhauls its design. 

2012: Twitter purchases Vine, a shortform video platform, bumping its rating up to 17+ in Apple’s app store. 

2013: Twitter launches Twitter Music, an app for the iPhone. 

2014: Twitter announces the release of new anti-harassment tools to combat one of its main growing issues – rampant abuse on the platform.

2015: Twitter showcases its new marketing platform partners, opening up the opportunity for marketers to target ads to specific audiences. Tweets are now seen in Google’s search results. 

2016: Vine discontinued and the Twitter Dashboard, its business app, is shut down. 

2017: Twitter launches the Explore tab, combining their trends, live video streams, search, and Moments, a way for people to get an overview of important tweets or threads. 

2018: Jack Dorsey testifies before the Senate about election meddling for the 2016 elections alongside current Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. 

2019: Twitter reveals that it has suspended 4,800 accounts linked to the Iran government. 

2022: Elon Musk takes over Twitter. 

That brings us to 2023. Here’s an overview of all the platform’s changes from the beginning of the year to now. 

January: 

• Third-party API access is revoked. This means apps and websites that relied on third-party APIs to share content to and from Twitter, such as WordPress, no longer function. (For WordPress, this was later fixed, but other third-party APIs are still inoperable). 

February: 

• Twitter aims to change its ad targeting to function like Google’s search ads. 
• Further layoffs were executed, continuing the trend from November 2022. 
• The Twitter algorithm is changed to boost Elon Musk’s personal tweets by a factor of 1000. 

March: 

• The Twitter press team stops responding to enquiries. Elon Musk announces that all press communications will be auto-responded with ?.
• Twitter releases its algorithm to the public on Github. 

April: 

• New labels are launched for state-affiliated media, which are applied to broadcasting companies such as NPR, BBC, and PBS – notably not state-affiliated. 
• Verification is now a paid service under Twitter Blue. 
• Cessation of the policy to label state-affiliated media, including for Chinese and Russian state media. 

June:

• Measures were implemented to limit the amount of tweets that could be seen per day. 

July: 

• Twitter is rebranded and renamed ‘X’.  

Is the Twitter rebrand that bad?

It’s too early to tell if it’ll be bad or good for Twitter. 

What we can say is this: 

In 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary expanded its definition of ‘tweet’ – a word in use since the 1800s – to specifically refer to posting on Twitter. When a brand has become so entrenched in daily life that it becomes part of daily conversation to the point where it introduces a new word into the lexicon, it’s powerful. Only a few brands have managed it successfully – we Google things, we retweet someone’s opinion, we check out someone’s Insta. 

We can also say this: Twitter’s recognisability as a brand is a poisoned chalice. Yes, it has the reputation of being the public town square – a place where you go to learn. A lot of historical events played out on Twitter, and people around the world had a front row seat to them via updates from verified sources. 

Think of the Ukrainian war. Think of the Black Lives Matters protests. Think of the January 6th riots on the Capitol. 

But here’s the other side of it: Twitter also has a notable reputation for being a place where content moderation is fast and loose, and harassment is particularly bad and something they’ve been struggling to control since 2015, to limited efficacy.

Rebranding to X will not necessarily remove that negative reputation – but if you’re playing the long game, it’s possible it could help. 

Now that the Twitter brand is dead, is it the end of the platform for good?

It’s possible, but it’s also unlikely. 

Social media platforms that have grown and grown to Twitter’s size and userbase have a unique selling point that other social media platforms just don’t have. The reason they’ve managed to grow so much is because of that unique selling point – and it’s what Twitter still has going for it, even with the rebrand, even with all the API changes, even with the declining interest by advertisers. 

Twitter is losing money. Twitter has always been losing money. It’s never managed to achieve the same advertising revenue as Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, or Youtube – but it’s far from being the only social media platform that haemorrhages money. Tumblr and Reddit, two of the most popular platforms, also lose significant cash.  

Elon Musk’s divisive practices have hastened the dropping user numbers, but Twitter is still functioning, Twitter still has people using it as their primary platform, and Twitter is unlikely to go away overnight. 

And that unique selling point is why: no other site does microblogging quite as well. The new ones that have cropped up – Mastodon, Bluesky, Misskey – are still too new to see whether or not they’ll be any good. 

Twitter was a very good platform for artists to advertise their products. It was a platform where journalists crowdsourced information that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. We watched elections play out on Twitter, coordinated information from countries where obtaining information was difficult. 

Twitter’s reputation was never great, but it was never any worse than other social media platforms. 

And what it had in spades was brand equity. 

With the rebrand, that recognition is gone. 

But the general consensus on the platform itself is this: whatever it’s going to be called, it’s still Twitter in their minds. 

Facebook went through something similar – although officially it’s now called Meta, people still use Facebook to refer to the company at large, and the scandals that plagued Facebook to begin with followed them through. If it is an attempt to wipe the slate clean of Twitter’s previous issues and start anew, it’s not a gambit that works well when the issues are big enough. 

What about the idea of an everything app?

Allegedly, part of the rebrand is because Twitter wants to move into becoming the Western equivalent of an everything app – similar to WeChat, in China. 

The theory is sound. Several apps do more than one thing: Tiktok, for example, allows you to show their products within the app. 

Where it might falter is in practice. 

Forget the difficulties of creating a secure payment service that will work with X. Forget the server impacts of turning Twitter into an app where you can do everything – hosting images, videos, longform content, mini apps. 

Regulators don’t want Western tech companies to know so much of your information. European privacy laws alone would slice Twitter’s everything app to ribbons. WeChat in China is a case study that might not be possible to repeat outside of China, and it’s all because of the legal ramifications of data privacy and breaking up tech monopolies. 

Beyond that, Twitter’s reputation comes back into play for this – consumers just don’t trust the app itself in its current state. To launch an everything app that can do, well, everything, there needs to be a baseline belief in the app to perform those functions well, and for Twitter, that doesn’t seem to exist. 

Twitter was the place where academics could talk about their research, journalists could speak freely, and internet users could go somewhere that wasn’t bloated down with ads and sponsors the way Meta apps were.

It has also been the place you go to to vent about small things, things that were on your mind but didn’t merit the effort of a Facebook post, things that you could complain about in peace to the global public.

That opinion hasn’t shifted, even under the Musk leadership. 

What else could happen with the rebrand?

Here’s the thing: it’s so early to tell what could happen with the rebrand that opinions vary greatly.

Let’s see what the team has to say: 

Ed

It is too early. One thing we have learned in the world of tech is to never say never. Of course, the regulatory hurdles in the way of achieving the new vision for X are significant, driven by a slumbering bureaucratic giant that the EU keeps ballooning into. Do I agree with wiping out billions in brand equity by killing the Twitter name? I find that a hard one to swallow in these early days. Will the brand X ever rebuild that equity? It really depends on how users take to the platform if they steadily increase the time spent in-app. That’s up to the unpredictable misfiring of Musk’s brain and the team he appoints to steward the brand and the product as it boldly goes where other apps have gone before. And knowing who is behind it, the outcome will either be a catastrophic failure we’d enjoy watching from a distance or a success we couldn’t possibly have predicted. As always, it’s up to us to keep an open mind and a watchful eye. This way we retain the agility to make the best of either situation.

Lisa

This really doesn’t affect me, I’ve never really paid attention to Twitter. But, looking at both logos side by side, the new one looks much less welcoming. I’m wondering if that’s a reflection of a new policy. As a completely unbiased outsider I’m interested to see how this is going to pan out, changing the brand at this stage after you’ve built so much equity could go either way, and it’s probably going to be wildly entertaining whichever way it goes.

Kim

I think we need diversity online as much as we need it in the real world. With Elon Musk taking over so many organisations that we use frequently and practically live on, I feel like that has the effect of flattening out the overall feel of these brands and our online experience. I think Twitter as a brand, with its cute blue bird, represented something that still had some form of diversity in it. With the ‘X’ rebrand and its echoing of so many other tech-obsessed brand imagery and ethos, I feel like it’s taken what Twitter might stand for for a lot of people, and chucked it out the window. With any kind of monopoly, we run the risk of homogenising the type of messaging and voices we’re exposed to, and instead of providing a platform for diversity it becomes one where only those opinions that fit within the brand’s idea will be favoured. Think of Disney and its hold on the media we consume; it has shaped a lot of our thinking in a way that’s probably more vanilla, conservative, and binary than it is (or should be) in real life.

Luke

This is definitely not how I pictured the Twitter brand meeting its downfall. Even though it had its struggles, it was an incredibly valuable resource and entertainment hub, especially with the improvements that were being made in recent years to the way misinformation was being handled. It formed part of a very select group of brands that had their name turned into a verb – I Xeroxed, Googled, Hoovered, Tweeted. I see this as the definitive end of this social media platform as we know it, and X is going to be a different beast altogether. But the beauty of the internet is that the real-estate is endless. The communities that inhabit it remain basically the same, and will flock from place to place like a cat fitting into different cardboard boxes. The question for businesses is, where will they flock to next if they don’t like the further inevitable changes that Musk is going to implement in the coming years?

Cam

Underneath the rebrand is a new direction for the social platform. Twitter has been a great resource for people needing to share info in situations where sharing information is throttled (like in the 2023 Turkish elections) – I’m afraid that the direction Musk is taking the platform in is diametrically opposite to this freedom of speech. 

Ernesta

The recent rebrand feels very hasty to me for a few reasons. One, it literally happened overnight without much warning. Nothing wrong with that, if it’s done well, though. Secondly, it doesn’t seem that the whole platform and processes were ready for it – the rollout of the brand seems to be lagging across platforms and devices. Three, the new logo. Using a single character from an existing font on a flat black background feels totally rushed, low-budget and quite disappointing, considering how much time, thought and effort it takes to develop a strong visual brand identity. And I have to agree with Lisa, it does not feel inviting at all. It gives that ‘taken over by the dark side’ vibe.

Andrea

I’ve followed very little at this point, and I can’t say i used twitter regularly. But, I think, we’re still looking at a logo and have not seen the overall impact of the changes that are coming to the platform. Personally, I think the biggest shock is coming from the shift from an approachable blue bird to a very ‘masculine’ X plastered on black. Can such a large platform make many drastic changes at one go? Probably not – so I think, or hope, that we are not seeing the full picture yet. For the sake of my homescreen, I hope that there’s more work to be done on the X though. 

Sam

I have never really been a Twitter user, so I don’t feel too strongly about this. I did notice that the new logo looks a lot more bland, cold, and doesn’t stand out compared to the old logo. The old logo was very distinguishable and easy to tell that it belonged to Twitter. If someone saw the new logo without knowing about the change, I don’t think they would know what brand it belongs to. I do think that rebranding is giving them a presence in the press and gets people’s attention because it will be talked about. Even though it might not be positive awareness, it is awareness, nonetheless. However, once the talk about this shift blows over, their equity might continue to decline, especially with the recent introduction of Threads. Ultimately, I think it might be too soon to forecast the direction of Twitter’s future. 

Thomas

I find it hard to believe Musk’s goal of making X the WeChat of the West will come to fruition. WeChat is notoriously used as a tool for spying on the Chinese by the government, something that will encounter a lot of resistance on our side of the world, especially with the EU’s stringent personal protection laws. Besides that, the conglomeration of all aspects of services offered by WeChat could never fly in the West with competition and anti-market-dominance laws.

Ranson

Look, Twitter has always been kind of THE place for a bit of craziness (Degeneracy is a strong word, although I wanted to use it), however, it has always been the place for news, whistleblowers, leakers and entertainment. I used to use it to get information about things before Youtube, Instagram and the news could report about it. I figure that that specific use will still not stop. 

Like Ed said, the change is ultimately unpredictable. The same person who made this decision made Paypal and Tesla into the giants they are today. So it could kind of make sense to wipe Twitter as a whole. But as Luke said, it became a verb, it’s a very exclusive and strong brand equity that’s hard to compete with. To say that they’re venturing into the deep is an understatement. My opinion is that the whole decision will be beneficial for reputation, however, it will bear fruit in the far future, which may be too late because of Tiktok and their increasing influence.

What does this mean for businesses?

At this not much. Could Twitter become the next hot thing in business advertising? Eh. Its purpose as an everything app sort of precludes the idea that you can use it for advertising, and while it’s trying to package something of LinkedIn in its new direction, Twitter is probably going to remain fundamentally Twitter. 

That doesn’t mean it’s bad for business. It just means you might need a different way of approaching how you use Twitter – and that’s fine. 

Twitter’s not going anywhere yet. We think it’s not going to go anywhere for a long time, rebrand notwithstanding. After that – who knows? The story’s changing quickly. 

But we’ll be keeping up with it. This kind of shift doesn’t happen often – and if Twitter really does succeed in changing to an everything app, it could definitely open up avenues for a new kind of marketing. 

For now, it’s time to watch and wait. 

The post RIP, Twitter, or the future of X appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

New tools have come and gone and the way we think of design has, while zigging and zagging, remained consistent over millennia. From the first tools and temples to the cities designed by the Greeks and the Romans and the Mayans, we have endeavoured to keep a healthy balance between form and function to solve the problems that surround us.

The printing press did not change the way we think about reading but it did give reading to the masses. A single new ‘design’ gave way to widespread literacy, changing the world and arguably leading directly to the internet.

But the longer answer relates to how we engage with design. It deals with the way the new tools are heading our way and how these could result in a significant shift in the way we perceive our roles in the design process.

Design thinking is expanding in scope

Design is a term with an immense scope. From drug design to graphic design, from residential interiors to Mars rovers, and from movie sets to fashion design, designers the world over apply their knowledge and the principles of good design to coming up with the stuff that shapes our world. All of these areas of practice are already making use of AI assistance. We have been successful in training machines to take on the problems that are too big for us to solve and to leverage huge computational power into solving the issue for us.

This is not new thinking. When we ran out of the limitations of our arms and legs, we designed and built the machines that carved out the industrial revolution. We could build taller structures, make more stuff and do so quickly, travel faster and farther, and in general unshackle ourselves from the physical limitations of our species.

Now, with AI taking a shape that more of us can use and understand, we are taking the next logical step and reaching beyond the limitations of our minds.

AI has been around for a while

AI is not new and it has been in use for a relatively long time in tech terms. If you use banking, social media, air travel, even the power grids in more advanced countries, you have been making use of neural networks with machine learning ability. The most efficient and hard-working systems that silently make our lives easier and more convenient are running some form of artificial intelligence but we are not able to look under the hood and notice.

What’s changed is that we can now ‘talk to’ an AI and get it to do our bidding. You’ve probably heard of DALL-E – the first image generator that we could speak to using plain English and that would generate images in a matter of seconds. A few months later it was the time for ChatGPT to make waves.

AI tools are more accessible than ever

But there are many, many more examples of AI-powered tools that are available to us, most of which have the ability to perform a single function very well. The easiest to get to grips with are the tools that exist as a subset of tools we use every day.

Take all the new neural filters that are inside Photoshop, or the integration of ChatGPT within Notion and Bing, the way photography stock libraries are giving access to generative image AI services, and other examples of the ready availability of AI that’s already making our lives easier.

There are also the useful tools that are making our workflow quicker and easier, the apps that take the repetitive or the boring and just make it happen while we’re doing other things. Designs.ai, Adobe Sensei, UIzard, Sketch2code, and all the apps out there that put a machine learning system at your disposal to automate the drudgery are there to give our minds better things to do. One could argue that these tools should and will become more pervasive as we apply our minds to really creative work.

Shifting behaviours

From a design perspective, there are more creative tools out there that are changing the way we work and, sometimes, the process with which we reach creative choices. Take using Midjourney or ChatGPT as a sparring partner, as a tool with which you can share ideas and dump the contents of an absurd idea onto to see what comes out. This is a behavioural shift. We previously ‘edited’ these ideas and then shared them with our peers. We pitched writing prompts, shared early sketch work, showed prototype models, sent over advanced drafts of a research paper… usually when it got to a point where we were seeking affirmation of our thinking more than anything.

Of course, doing so with an open mind, and selecting the people who we consider like-minded, made the process an integral part of the creative journey. Most design adds onto the work of our peers or of those who came before us.

Machines don’t judge, don’t get tired…

In the case of using AI as a member of the creative team, there is no need for affirmation, there is no fear of exhaustion or rejection or judgement – one can simply dump their intentions on whatever tool is available and see what comes out at the other end. Many times, it’s rubbish. Sometimes it’s predictable. But there are those times when the AI misfires in a way that is genuinely inspiring and this is where the magic can happen. At its least useful, it shortens the delay between thought and execution. And when we see it at its best it is a beautiful synergy between human and machine that creates what we’re already calling art.

This has been seen across the world of design. The impossible architecture, fashion, urban contexts, graphic art, and photography that is being created by the sudden rise of the AI artist is already an inspiration. It sows fear in those afraid of change but, to those with a grasp of the way the world works, it is a source of inspiration and imagination.

Work with the tools, not against them

The best work out there is being created by those who have taken to the tools like a fish takes to the sea and they have learned how to wrangle these unpredictable, often infuriating tools into submission, coaxing beauty out of the right combination of seed images and text prompts.

Once again, this is not new. Given the same paintbrush used to paint the Mona Lisa, I will still create a terrible stick figure. The best design has never been about the tools. It has always been about the brains that put the tool to task.

This time around, it’s a more complex and almost literally a more cerebral set of tools we’re dealing with so the knee-jerk reactions will be stronger. But it doesn’t change the way we think about design. It changes the way we integrate with the tools. And the sooner we realise that it’s up to us to make our silicon-based progeny help us create our best work, the sooner we will get to sharing it with the world.

The post 2023 is the year of AI. Could it change the way we think of design? appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

AI is going to take our jobs. AI is a bubble. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is just around the corner. AGI will never happen.

In reality, there is a little truth in all of the statements being made about AI but neither can be completely accurate because, like every industry caught in a frantic rush of development, it is impossible to see where all the pieces will land.

The AI space is vastly unpredictable

Even when the pieces land, the landscape will shift. AI isn’t a destination. It is a journey that our species will forever be intertwined with. We didn’t stop inventing machines when the Industrial Revolution had blown its last puff of steam. We kept inventing and aggregating. It’s unlikely that the inventors of the steam engine would have predicted Boston Dynamics and their robotic dogs but we can trace the lineage from one to the other.

Perhaps even more pertinent is the nature of the industry and the complex web of moving parts that it encompasses. Medicine, finance, search, advertising, aviation, energy, blockchain, imaging… the list of activities impacted is multiplied by the number of technologies being developed by all the established tech companies, universities, startups, and even individuals to leave us with so many moving parts that we can’t really nail anything down.

To add another layer of unpredictability, we must not forget that we are dealing with an intelligence. It keeps surprising us and bewildering is as we develop it. The idea of a predictable or explainable AI continues to largely elude us. While we know what we ask of an AI and can see what results it gives us, the inner machinations of deep neural networks that we have developed is too complex for us to understand. Add to this the “oh shit!” notion that we are using AI to develop better AI and it should cause us to pause for a moment before deciding that we know what’s next.

If there is one certainty, it is that this industry will keep surprising us.

Let’s look at jobs. As horrible as it sounds, some jobs are almost immediately at risk. And these are the ones, quite predictably, that most commonly resemble the tasks that the newly emerging AI models perform so well. But first, we need to have a shared understanding of what AI we’re referring to.

So what’s an AI in this context?

Let’s for a moment qualify what we mean by an AI.

An intelligence can be described as any entity that has the ability to choose a better outcome from a possible list of outcomes. The more intelligent this entity is, the more outcomes it can choose from and the better equipped it is to pick the best possible one. Using this model, an ant is not as intelligent as a mouse, and a mouse is not as intelligent as a human.

Humans have a broad spectrum of intelligence types – the same person can ride a bicycle in a city, write a novel, peel an orange, and flirt with another human using subtle, non-verbal cues. And the same human can generalise intelligence very quickly. We only need to burn our fingers once to know to avoid all flames, no matter what the source of the fire is.

Artificial Intelligence and the neural networks they run on, at least the ones we have access to today, work differently. They take a huge amount of training to generalise knowledge. Tesla have billions of miles of training on their self-driving car models to approach a reasonably good driving AI while it takes a human a few hours of lessons to achieve the same ability.

And they have a narrow spectrum of intelligence. The AIs at our disposal are really, really good at one thing. They are far superior to any human at that task but that’s all they know.

Armed with this knowledge, we can make a few assumptions about what tasks we will be passing on to AI or at least working with AI to help us do our job much better.

AI will help us do our jobs (and relieve us of annoying ones)

Let’s take a day in the life of a content writer or a designer. The day is usually split into many different ‘jobs’ or tasks. There’s some time dedicated to research, some time dedicated to thinking and putting ideas together, and some time devoted to actually creating something new. But there are also parts of the day that are relatively repetitive – the kind of tasks that we do without really needing to think too hard.

Let’s say a beautiful piece of artwork has been created. Now it is time to resize it to fit a pretty standard set of assets.

Or a wonderfully crafted blog post has been written and now it’s time to summarise it into brief captions for a handful of different social media platforms.

Both of these can be offloaded from our mind and given to a machine that has learned how do one of these tasks and to do it quite well. It’s been trained, by assigning weights to successful outcomes, to perform in a way that we like best. It is equipped to learn our preferences and to keep working that way. So, both of these creatives can work side-by-side with an AI and spend the time they’ve saved just enjoying their lives.

Now if there is a person whose job it is to do just the task that’s repetitive and that we would rather give to a machine to do, then that person’s job can be replaced by an AI. This is not to say it will, but it is possible.

But let’s take a plumber. They come home and troubleshoot the most bizarre of faults that we, messy humans, create in our own homes. They use their experience, their tools, their hands, and their ability to take instant decisions on the most practical outcome to get the job done and restore order and harmony in our homes.

Carry this over across all jobs that require skill and we can see that these jobs are safe for now. It will take us a while to implement the broader kind of intelligence needed to do these jobs and to build the robots it takes to give this general intelligence a useful corporeal form. To be more precise, the tech we need to build this robot probably exists, scattered around industries and intellectual property licenses, but it would cost as much as the GDP of a small nation to put one unit together and that’s not good business. For now.

It’s the mid-level white-collar jobs that are at stake.

Wherever there are groups of people in a bullpen doing what is mostly repetitive work that can be passed onto an automated system with a narrow but deep intelligence, the likelihood is that the populations of these bullpens will be the first to start thinning. Whether this is a good thing or not is up to your personal ethical standpoint and the subject of a significantly deeper discussion than this brief blog can go into.

A good point of departure is to think of the fate of the ecosystem around horse-drawn cabs at the dawn of the popularity of the motor car and work your way up from there.

We’re all coders

For a long time – meaning for all the time that computer code existed and all the way until a few months ago – programming a computer to do your bidding was the reserve of the coder, the software engineer, the guys and girls who knew languages that were esoteric to the rest of us. Now, we can address some of the most powerful computers out there by just typing a sentence into a chat box. In essence, every time we ask a chat-enabled AI for something, we are writing a little single-serve app and asking it to do our bidding. The more creative we are, and the more complex the task, the more useful and productive is the result of our interaction.

This means that natural language is already the de facto programming language. And as the AIs available to us get even more powerful, the need to use the programming languages of old (they’re so last week) will dwindle into obscurity. If you’re a sub-par coder, you’d better watch out because there’s a grandma out there doing a better job than you are and all she had to learn was how to write in English.

Symbiotic relationships are desirable

When we think of symbiotic relationships we usually go to that bird that eats the insects on a crocodile’s back as an example. The bird is fed and the crocodile isn’t itchy so both live quite happily. It’s an old definition of symbiosis but for the sake of this article we can put up with eye-rolling of biologists.

The happy relationship we’re referring to is the one between carbon-based lifeforms (us) and silicon-based brains (Artificial Intelligence).

The abilities of the systems that are available to us are quite staggering. They far outstrip the ability of any one person because they have been trained on gigantic models, huge data sets that represent the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of humans. They run on GPUs (the computers that power AI) that just love parallel processing and do so at outrageous speed. This means that, unlike us, they think of multiple things at the same time and do so thousands of times every second.

The highest ideal is, therefore, a human-machine tandem. A carbon-silicon creature that thinks with the value system and ambitions of a human and does so at the speed of a machine, drawing on a data set that is much broader than any amount of swotting for exams can achieve.

Think back to the industrial revolution. A lot of back-breaking work done by humans was replaced by machines that didn’t suffer and that could be significantly stronger than any one human. One man can carry one brick for so many metres but a steam engine can carry many, many bricks for as long as you can feed it coal.

What you want to be in that situation is able to drive the train or perhaps to repair it.

It takes skill to get the most out of any device, and AI assistants are a perfect embodiment of this maxim. Consider a camera. The same camera in the hands of an experienced photographer and in the hands of a complete novice will not produce the same photos. Give me the full set of paintbrushes that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling with and I will produce an unholy mess that no pope would bless.

Embrace the race

Leaps in technology follow a pattern that echoes the one that came before. We’ve seen figures that show how long it took for radio to reach 80% of households and how that time was much shorter for TV, and even shorter for mobile internet.

And there is a pattern in the narrative, too. Early adopters tout a new tech as a panacea, gilding the advance with an unrealistic set of expectations of what it will do. Laggards and those afraid of change are vocal in their objections, with a handful of versions of ‘this tech will never catch on’ or ‘this tech is evil and should not be allowed’. While both positions are heartfelt, neither is entirely true of almost any innovation.

Photography purists are bemoaning the fact that some artists won photography competitions and immediately after they did, they admitted they’d created the images using Midjourney. What they’re angry about is that they didn’t have the ability to discern the difference themselves. ‘AI art isn’t art’ is an echo of the reaction that artists who had honed their skill at oils on canvas had when photography was invented. They argued that ‘photography isn’t art’ because photographers hadn’t bothered learning how to use a paintbrush. If an inkjet print of a photo fetches a couple of millions at the better galleries, why would an NFT of AI-generated art not do the same?

Midjourney won’t be replacing Saul Leiter’s colour work but it can already create passable street work that, at a glance, is coherent and convincing.

It is up to every one of us to land on the side of this story that is committed to history. A sensible place is to embrace the race, to get acquainted with the immense potential that these emerging technologies have to offer while being acutely aware of their limitations. This allows us to stretch the tech to its maximum, harnessing its power to make our lives easier and the output of our work even better. It also keeps us from falling into the trap of unrealistic reliance on a tool that has its inherent limitations.

Once again, this is an echo of past wins and losses with new tech. The ones who said new tech will never catch on died like Kodak did. The ones that put far too much faith in new tech died like so many of the tech startups at the dawn of the internet. The ones that embraced change and pivoted are still doing what they set out to do. We don’t think of IBM as International Business Machines any more but that’s what they are and they remained true to purpose. From cash registers when those were relevant to desktop PCs and laptops and all the way to Watson, they weren’t married to a specific technology but considered their purpose as delivering the machines that ran the business of the day.

We speak about being true to purpose at every opportunity. We also speak about business agility until someone tapes our mouths shut. But they are two maxims that have historically led to robust, sustainable business models.

Opportunity and agility

Opportunity lies in what you are already doing for your customers. Agility means you can remain valid to them, no matter what changes happen around you. Having your purpose clearly in mind means that you can be valid for as long as it takes us humans to evolve into a different species and that will take a while.

This means that to stave off redundancy, we need to be absolutely sure of what we are giving our customers. Let’s take Amazon as an example. They offer low prices, a wide variety of goods, and rapid delivery. Three fundamental pillars that humans will always want. In the words of Jeff Bezos:

“I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’

And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two – because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection.

It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ [or] ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible.

And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now.

When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”

This could be one interesting approach about your business to keep in mind in the face of a sea of uncertainty: What’s going to be constant in your space over the next ten years? What fundamental human need do you serve? Therein lies your opportunity and it takes all the agility you can muster to dance to the changing landscape and keep your operation relevant.

What should we be doing about AI?

If there is something we’ve learned about tech it is to never say never. ‘Never’ stems from fear of change. It is a wholly unrealistic standpoint and this is more true today than ever. The money pouring into silicon that can think is staggering. The parties at play mean business – quite literally. The quicker we accept and move ahead at the right pace the better. You don’t want to be the company that said “We don’t need to be on Facebook because it will never catch on.” Neither do you want to be the investor who put all their eggs into MySpace. But you do want to watch this space with a healthy balance of caution and optimism. Caution about the unrealistic claims and optimism about what machine learning systems can bring to your business.

If you’re recruiting in areas that are repetitive, consider investing in tech instead because automation of anything we humans do more than once will come sooner than we think. This isn’t new – automation has been around for almost two centuries now – but now it takes a deeper meaning. It goes beyond a simple ‘if this then that’ and delves into repetitive decision-making within narrow or specialised fields, especially when this thinking involves drawing on an overwhelming dataset.

Whatever your area of practice, there are Machine Learning systems being developed or already deployed, albeit at varying stages of maturity. Seek them out. If they appear underdeveloped or the results are as yet sub-par don’t dismiss them. Use them for inspiration. Riff on them. Perhaps more importantly, learn about them while they’re still embryonic and allow your learning curve to naturally grow with the tech.

When those who have taken the option to wait for some unspecified time in the future to figure out where the dust will settle, you want to be miles ahead. You want to have found the best way for silicon brains to do your bidding. The prosthetic superpowers we were promised in sci-fi narratives since Jules Verne put pen to paper are finally within reach. We’d be fools to leave them to others.

All images were created using Midjourney.

Here’s a little exercise. If you’ve gone through the cycle of being amazed at what ChatGPT 3 (and now 4) can do and then realised that it’s writing is completely devoid of humanity, read a paragraph of this blog at random and try and spot what it is that makes you think it was written by a human and not by ChatGPT. Put a reminder in your calendar for one year from the day you read this. On that day next year, look up a handful of blogs and do the same. Odds are you won’t be able to make this distinction any more.

The post AI have no idea what’s coming, but it’s coming appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

94% of the first impression any client gets about a brand website comes from web design. 

Immersive imagery. Playful shapes. Moving elements. 

Web design has come a long way from the flickering, pastelly brightness of the nineties, the tiny-text minimalism of the early 2000s, and the sleek rebrandings of the late 2010s. We’re looking at websites now that fulfil a function far more than just a place to park your brand and hope for the best: we’re looking at websites that exist on their own merit as an essential pillar of your brand’s personality. 

This is not new. 

What is new is this: we have social media platforms that now struggle to maintain the same level of engagement as they did previously. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok are all inundated with their own issues, and so a greater proportion of brands are turning to older ways of communicating with their consumers. 

That means websites. It means forums. It means web design. 

For 2023, we’re going to see more websites. 

Here’s what they’re going to look like.

What’s here to stay: 

Vanillafication 

Some people might not have a fully-kitted out desktop or laptop computer. 

But they will have a phone. 

Websites that prioritise clean, effortless aesthetics that load fast and look good are poised to see an even greater boost as consumers’ shrinking attention span means they will pivot away from any brand website that takes ages to load on the device they use the most: their mobile phone. The age of instant gratification and hyper-speed responses is only giving rise to faster websites, and in 2023, speed is going to be an increasingly important element in web design. 

Inclusion through typography

2022 showcased some excellent advances in typography: from 70s-inspired curls to user-set sizes, typography gained new importance as a unifier across all capabilities. Adaptable colour schemes, alt-text, keyboard navigation, and captions will see a greater focus in 2023 as companies strive to create a more inclusive internet experience for everyone. 

The Return of Experimental

Web design can be fun. 

In 2022, websites that introduced an element of enjoyment to consumers did well, and in 2023, it won’t be any different. Bold colours, beautiful typography, and stunning animations still draw significant attention, and with the growing return to the nostalgic, websites in 2023 can really benefit from turning the clock back to move forwards. 

Trends 2023

It’s not all about the past. 

2023 is looking forward to a bright future. 

Here’s some of the highlights. 

1. Hanging a(round)

Sharp, angular lines aren’t going anywhere. The days of brute minimalism are still on us. 

However, more and more platforms are opting to take their sharp edges away and replace them with squovals, squircles, and rounded corners. Google and Youtube have already hopped onto the circular see-saw, and with Google and Youtube settled as two of the platforms used daily, we’re likely to see this trend cropping up in other websites sooner rather than later. 

2. Micro-interactions

We’ve already mentioned micro-movements. 

This is a step beyond that. 

Consumer attention spans are growing shorter. Their focus is narrower. 

The web is huge, noisy, and chaotic, and it’s only getting more so as brands try and grab hold of as many consumers as possible – and they’re trying to do so by injecting their websites full of character and expression. 

Beautiful imagery. Text that sings. 

Animation.

A little animation goes a long way towards connecting a brand and its audience. Throw in ‘hidden’ animations – ones that only appear when the consumer interacts a certain way with the website – and you can definitely see repeat visits from your closest fans. 

According to Andrea, our lead designer, “gratifying animations can give users a micro-dopamine kick”, keeping them coming back to your website for the pleasure as much as the product. However, it’s important that all your animations don’t slow down the way your website loads. In 2023, speed is still the biggest factor for website success, and clunky, slow-loading sites that look beautiful will not benefit from any micro-interactions added to the site – no matter how expressive they are. 

3. Interactive gradients

Whether you’re a fan or not quite sold on gradients, their presence in 2023 is undeniable: not only will we see more static gradient design, but websites that want to add movement to their site without limiting their loading speed may opt to add warping gradients to their page as a form of expression. For sites where speed is the greatest concern, adding animated gradients and shifting gradients is the best of both worlds: you’ll add character to your web design without limiting what your web page can do. 

4. Lazy Loading

Think of your website as a book. 

Your user can only look at one page at a time. Lazy loading is a way of making sure that that page – the only page that they’re looking at – loads up fast. The rest can come later. 

Does it matter in the long run? It does if you’re a site with a lot of content to go through, particularly if that content is imagery, animation, or video. Your consumers only have milliseconds to decide whether or not they want to stay on your webpage long enough for it to make an impression, and lazy loading will keep those precious milliseconds focused on the things that matter: the content that’s drawing your customers in.

5. Reassuring Reality

The web is a global platform. 

Some days, there is more bad news than good news to read about. 

Web design can help with that. Keeping your web design light, your typography calm, and your users in control is a way of combatting the growing cynicism of the web – and no, it doesn’t have to be happy. People who go on the internet are used to having very little control over their viewing habits: from GDPR to hiding the unsubscribe button in typographic loopholes, hostile web design to keep people pinned to the page or the brand is not new. 

But it’s no longer the norm. 

Calming calls to action. Visible controls: unsubscribe, increase the text, remove all tracking. 

Andrea says, “the web has the duty of making its audience a little calmer, but it’s not about whimsical, on-the-nose, super-happy illustrations or animations: that’s a sign of cynicism. But we’ll see the trend of letting users know that they are in control.”

6. AI-bstract imagery

AI-generated art sparks a lot of opinions on both sides of the argument. 

But it definitely has its place in web design in 2023. 

Partially, it’s because we’re still in the early stages of refining AI art generation. Partially, it’s because it’s an innovation to the art world that has opened up access to creation to people who don’t have the technical training for art or design. 

Either way, AI art has a distinctive uncanny-valley style to it that web designers can use to their advantage. From strange proportions to questionable colour choices, AI-generated art can be an interesting stylistic choice for brands that want to set their opinion down on a controversial topic – and for those not in the know, it’s setting a style that can quickly set them apart from the rest. 

7. AI Know You

Your online experience is unique to you. What you watch, what you read, and what you look for is going to vary – and AI can bring it all to the forefront. 

What AI can do is still in its infancy. AI can be taught to create experiences that change depending on the person who views the advertisement, but it will take time before it’s ready to make these changes. 

DALL-E was a taster of what can happen when AI is made available to the public. 

Now we can build on it. 

Andrea says, “the next step for AI is to have it actually create on-demand virtual experiences: for example, Google knows what I like and what I don’t like, and tailors my advertisement based on that knowledge. Tone of voice, imagery, vocabulary use – even pop culture references – can all be tweaked to create content on the fly.”

8. 3D Dreams

In 2021, a living billboard caught the attention of pedestrians in Shinjuku. In 2022, more animated billboards took over public spaces: Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, Shenzhen. 

Websites will see more of the same: images that seem superimposed on your screen depending on how you tilt your phone. Images that follow you. Text that seems to stand apart from the rest. While the technology is relatively new, consumers are already used to images that stand out as larger than life, and careful use of 3D imagery can only add to an immersive experience. 

9. Frasurbane

This is not a new trend – but it’s taken on new life in the latter half of 2022. Initially a 90s interior design trend, Frasurbane is all about beige and earth, softened elements that focus on muted colours and larger-than-life fonts. With the nineties and Y2K aesthetic already drawing focus to the possibilities of the past, it’s no surprise that Frasurbane is coming back as a design style – or that it lends itself so well to so many different brands. Add in the sudden turn towards natural and earthy design, and Frasurbane can inspire a lot of comfort to consumers looking for a brand that speaks to them. 

 10. Claymorphism

Life, larger: it’s a key component of design thinking in 2023. We’ve already mentioned 3D imagery, shifting gradients, and micro-movements. 

Here’s another. 

Claymorphism. 

Think of the corporate design aesthetic from a few years back: the rounded shapes, the featureless faces. Now, make it 3D. 

Claymorphism is pastel. Claymorphism is rounded. Claymorphism has depth and shadow, and it looks like it’s moving when you look at it. Web design in 2023 is seeking out movement and colour, and claymorphism is the best of both worlds: an aesthetic that both appeals and inspires. 

11. Memphis Design

Here’s another blast from the past. 

Memphis design originated in the 80s: the decade of cartoons, bright pops of colour, and repeating patterns. However, it’s not quite the same as what we’re used to seeing: it’s evolved into a sleeker, sharper version of itself where the colours are deeper, the contrast sharper, and the choices made more deliberate. 

According to Sorina, “Memphis is much more than just a design trend, it breaks the typical norm and encourages freshness, creativity, and uniqueness through the design. Also, it motivates boldness and bravery, not just in design but in life, and reminds us that our time on this earth should be fun. Thus, it can actually help you deliver the best impression.”

2022 had plenty of reasons for us to stay understated. 

2023 will not be the same. 

12. Visible borders

For something completely different: realism. 

But not for imagery. 

Borders. 

Websites exist in a virtual space, and that is an unavoidable fact. However, adding borders irons the website down flat, giving it an easier, smoother look for the easily-scattered consumer. The shrinking attention span we mentioned earlier? It’s aided well by borders and shapes that guide the eye along. 

A lot of what happens on the internet doesn’t feel real to us. Borders are a way to help combat that unrealism and make the viewer more present. 

Conclusion

For 2023, we’re looking at movement and our childhood, up in lights.

Design is past and present and future.

The trends we mentioned today aren’t the only trends you’ll see in 2023. 

With so much of the world spending a growing amount of time on the internet, it’s no wonder that the internet we see now has started to resemble what we were used to when we were young. Nostalgia is powerful. For many, the web is still a place of comfort, even with the negative press around it. 

Design trends will always reflect that. 

The post Web Design Trends 2023 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you’re not paid to do anything creative, please move along. Turn the page. Click here if you have to. This one’s not for you.

If you’re still reading, strap in for a bit of an angry ride.

How often do you see a joke on something like @designershumour on Instagram and feel like it totally describes an aspect of your day at work? The ones about being asked to design something/photograph someone/take an art commission in exchange for exposure. Or the ones about the seventy-eight rounds of changes that a client requests before they finally accept the work. And by ‘the work’ we mean a version of the original so watered down that it looks like those painting-by-numbers sheets you buy at the Van Gogh museum gift shop.

I recently saw one that struck a chord. The €500 client is the one that acts like they now own your soul, feeling free to call after office hours and to make unreasonable demands and that will pay your fees begrudgingly, often several months after they’re overdue. The €50,000 client (I know, this was on an international channel) is the one that just sends the payment and accepts the work.

This got me thinking. It’s not about the size of the account. It is about the maturity of the client. The small client hasn’t understood the value of creative while those entrusted with massive accounts usually do.

Let’s start by a rudimentary definition of what we could call ‘successful creative’. This isn’t meant to go into a dictionary. It’s meant for us to have a phrase that we can work with for understanding the context.

There is everything we are familiar with. Bread and butter. They go together and we can all see how. Then there is the totally uncomfortable and unfamiliar. This is the stuff we don’t like and don’t want to think about. The creative will take a couple of different ideas and mash them together so they retain enough familiarity for us to see a completely new link between the ideas. If the link is really great, it pushes us just towards the border of the uncomfortable. And the closer it gets, the better the creative.

But, I hear you scream, what’s familiar to me is not familiar to everyone. And what’s uncomfortable to me is not uncomfortable to everyone.

This is where the good creatives excel. They understand their audiences. They know who they’re speaking to and who they are leaving out. They refuse to dilute their messaging to the point where it becomes familiar to absolutely everyone. Because that, by definition, is not creative.

So, backed by experience, fortified by intuition, equipped with years of education, driven by the desire to create beautiful and beautifully functional communication, the creative gets to work. This means hours or days of research, sketching, writing, scribbling, finding inspiration in the least likely of places, digging into ideas that have been squirreled away for this very moment. It means losing track of lunchtime and bedtime because the right way needs more refinement. It means taking honest criticism from colleagues and peers and the humility to act upon it…

It also means coping with the gut-wrenching knowledge that if it takes a hundred ideas to get to the right place, ninety-nine of them will have to be cruelly culled. They’re your ideas and you get to kill them.

Finally, thanks to this ineffable blend of intuition and training, to the careful pirouette between fact and feeling, and to the tango that form and function so elegantly dance, the work is done and ready to be presented.

Presented to whom? This is where it gets messy.

The recipient of your creative work is the steward of the brand. They know what is brand-appropriate and what isn’t. They are also humans, with a lifetime of experiences behind them. And, more often than not, they will not take the time to approach creative objectively.

This is inevitable. Our lives are experienced subjectively. But when we’re at work we must take an amount of objectivity with us. We can’t react emotionally to management accounts even if we want to. We can’t react emotionally to health & safety regulations. We must retain the objectivity we need to think and act in the best interest of the organisation and of the brand.

The best outcome for a meeting of minds between those proposing creative and those approving of it is a piece of communication that stuns your audiences for all the right reasons – a persuasive piece of beautiful communication. It ought to look great and it ought to do the job of changing people’s minds.

This means that those approving of the work need to be comfortable with feeling a little uncomfortable. The best creative does this. Every time you see the work presented at the Cannes Lions or the stuff that does the rounds with comments like ‘this is a brilliant piece of marketing’ you should be thinking “that’s a brilliant collaboration between clever creative and brave client”. 

Because it takes two to win at this game. It takes a creative who is willing to be brave and to have the smarts it takes to produce work that will work, not just look good. And it takes a client who knows to keep their personal preferences out of things and to look at the work based on its ability to work for the brand.

A bigger logo doesn’t make communication any more effective. If you hate the colour blue it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t feature on your creative. If you’re allergic to cats they could still help tell a good story.

This is not an easy ask. It takes discipline and restraint. It takes working through the cognitive dissonance that good creative often puts forth. It takes bravery and the will to fail once in a while. It takes away the safety net that playing safe provides. 

It does lead to greatness though. It means that the brand will be known for great stories. No one remembers the brands that play safe. It also means you’ll encourage your creatives to produce even more stunning work rather than bludgeoning them into a permanent semi-coma. 

If you’re not paid to do creative and you’re still reading this you’ve noticed this one is also for you. If you’re reading this after the warning not to, it means you’re curious about breaking some rules. So be brave, be that rebel who sticks their neck out in the name of a good story that’s well told. Your brand will thank you for it and you’ll have made a creative happy and fulfilled. And we’d have postponed this call to arms for another day.

The post Creatives, designers, copywriters, this one’s worth getting angry about appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Fair warning, this is a relatively long read. If you don’t have the time to take it all in now, you can download the PDF version of Web Design Trends 2022 for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading!

Intro to Web Design Trends 2022

Mobile apps may be on the rise, but for most brands, a consumer’s first impression of them is their website. 

The website is the oldest form of modern brand communication. It has had to contend with two decades of accelerating user requirements and design influences: Web 1.0 technologies that cannot support today’s needs, growing demands by consumers to see technology expressed differently, the expansion of social media as it interweaves with the web, and a steady acceleration of mobile-first web consumption. 

The next 12 – 18 months are going to see upheavals that are much bigger than the slight evolution that design and marketing has been seeing over the past decade. 

Web design is no different, so we’ve asked our designers to collect the research they’ve been doing to figure out what’s changing in 2022. 

This is what they found out. 

Page Speed and UX improvements

When Google released its algorithm update in June 2021, web developers were suddenly being pulled into SEO conversations in ways they hadn’t been before. Before then, they hadn’t had much to do with the SEO side of things: that was what SEO experts were for. 

But as speed and UX scores became even more crucial for any brand that wanted to rank, SEO experts started to look at the way the sites were built in much more detail, beyond the technical analysis scores and content on those sites. 

This isn’t surprising. It’s what needed to be done years ago, put off and set aside until brands had to make those changes. With website traffic decreasing, web design theory needed to catch up. 

And now we’re here: with websites loading even faster than ever, algorithms more complicated than we started with, and designers who have to contend with the changes and make it look good. 

In 2022, a lot of the trends we’re seeing are built around speed and advancing UX algorithms. Here’s a few we keep thinking about. 

At least one successful micro-metaverse

Head of Studio, Andrea, considers the metaverse one of the more interesting concepts of 2021, something that’ll carry over into 2022 – but what the metaverse will ultimately be is still an unanswered question. 

“We’ll be constantly defining what we want the metaverse to be – right now, there’s a lot of misinterpretation and question marks about the metaverse, and early adopters jumping onto this idea that doesn’t yet have a clear definition. However, by mid-2022, we’ll probably see some big corporations embrace the idea of the metaverse, possibly as a tongue-in-cheek reference, like Wendy’s Fortnight expansion. Brands that especially turn to offering digital products are going to be lured into the idea of expanding their brand into the metaverse and creating a miniature world where their brand is everywhere.”

More shared virtual experiences

Shared experiences brought people closer during the pandemic, when lockdown was everywhere and people were mostly trapped in their own homes. They created their own communities then, with whatever they had available: group chat apps that allowed you to watch videos or games that helped you connect with strangers to play. It changed the way people considered proximity and community. 

In the almost post-pandemic, that isn’t going to go away – even though it’s at odds with the ‘anonymous online’ part of the web. 

In 2020, Porter Robinson started releasing singles on his site where you essentially enter a virtual space with one other stranger and listen to the song together. 

For 2021, we had apps like Skittish, that brought events to you with a mingling of business and pleasure applications. 

For 2022, we’re going to see more of the understated, low-key shared experiences that the early internet was known for: small, simple, and intimate connections between relative strangers. 

Vanillification 

We’re now stuck to screens for an unprecedented amount of time per day, and the time we spend on websites has to matter. The idea of remote-first isn’t going anywhere; in fact, it’s getting deeper and transmuting into webpage experiences that are pared down to the essentials and can still take you places. 

Our head of design says, “Remember, your phone or laptop are essentially teleportation devices – web design needs to consciously facilitate this feeling of ‘travel in a still travel-semi-restricted world.’ And it’s not only about going to places that don’t exist.”

Sorina adds, “We’re going to see a move back to clean design, with generous white space, allowing room to breathe, and this ties in really well with Google’s recent algorithm changes and the rising demand for mobile-friendly websites – the simpler a design is, the easier it will be to make sure it works the same across devices.”

Our CEO, Rik, has a point to add to this: “As more people work remotely, it’s not only farmers who are experiencing slower connections. People who are used to working on a fibre connection suddenly have to contend with the slower internet speeds available in more remote places, and they’ll be looking for sites that don’t take ages to load.”

Inclusion through typography

Designers love their tiny text. 

In 2022, they’re still set to rule – but not entirely on their own. The remote-first modus operandi means that previously inaccessible events are open to a lot more people than before; it’s time for the web to reflect that. User-dictated type sizes and adaptable colour schemes are in, as are alt-texts, captions, and a greater emphasis on keyboard navigation, both manually and by voice. 

The Return of Experimental

Minimalist app design has a lot to answer for when it comes to modern web design, and for a good reason: as a new technology, it was imperative that digital services were easy to understand, use, and navigate. 

That was then. 

Now, we’re going back to the roots. Work has changed. The way we work has changed. 

The way we interact online is also going to change. 

Nella says, “Ever since March 2020, our lives have been turned upside down, so I don’t see any harm in having some fun with web design in the near future. Re-introducing bold and playful combinations of colour, a mix of harmonious typography, some animation and an overall sense of positivity, is definitely a step in the right direction.”

Outdoors, Indoors

Plant parenting, solitary hikes, the great outdoors: lockdown life brought a lot of people back into the fold of nature, and that’s set to keep going into 2022. Websites that use tranquil, soft tones and try to create a sense of calm aren’t new, but this is one of those underpinning trends that’s likely to cause big shifts in how we approach web design. 

Additionally, the ongoing climate crisis is a big driver for more natural web design. Nella, says, “This is also a nod towards awareness of the environment, our impact on the planet and a quick realisation of how much time we spend daily, looking at our screens. Young designers whom the industry relies upon to innovate have lived through this short period of pain, but have also been born into a warming planet. They’re hungry to innovate and they will most certainly push the market to do so as well.”

As I Do, So Do You

Behavioural design is an age-old principle that has shaped the products that surround us. It is poised to see a surge in 2022 as brands use data in novel ways for them to stand out from their competitors. Cleverly blending collected data with web design will further enhance user experiences. 

According to Sorina, “behavioural design is based around cue, action, and reward, and a lot of apps use it today, such as Headspace. Headspace’s success is largely due to its ability to keep subscribers engaged and ‘active’, using personalised daily playlists, stats, schedule syncing – and it’s successful because these are the methods that it chooses; it understands what its users find as motivational.” 

It’s All In The Thumb

The better your website is designed, the easier it is for your consumers. 

Thumb-friendly navigation is one of those things that users don’t really think about, but is going to become absolutely fundamental the more that we move into faster, more responsive mobile-first -pages. 

This also opens up the option for different scroll patterns. The web has no longer been designed solely for a mouse and a computer for over a decade, but gesture control will likely come into its own in 2022. 

Talk Out Loud

Voice-search is on the rise, and web design has to keep up. With more and more searches conducted through voice every day, it’ll be interesting to see how web design can subsume voice chatbots and virtual assistants into a part of the overall approach to web design, and what that’s going to mean in the future. 

Sorina’s prediction: more websites will integrate voice search as an alternative to traditional text search, which will also make these websites more accessible. 

90s, Baby

There’s always a place for nostalgia, and in 2022, that place is going to be the internet. With the youngest 90s baby now 22 years old, the early internet aesthetic is going to reign supreme in 2022 as actual 90s kids turn their love of nostalgia into the place where they used to spend all their time: the internet, and all its neon popup glory. Add in the popularity of lo-fi music and the TikTok filter machine, and the 90s are on their way back to the web in a big way. 

Google’s Page Experience Update

According to Andrea, this is something that’s been in the works since the internet was – and it’s finally being formalised. 

And it’s a good thing. 

The Google Page Experience update has changed the way Google’s engines parse web pages, helping them load faster and better. With an improved page experience and a quick loading time, it changes the way designers have to approach a web page. 

Websites that look beautiful but have elements that stutter or skip break the immersion of that web-page. Similarly, websites that load well but have elements that don’t look good won’t hold your attention.

Andrea says, “this is really going to positively challenge designers to be as brutal in their approach as possible. For all its openness when compared to print, web does have an interesting set of core ideals or limitations that, so far, we’ve been pretty free and relaxed about. Something as simple as keeping your choices minimal but cohesive, throughout web projects is an obvious but important start, but this puts more of an engineering spin on web design than anything else – it’s got to look great and work greater. We need to design with the end experience in mind, not just ‘does it look good’ but ‘do I even know that I’m on a website.’ If the experience is uninterrupted through smart design, users will end up having better experiences.”

What Are they Going to Look Like: Web Design Trends 2022

It’s important to keep in mind that these changes aren’t happening just because designers got bored with the last set of trends, or because last year’s trends no longer apply. We’re nearing a complete change in how the web works. 

In some aspects, that change has already happened. Blockchain, bitcoin, NFTs, metaverses, entertainment over anything else: this is new. 

And designers have to work with it. 

We talked about the why. 

Here’s the how.

One-Page Age

Lockdown made the world a lot smaller. Overnight, you couldn’t travel. You had to stay indoors. You couldn’t attend events you’d been looking forward to or engage in different experiences. 

Those limitations keep coming and going, and will for a while. 

One page websites are here to make the best of the bad.

By containing everything to one interactive webpage, the experience of doing something, of being somewhere, is maximised: there’s no burger menu to take you out of it or traditional page set-up to remind you you’re on a website. All you need to do is go onto the homepage, access the article, find the micro-site, and scroll through the story. 

Animated in-text elements, tiny animations, and incredible visual design are the cornerstones. 

The heart is the immersion.

Point-and-Click Panorama

Do you miss the old internet design?

Well, good news: it’s on the up. It’s been on the up since 2021, but 2022 is going to bring the 90s point-and-click nostalgia back to the forefront. 

Nostalgia sells. 

It always has.

But this is deeper than nostalgia. 

Before the web was standardised, social-media-ised, or (barely) sanitised, web design was full of easter eggs and HTML coding tricks and figuring out new ways to apply the same three elements in different configurations. Community efforts to create websites that worked beautifully and had little tricks in them for users to discover were what you did on the internet way back. 

People are tired, and they’re tired of websites that exist just to sell a product. Websites that can incorporate some of the joy of logging into the internet in the 90s and winding up in a coding rabbit-hole are going to see the effort pay off beautifully. As people strive to find connection in a time when connection is especially important, and increasingly difficult to create, giving them a talking point and a no-strings-attached adventure is an excellent way to keep them coming back because they want to.

Bespoke Page View

Some people like to read their articles in dark mode. Some people don’t. 

In 2022, those design choices are going to become a facet of every web design plan. Right now, tailoring things to specifications – smaller text, bigger text, different colours, dark mode, light mode – is prevalent in everything from apps to mobile devices. It’s going to extend to web as a matter of course. 

Tailoring a site to fit personal specifications builds a connection, and opens up the accessibility of the website to everyone. We’re looking at an age where humans want the choice to change things – not because they specifically need it, but because it’s more comfortable to. 

Mise En Place

In the age of Zoom calls and house tours and vlogs, something stands out. 

People are really curious about other people. 

Websites can leverage this. 

Design that gives more sense of place. Images that identify who’s who and what they like. 

Design that puts the humans behind it at the front and centre, and build a sense of trust between the people on the website and the people who designed it. 

And with that trust comes connection. 

As we’ve said above, connection is critical – even more so now than it ever was. 2019 and 2020 showed the global population what isolation felt like. 

It isn’t surprising that nobody wants to go back to that state of being. 

Positively Positive

We could all use a little bit of good news with the bad. 

Going into 2022, websites will lean into the positive. Light, bright colours, upbeat music, an emphasis on the happier side of things. 

It’s not just altruism.

There’s enough bad news to go around. People are tired of hearing about it, of getting bombarded with reasons to worry, of feeling stressed and sad and lonely. Websites that can add back a little happiness, and build a connection with their viewers, are going to feel the uptick in traffic. 

Micro Movements

There’s a lot on the web that’s interesting. 

So much so that websites can struggle to keep their audiences right where they need them, especially for longform content. 

Tiny animations can help keep the brain grounded to your page. Tiny animations throughout a piece of longform content help keep people engaged. 

We get it. There’s so much to keep in mind already that long-form content and static web pages seem like an extra effort. Tiny animations are a middle-ground: emphasising content, without losing the attention of a frazzled audience. 

Designer’s Dream

Static images aren’t out. 

But there’s going to be less of them around. 

Design elements are on the up for 2022, with websites opting for less in stock photos and more in custom design that really puts your personality where your site (or social media!) is. This trend is also capitalising on something we’ve noticed overall in human behaviour: the sudden shift towards hyper-custom, hyper-personalised content and design that’s built to stand out above what’s been popular for the last ten years. 

Andrea pinpoints a few that he considers will have a bigger emphasis on the way web design is approached in 2022. 

Art Deco Double

The Art Deco revival really started a year ago, but we haven’t seen the full limits of what it’s capable of until now. According to Andrea, Art Deco is an excellent trend for 2022 and the rise of personalised content due to the minimalism that drives it. With a fundamentally simple design, Art Deco can be both contemporary and classic, and suit multiple different materials, mediums, and brand needs. 

Textual Feeling

Part accessibility, part style choice, web design is going to go all out on text with large, bold titles and micro messaging. Andrea suggests we’ll see large copy especially in tandem with bright visuals and scrollable interfaces as brands build stories told exclusively via movement. 

Linework Love

We’ve seen this trend before. It’s one of those things that just keeps popping in and out of style, but Andrea’s predicting a sudden surge for linework for 2022 as users are given more control over how to approach design. Andrea says, “think of it like a colouring book – the basic elements are there, but users can fill in the gaps with their own styles and experiences. It is also a great graphic style that allows designers to lay out flowing information without needing to default to endless columns of text.”

Going Forward

As the years roll on and the idea of web design moves from an idea to an entrenched discipline, it’s interesting to see how changes happen, and how close they are aesthetically to Web 1.0. 

From minimalist text to just-because-I-felt-like-it font choice, the internet has come full circle. We’re back to the era of early internet exploration, of creating websites that look and work beautifully just for the hell of it, of working together with some of the biggest technologies to create an experience. 

2022 is going to be a lot of things, and boring is not going to be one of them. We’re looking at a web gone more accessible, louder, more customisable, more easy to adapt to. 

It’s going to change everything. 

And we can’t wait to get our hands on it. 

Want to read more marketing trends for 2022?

Here are a few more resources we’ve put together, with more on the way:

SEO Trends 2022: More Human

Marketing Trends 2022: The Year of Conflict

Seven Regional Marketing Trends We Want To See More Of

Social Media Trends 2022: The Year of More

B2B Marketing Trends 2022

The post Web Design Trends 2022 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

There is so much accessibility, functionality, and easy-to-understand usability in Facebook that it rendered websites for brands a little bit obsolete. Virtually everything you can do on a brand’s webpage can be recreated, faster, on Facebook: there’s no need for a domain, no need to pay a web designer to design your page, and no need to encourage people to click four or five extra times to get what they need.

More importantly, that’s where the people are. 

Facebook gives you a page. 

You populate it with things for sale, brand values, and contact information. 

Your audience, who is likely already on Facebook, takes it from there. 

Easy. 

However, as with most things during 2020, the pandemic brought Facebook’s physical limitations forward. 

Brands sought out different platforms for virtual experiences that went beyond the function-first approach of Facebook and other socials. 

Zoom. Hangouts. Houseparty. 

The difficulties of hosting virtual events on an ephemeral platform are obvious. What people needed was different to a social media platform, or a way of communicating. They needed a whole world. 

Enter, the website. 

Websites: A Functional Explanation

In the absence of other things – going outside, meeting friends, travelling, anything that has to do with people – websites have stepped in to give people a taste of the possibilities of indoor experiences. Some websites have made themselves into virtual cities and stalls. Others are built around gamification. Even more others change frequently, not just the design, but also the functionality. 

For people whose primary internet usage for the past seven years has been Facebook, the possibilities of websites has more than tripled what they can do on the internet. Not to mention, it’s also shown them something that is easily forgotten: the possibility of web design itself. 

In the early days of web design, it was all about what you could do with this new technology. As we became more familiar with it, websites grew sleeker and more sparse. Doing things ‘just because’ gave way to doing things in a way that would maximise profitability. 

The internet grew up. 

Web Design 2021

And then COVID-19 happened. 

Facebook and other socials started to struggle. 

And the web slid back a few years. 

Right now, we’re in the midst of a 90s resurgence. Nostalgia is a powerful incentive in any case, but coupled with what’s happening around us in 2021, no wonder people want escapism in any way they can find it. 

Web is an excellent way to provide that escapism, and talk about your brand. 

Why Web?

Web is really the only medium where brands can directly interact with their fans, and one of the only mediums where they can have a little fun. With a captive audience desperate for any sort of engagement, this is an excellent opportunity to capitalise on the current situation and create brand design that really stands out. 

More importantly, that entertains and informs. 

With websites, a key facet of design is that you need to reward people for taking the time to visit your web-page, particularly if there’s no reason for them to do so. Web allows an opportunity to engage with and explore the brand without the pressure to purchase, and the space to take in a different side of the brand. 

Any side of the brand. 

Web in 2021 is a blank slate. Everything else on the web is so structured – so Facebookized – that the slightest step out of the norm feels like a big luxury, something that comes around only rarely. 

Tips for Web Design in 2021

• Maximise every aspect of the browser. From customised messages in the tabs to hidden links, good web design can create a miniature world on the web that allows deeper access to your brand than a Facebook page or a simple brand page. 
• Experiment. With web design, nothing is forever unless you want it to be. Print campaigns and newspapers are permanent; web design is fluid, and can be done just ‘for fun’ without the risk that, ten years from now, it’ll be dated.
• React, interact, act. Websites allow you to use aspects of your brand voice that could go unheard in Facebook or a corporate website. Allowing your brand’s personality to shine through can help hold your audience’s attention. They’ll remember a fun web-page that they spent a few minutes on. 
• Design to brand. Use hidden links and easter eggs if you have to, but bring your brand’s personality and voice forward through every part of the design. 

This isn’t to say these are the only tips, or that Facebook cauterised web design. 

It’s the opposite. In the 15 – 20 years of the internet, we’ve honed and created a way of displaying information and an easily-understood visual language that is almost universally recreated. Now that the mold has been set, it’s the perfect time to break it, stand out, and speak above the crowd. 

What’s next for websites post-pandemic?

There are people who might say that the age of the website will end when lockdown does. 

That isn’t strictly true. 

While websites might experience a dip in their newfound popularity, they won’t go back to pre-pandemic levels if a website is done well. With web, there are no real limitations on what you can do. 

Put simply: 

You can sell a pair of shoes on Facebook. 

But to make people drool over your shoes, allow them to try them on virtually, make shoe-shopping fun, you need a website. The web, as they say, is forever. 

The post Facebook Killed Website Design appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

For a lot of brands, it’s the only form of storytelling they can have a little fun with. From glitchy graphics to hidden links to slow-scrolling pictures, web design enhances what’s good about your brand to mythic proportions. It’s the Willy Wonka method of storytelling, everything bigger and brighter and more beautiful. 

In 2021, web design isn’t just storytelling; it’s crucial storytelling. Without a good website now, the losses aren’t even calculable. 

And that’s without taking into account the fact that without a website, your brand might not exist on the greater planes of the web. 

So. 

Let’s talk about web design. 

The State of Web in 2021

As with most trends, what happens on the web starts out in real life. 

What happened in real life is this: people stayed indoors. Mobile phone users glued themselves to their phones. Internet usage skyrocketed. 

Websites ruled. 

In Malta alone, 91% of the country was online by January 2020. It’s estimated that, during COVID-19, internet usage increased to 100% in countries most afflicted by it – think Italy, the United States, even Malta. Online traffic surged. 

Globally, transactions online increased 39.7% from January 2020 to January 2021. Global conversion rates increased by 40.3% for the same time period. 

Everywhere, everyone, was online. 

Which meant that everywhere, everyone, had something to say about web design. 

Web is the first impression your audience will get with your brand. Websites that load slowly, are difficult to access from mobile devices, or are just plain ugly are going to affect your brand’s reputation, even if you don’t know it. 

A negative review left on Facebook is bad. 

A person who clicks through your website and leaves without saying anything at all is worse. 

85% of B2B and 79% of B2C consumers put a lot of value into the experience they have with a brand. That includes their first impression of your website, and how easy it is to understand. 

Web Design 2021

Here’s what we’re seeing in Web Design for 2021. 

Silverscreen Life

Let’s face it: we’re unlikely to move past the pandemic in the next year or so. In the meantime, there’s been a resurface of digital events, digital experiences, and digital lives, from online lectures to virtual lives. 

Interactive websites can make the separation between virtual and IRL seamless. 

Do you remember the early internet? All those clickable, hidden links?

This is similar, though without the 90s pop-up ads. 

Think of clean, clear space and elaborate, moving visuals – parallax is making a comeback this year, and we’re a fan of it for clean websites that want enough animation to compel and hold the attention. 

Our tip: add animations. Animations help keep focus where static images struggle. The best of both worlds? Have a static image with some animation. Additionally, make sure your website can load up content fast – optimise it for that purpose. 

We See You

Seeing other humans has become a little more rare since the early days of lockdown. 

Is it any surprise that web design is suddenly, understandably, loaded up with images of humanity? Avatars, filters, memojis: human identity built to bridge a connection. Images of humans and personalised services bring the website back around to experience. 

The experience of your life, of how you look at the world, of how you understand. 

It builds connection. Seeing yourself reflected in images, your capabilities echoed in design, helps consumers feel like the brand considers them at all stages, not just to make purchases. It’s conversation and connection without being obvious.  

Dark mode or light? Colour or black and white? Larger text, smaller text?

Customisation features allows for audiences to really feel like the brand understands them, understands their needs, understands that sometimes they need text to be bigger or to have a different colour-palette for legibility. Each website a nest of interfaces. 

Each interface unique. 

Our tip: don’t skimp on accessibility. More people than you know struggle to read tiny text, tell colours apart, or to manoeuvre around a factory-built website. Give your audience as many ways of customising it as is possible, and remember that most of your consumers will be accessing your website through their phones or tablets. 

Remember When…?

We’ve been writing a lot about nostalgia recently, and with good reason. From clothing to web design, 2021’s bringing nostalgia back. 

In web design for 2021, this means tactile response. It means a physical moment made virtual. Web pages will scroll, turn, twist, move, just like the pages of a magazine, a leaf of postcards, a selection of notebook doodles. Websites look lived in and used and heavy. 

Websites are interactive. With so much of our lives conducted virtually, this interactivity, this physicality, helps connect a user to the moment. They’ll remember it. 

They’ll want to relive it. 

Forget the sleek, flat, 2020 gloss. 2021 is all about the heavy physicality of the past, ‘60s curves, ‘70s patterns and ‘80s colours.  

Our tip: What’s your favourite nostalgic memory? Is it the glitchy spatiality of Windows ‘95, or the sweepy, flowery patterns of ‘70s mandalas? Add that into your website – as text, as a graphic, as a hidden link. Nostalgia makes people feel better, think back to a better time. Happier consumers are more likely to remember you when they’re in a position to buy something.

Design With Purpose

There’s been a lot in the news lately about historical moments. We’re living through something that is going to be taught in schools, immortalised in memoirs, and taken apart by university graduates. What history is going to remember is who helped, who hindered, and who watched. 

Companies are expected to be the helpers. 

Brands are expected to talk about social issues. Audience loyalty, especially now, is a fickle thing to hold: with so many companies talking so much about so many things, it’s easy to switch to a company that better holds your values. We’ve spoken about this before, and we’ll continue to say it – your best supporter is always going to be who you cultivate. 

Web design in 2021 puts your loyalties at the centre. 

You have to talk about what you support. Sustainability? Community responsibility? Put it in there. Dig through your archives to showcase the diversity of your customers. Add a graphic to talk about burnout. Your audience wants to know that you care. 

In 2021, it’s fundamental that you do. 

Our tip: you have to have an initiative you’re proud of. Maybe you boosted your employees’ wages when so many other companies slashed them. Maybe you switched to environmentally-friendly packaging. Find your pride, and put it where people can see it. 

Softer, Soothing, Supportive

From gentle colours to feel-good news, web design in 2021 wants to uplift. 

This means a call back to simplicity. Clean lines. Pastels bleeding into one another. Colours. Whimsical type. 

Whereas 2019 was all about the corporate, the glossy, glassy, smooth, professional web, 2021 is about softness and feeling good and design that makes you happy. 

Our tip: Play around with colours, shapes, and text. We’ve had our fill of professional blue, corporate grey, and gentle beige. A pop of colour, a curlier text, can help liven up a corporate website – and show your brand’s personality a little better. 

Statistics for Web in 2021

We don’t like telling you what to do without backing it up with facts. 

Here are a few to get you started. 

• 55.64% of internet users come from mobile devices. 
• 68% of consumers expect better from businesses when it comes to digital capabilities. 
• 94% of people notice the appearance of a website first, and make the decision whether or not to continue using it on that appearance.
• People make up their minds about a website within 50 milliseconds. 
• Websites that take longer than 2 seconds to load abandon the website 38% of the time. 
• 48% of people decide a business’ credibility based on their website design. 
• 85% of users believe a mobile website should be as good or better than the desktop version. 

Web Design Going Forwards

We’ve made a lot of changes in the year and a half of the pandemic. 

Only some of it is internal. 

The rest is external: in the way we run our social media apps, the way we talk to each other online, the way everything looks. From sleek, flat, angular design, we’ve gone for softer curves, brighter colours, and better usability. As more of our lives become entwined with online, this is not likely to change. 

If anything, it’s going to become more important. Web is never going to be the same as it was before 2019. 

Neither are we. 

So hit the ground running, and get ready for the future.

And speak to us if you want to take this journey with us.

The post Web Design in 2021: Where We Were, Where We Are, Where We’re Going appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If the last few decades have taught us anything, it is that we should be doing what we can today rather than leaving it until tomorrow. If we don’t, never mind; it’s not the end of the world – oh… wait. Some of our best-laid plans can often go askew, and that could prove to be a boon. If these unexpected, life-changing (or world-changing) curve-balls don’t prompt us to be agile and quickly react in full force as one collective voice, then we don’t know what will. Reactive agility is the backbone of every revolution – design-related or otherwise. 

Reactivity does not work in a vacuum. It can only work successfully when reactive supports that which has been planned for.

Design that is well established does not need to change based on the time in which an audience consumes it. Products and services naturally go through their own life cycles that are governed by emerging technologies and cultural shifts. But the core of everything we do – our identity – merits the groundwork of a well-thought-out strategic blueprint that is equipped to creatively adapt to the times while maintaining its integrity.

Developing timeless design is much simpler than anyone thinks; it is far from being easy, but it is straightforward. It starts and ends with unequivocal commitment. Explicit commitment is the bedrock of every successful relationship and that is something that (though intangible) can be felt by the individuals who identify with a brand to the point where they feel like they own part of it. This is probably the closest we get to ‘magic’.

But what do we mean by commitment? We are referring to the soul-searching process we go through when building and committing to an identity along with every visual element we deliberately choose to call our own. Sometimes it might take a few false starts – not everything works out fine on the first try. Some relationships don’t work from the get-go; some need tweaking and sometimes they might need to be thrown out of the window to rebuild over the mistakes of the past.

We see the success of visual commitment in brands like Omega or National Geographic. Every article of design these brands produce strikes a sublime balance of functional form and approachable exclusivity. National Geographic makes a simple but bold statement through its minimal yellow square that literally frames the subjects they are highlighting. This essential element works so well that some think that the viewers might miss it – but they do not miss it at all. The visual aspect of these brands take on the trends of the times in their application, but the strong core elements anchor the visual changes back to the original design DNA.

Timeless means looking back at the classics and extracting their core to fit the past, present, and future. Our recent work with The Athenaeum Spa saw us building upon the design legacy tied to the Corinthia Hotel brand. From the core logo to every bit of collateral, every material, ink, and foil were hand-picked to fulfill one purpose – uplifting guest’s lives by carving out time to themselves. The mark we created was built to live as part of the Corinthia heritage, yet still keeping a voice of its own. This then evolved into seamless patterns which were embossed on boards and stitched onto robes. Through the subtle application of these core elements, we created a strongly-branded experience that is almost invisible at first glance, but evident the moment you look for it. It is more about feeling than it is about seeing.

Another example that comes to mind was the journey Switch embarked on with eCabs to build their refreshed brand and design. Even though the company had been on a constant evolution, eCabs required the final step in the progression of its visual voice that would stand the test of time. Stripping any unnecessary ornamentation and reducing the kit of design elements to leave the bare fundamentals to reaffirm eCabs’ identity was essential. Design-wise, eCabs has to ooze functional and beautiful ‘mass production and mass adaptation.’ It’s a bit like Bauhaus. The amazing thing about that design movement is that the fundamentals they produced almost live in a time-vacuum – they are visually relevant (and, importantly, look good) within any context at any time in history, from their origins until today. And they will likely do so until the end of time.

We future-proofed the eCabs visual language for any opportunity related to mobility and beyond. And time has shown us that the decisions we took are already fulfilling their purpose. During times that challenged us to be reactive on a daily basis, the solid foundations we built for the brand made adapting and reacting a walk in the park. Part of us – secretly – can’t wait for the next curve-ball life throws at us and we’ll be there, hand on the holster, ready to fire back.

The post There’s no Time like the Timeless appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

1. Explore!

Like great voyagers we need to survey and scavenge around to gain a good understanding of our surroundings. Be it by getting in touch directly with the client, marketing executive or supplier, take the lack of a clear direction as a great way to develop or create new relationships. We’re in the communication industry after all.

2. Boldly go where no man has gone before

The design world needs its Marco Polos and Captain Kirks; people who are defined by their discoveries rather than by who they are. Incomplete briefs may be the perfect excuse to be experimental, and let your creative process take you through routes you wouldn’t have thought of going through before. There’s a fine line between creating cool stuff for the sake of being different and creating unconventional design pieces in hope of creating a more engaging piece of communication.

3. Learn new languages

One of the more thrilling things about exploration is meeting the natives. If you venture far enough from your homeland (metaphoric comfort zone) you’ll encounter new cultures and people (a metaphor for new mediums, in this case). More often than not, we as creatives tend to list two or three disciplines we’re best at.
“I’m an illustrator at heart, but love editorial design too!” That’s two ‘languages’ – it’s time to become a polyglot! There’s absolutely no reason why a 3D artist shouldn’t develop 2D illustration skills; or editorial design or storyboard creation for that matter. Be a Jack of all trades, master of SOME.

4. Free time. Prototype to build better understanding!

I’m sometimes asked what hobbies I have, and I seriously struggle to find anything else to say other than “Well, I keep designing stuff at home.” Experimentation in the workplace may sometimes be a little challenging, yet find time to work on your own personal projects. It’s up to us to find a couple of extra hours to develop and innovate new ideas and tools. Be it designing t-shirts or attempting to create a typeface from scratch, working on projects you’re the boss of should be the thing you crave to do once you’re out of the studio – no matter how far-fetched your ideas are. As Tobias Van Schneider eloquently puts it, ‘Side projects should be stupid.’

5. Document every step of your journey

We might remember the names of great explorers, but their names would be nothing hadn’t they recorded their journeys and the sights, sounds, and locations they discovered on the way. We’re probably all guilty of this, in one way or another. Rarely do we spend a few extra minutes documenting our design decisions, findings, or thoughts. More often than not, these little discoveries could be the fruit of happy accidents, or even little ideas that could be taken further on your next project. The same way Columbus came across America by chance, your next happy accident could lead to you pioneering the next big design trend.

In the end, the thing that matters the most is tackling a lack of brief like a boss.
Turn obstacles into challenges, limitations into strengths, and frustrations into stimulants. Not knowing where to begin will help you think differently. But most importantly, clients, (please) write a good brief.
Who needs stock imagery when you can draw some yourself? All the images used in this blog post come straight from the steady hands of the author himself.

The post The top 5 secrets for becoming a design conquistador appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.