In 1986, thousands of typesetters took to the streets of London as the English capital’s leading publisher was set to replace 90% of them with a computer. While before, designers worked in tandem with analog typesetters and typographers—who assembled and turned newspapers’ copies, layouts, and designs into printed matter—new publishing software allowed them to feed their work directly into printers. Typesetters lost to automation in the end and were soon obsolete, paving the way for the modern graphic designer. “A Robot Is After Your Job,” read a 1980 New York Times headline. Decades later, those very graphic designers face a similar crisis as generative AI threatens their future. Over the last few months, tech firms have released tools that can auto-generate design copies, visuals, slide decks, wireframes, and “bring a creative vision to life” with a click of a button. Punch in a few words about your brand on Canva, such as a “bike shop,” and its new AI tools will instantly produce sales decks, logos, and social media posts for you to use. Adobe, similarly, will soon roll out updates to its creative suite that will not only let anyone outsource their graphic design duties to an AI but also allow them to professionally tweak their photos, and videos without ever learning Photoshop. Wix Studio has launched AI text creators in its editor, allowing designers to generate website copy without leaving the platform. Why so much concern around seemingly helpful tools? OpenAI, the research firm behind ChatGPT, conducted a study on the impact AI will have on jobs and found web, graphic, and design interface designers were potentially some of the most vulnerable professions. So yeah, the concern isn’t coming from nowhere. How agencies are using AI now Although Jessica Walsh, a designer and founder of the New York-based agency, &Walsh, believes creatives won’t have to worry about AI taking over their jobs anytime soon, she says their focus will shift more towards what today’s art directors do. The difference will be that “instead of directing humans, we’ll be directing AI to shape our vision,” and as AI becomes capable of automating designers’ workflows like end-to-end branding, more and more jobs “will be focused on AI prompt engineering and manipulating the output of AI.” Walsh and her team are already experimenting with AI technologies in brand campaigns. On one recent project to rebrand a platform promoting nuclear energy as a tool against climate change, &Walsh used Dall-E, OpenAI’s text-to-image generator, to brainstorm ideas and generate thousands of images for the project’s backgrounds, case study themes, and typography. The agency’s designers then curated a few from this pool and further tweaked them to match their intentions. Agencies like Ogilvy Paris have used AI tools similarly. Similarly, Jeff Turkelson, a strategy director at design firm Artefact, agrees AI taking over tedious tasks will augment designers at agencies, not replace them outright in the near term—and enable them to focus on higher-level decision-making and directing the design process. Turkelson, who used to spend hours online hunting down visuals and metaphors, now often turns to Microsoft’s Bing chatbot to quickly sift through the internet’s vast resources, and Notion AI, a writing assistant, to clean up his copy. While designers are divided on how far-reaching this new wave of AI products will be, many agree that it will cut down the time to test and prototype a new idea. With generative AI tools like Midjourney, another text-to-image generator, and Uizard, which lets designers instantly create UI mockups with AI, “we can quickly create multiple product iterations, compare the results, and return to the drawing board,” says Romina Kavcic, an Austria-based design lead. “This saves us weeks and even months of work.” One Discord designer, for example, built a ChatGPT-powered Figma plugin that automatically generates the chats based on the number of people and messages and the topic, rather than manually populating his mockups with dummy conversations. What the future of design might look like In a research paper published in March 2020, researchers at the Harvard Business School argued that AI won’t undermine the principles of design thinking—which is both people-centered and abductive—but will overcome limitations in scale and scope, enabling designers to be more creative and personalize their work to an extreme level of granularity. However, the paper added, AI will profoundly change the practice of design, and as designers automate their workflows, the human side of the design will increasingly become an activity of sense-making, and inch closer to management and leadership. “As machines will do the tasks and propose solutions, designers will be left with the key question: ‘Does it make sense?,’ one of the paper’s authors, Roberto Verganti, a design theory professor at the Harvard Business School, told Shaping Design. “No machine can address this.” Indeed, the only aspect of a designer’s job that AI hasn’t yet encroached on at all is the human one, from understanding the client’s needs to capturing the audience’s emotions. “Emotional empathy is a fundamental aspect of design,” says Tim Smith, a design director at NewTerritory, “perhaps even exclusive and unique to a human.” But the industry will need to tread carefully At the same time, the transition to AI software may not be as smooth as some hope. Researchers fear that the lack of engagement by graphic designers in training AI models, which is largely spearheaded by computer scientists, could overwhelm the field of design with overly functional, anodyne approaches. One June 2022 research paper published in the Design Research Society on graphic design and AI warned that this threatens to de-skill the profession and spawn a second tier of ‘non-professional’ designers, “particularly within less creative work that emphasizes fast turnover and functional artifact production.” In such a scenario, Dr. Yaron Meron, the research’s author, and a design lecturer at the University of Sydney, expects professional design roles to adapt rather than go extinct, and possibly become more skillful in different ways, such as being better and more creative at prompting the most out of AI technologies. Designers I spoke to agree if everyone drew inspiration and materials from the same set of models, it may lead to a rise in repetitive designs, but at the same time, they’re optimistic this would mean clients will come to expect more original thinking and unique content from studios, helping both further crystalize their role, and drive the intellectual skill forward—just like how Mac, Adobe, and Macromedia software did when it automated several manual processes in the computer revolution. Besides, for now, AI-generated content has proved to be an ethical minefield for design agencies. Since these technologies are trained on existing human work without acquiring copyrights, there’s a chance brands that are using them may be indirectly infringing on an artist's or a designer’s rights. (Turkelson cites this as a major concern, and is hopeful that the steps taken by Adobe Firefly could be the path forward.) Pau Garcia, the founder of a data-focused design and research studio, Domestic Data Streamers, has another concern: tech companies aren’t transparent with the material used to train these algorithms. That makes it harder for clients to feel confident that agencies created AI work with images that are fair use. Ultimately, Dr. Meron adds, AI is just another tool and technological step for designers. Graphic design is first and foremost about communication—so a deep knowledge of the audience, brief, and context a designer is working within is far more important than the tools. “If we look at what Neville Brody and David Carson were doing with [desktop publishing] software back in the 1980s, in what way was that different from what Milton Glaser or Paul Rand were doing a generation earlier? And how do they differ from those designers that produced all those marvelous 1920s art deco posters, or from even earlier, say, William Morris?” posits Dr. Meron. “I would argue not a lot.” The work isn’t different, even as the technology changes.

Over the years we’ve grown our platform’s capabilities to meet the rapidly changing needs of you and your clients, with advanced design features, tailored eCommerce, SEO tools, marketing solutions, dev tools and complex functionalities. We are continually testing and optimizing our platform to learn exactly what you and your clients need, including rolling out powerful new advancements like Advanced Developer Platform and Wix Enterprise, announced earlier this year. To reflect the evolution of our platform, we restructured all Wix Premium plans and launched them in the U.S. on June 5, 2023. They will be rolled out gradually to the rest of the world. Our new plans represent the growing complexity of sites that Partners are building and a diverse range of client needs. Please note: In the United States, the new Premium plans are available to Partners and all Wix users in English (EN) only. In Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, the plans are currently available to all EN Wix users. Partners and their clients in these countries don’t have access yet. We will update this article as soon as the new Premium plans open to Partners in more languages and locations. For now, existing legacy plans won’t be affected, as long as auto-renewal is turned on. Here’s what’s changing We’ve restructured our offering into 5 segmented Premium plans: Light, Core, Business, Business Elite and Enterprise. Each new plan has been rebuilt with clearly defined capabilities, making it easier for you and your clients to view and compare plans at a glance. All plans now include access to marketing tools that were previously part of the Ascend Premium plans, such as: lead-capture forms, social media marketing and automations. Send up to 200 emails a month for free, or increase your clients’ quota by purchasing a standalone email marketing package. For clients needing custom web solutions or tailored eCommerce we’ve created Business Elite, an entirely new plan built around a powerful new offering: Advanced Developer Platform. This set of products and capabilities is designed to enhance the resources and computing power of any site. An overview of our new plans Finally, it’s important to note that Partners of all levels are eligible to earn 50% revenue share on purchases of Business Elite and Enterprise plans in 2023, including their renewals, as long as they meet the requirements for qualifying for revenue share. To upgrade your site to one of the Premium plans, click here. Until these updates go live outside of the U.S., you can view the new Premium plans in our downloadable PDFs for the following locations: Canada, Australia, U.K. If you have any further questions, please get in touch with our Customer Care team. FAQs How will these new plans affect my clients’ current plans? For now, existing plans won’t be affected, as long as auto-renewal is turned on. What is a site collaborator? Are my teammates counted as separate collaborators? A site collaborator or contributor is someone that the Account Owner has invited to work on a site. For Partners, all team members under the same Partner’s account are counted as one collaborator. Partners who are Account Owners can add teammates to their account, and assign them different roles, permissions and access levels. What is the Advanced Developer Platform included in the new Business Elite plan? Advanced Developer Platform is a set of new products and capabilities tailored to better cater the needs of complex data-heavy and backend-heavy sites. This solution gives sites on Business Elite and Enterprise plans substantially more computing power, enhancing the experience for both developers and end users alike. Are Velo by Wix and the Content Manager available on all plans? Yes, you can use Velo and the Content Manager in all plans. Moreover, you can use them without purchasing a Premium plan. The difference is in the amount of computing resources and data processing power you get on each plan. You can view a complete breakdown of capabilities in the downloadable PDF. Will any of these new plans be eligible for Revenue Share? Partners of all levels are eligible to earn 50% revenue share on purchases of Business Elite and Enterprise plans in 2023, including their renewals, as long as they meet the requirements for qualifying for revenue share. Legend level Partners will continue to earn 20% revenue share on all other Premium plans.

Worldbuilding is a process that’s typically used in science-fiction and fantasy. But in the two-dimensional, flat color world of direct-to-consumer marketing? Not so much. That’s changing with a new generation of DTC beauty brands that are adopting a holistic design approach that builds niche, immersive brand worlds across their websites, social channels, and packaging. It’s about more than just selling a product; it’s about inviting individuals to become a part of a rich story, and creating a community that feels playful, imaginative, and authentic—wherever a potential customer encounters the brand. Brands have been moving away from moodboards and toward extensive brand “worlds” for a little while now (see design-savvy sunscreen brand Vacation, for instance), but two relative newcomers—the celeb-adored pimple patch brand Starface and skincare brand Futurewise—best exemplify the most online, contemporary version of this approach embraced by teens and younger millennials. Co-founded by Julie Schott, former Elle.com beauty director, both brands stand out for their story-driven maximalist aesthetics and their rejection of the flat pastel minimalism that has become synonymous with an earlier generation of DTC skincare brands like Glossier. Consider this scroll-stopping short clip for Futurewise’s recent product launch. The Instagram post is less of an ad and more of a psychedelic dreamscape, populated by dewy-skinned models shrunk down to the size of bugs, relaxing among a sea of gooey plants and mushrooms. The caption beckons you to “enter the world of Futurewise with SLUG BALM.✨” DTC brands took a major financial hit in 2022 due to inflation, market volatility, skyrocketing digital ad prices, and increased shipping costs. But Starface and Futurewise have successfully weathered the storm by cultivating a loyal customer base via TikTok and Instagram, and diversifying their income streams through strategic retail partnerships. (Lots of DTC brands have started to do this, including Glossier, which has expanded its brick and mortar operations and partnered with Sephora last year.) Schott also recently launched two other DTC personal care brands: Julie, an emergency contraceptive that’s currently available at CVS; and Plus Products, a line of waterless body wash sheets that will likely follow a similar retail trajectory. The Futurewise slug. Images 1-2 courtesy Mortis Studio; 3-4 via Instagram. Should a user enter the Futurewise brand world, they’ll have a guide, of sorts. Design agency Mortis Studio, which collaborated with Futurewise creative director Sarah DeCou (a co-creator of the virtual influencer Lil Miquela) and 3D artist Freddie Guthrie to develop the brand, wanted to go beyond creating a standard logomark and create a character based on the descriptive nature of the term “slugging” to differentiate the brand online. (“Slugging” refers to a skincare practice in which you apply an occlusive layer to your face to prevent dehydration and retain your skin's natural moisture. It went viral on TikTok last year.) “There really aren’t a lot of products in the skincare or beauty space that are using characters or personification to enhance their brand,” says Andrew Reyes, senior designer at Mortis. Done well, brand world-building is both fantastical and grounded in a realism that allows consumers to see themselves in it (there’s still product to move, after all). First, the fantasy. Futurewise plays with scale to shrink the models down until the plants and mushrooms tower over them, and applies surrealist, narrative-driven images and video (like the slug character or this video of disembodied patent-leather gloves using the product) to create an overall Alice in Wonderland effect. Video courtesy Mortis Studio. As for realism, the styling is closer to editorial ready-to-wear rather than costume. One model is in a shiny black latex trench coat; another in a fuzzy sweater, bell bottoms and rubber rain boots; and a third in a Y2K-esque silver tube top, bright orange cigarette capris, and matching platform heels (don’t forget the futuristic alien/bug-inspired sunglasses!). Product photography is hyper-realistic, showcasing natural and imperfect skin textures. Visuals across platforms have a similarly surreal quality, but they’re not constrained to one particular aesthetic, which establishes a hard-to-pigeonhole brand mood with easy-to-ID brand equity. “Brands nowadays don't have to be so strict in adhering to a rigid style guide, and Futurewise understands that,” says Taylor Johnson, owner and art director of Mortis. “They know that a brand has to have room to grow and evolve, especially across its social channels. So combining different aesthetics keeps things fresh and exciting.” In fact, many visuals forego the product completely, making worldbuilding the epitome of approachable soft marketing. Buying in isn’t just about buying the product—it’s about buying into the brand. Starface uses the Big Smiley character as a brand persona for memes, and virtually never sells the product offering explicitly. Courtesy Someone & Others. Starface (also co-founded by Schott) also takes a worldbuilding approach to brand development, and it’s become wildly popular among teens for its colorful star-shaped acne patches. Someone & Others, which developed the brand’s identity (as well as for other notable beauty brands, like Kosas and Good Weird), grounded the Starface branding with a bright yellow color palette, Y2K design elements, and an adorable, starry-eyed, smiley face character called Big Yellow that, like the Futurewise slug, serves as the main persona for brand storytelling. [Related: The "Love is Blind" dating approach is coming for your apps] Big Yellow anthropomorphizes the brand’s packaging: riding roller coasters, running a book club, buying a bouncy house on TikTok (to which one of the brand’s two million followers commented, “this is so random I’m obsessed”), and commenting on brand posts from its own account. (All things one hypothetically might do with the loud confidence provided by a Starface pimple patch.) Recently, the brand posted a video on Instagram and TikTok featuring a fictional Starface highschool. The overlaid music says: “you’re such a star, girl // entering your world // I’m getting used to– // I’ll never get over– // your glow.” “When I was in high school, if I got a pimple, I wouldn’t even want to leave my room,” says Daniel Lowe, Someone & Others founder and creative director. “But we’ve seen a change in the mindset of Gen Z. They're not interested in hiding what we've always thought of as imperfections, because no one is perfect. The ethos of Starface is really about standing out and showing off who you are as an individual.” This is where both Starface and its sibling Futurewise shine: By building a fantasy world around an everyday product, the user experience is no longer just about functionality; it's an aspirational community. Want to take up residence? Simply add to cart.

If you’re hiring your marketing team based on industry experience alone, you’re probably overlooking some serious talent. “I think resumes are absolute BS,” says Kate Gunning, CEO of Crush, a marketing agency ‘that makes brands you can’t stop thinking about,’ and host of the CMO Show podcast. “I’ve come to realize that people's life experiences are more important than their actual marketing experiences.” So, what should you look for when expanding your marketing team? “How one thinks, solves problems, creates and imagines new possibilities,” she says. “Those are the things that are more important in marketing than a resume.” These qualities are even more relevant in a rapidly changing digital world. How many people have years of experience working with AI, for example? Not many. So the key is looking beyond the resume. Here’s what to look for when expanding your marketing team. Start with your vision “What kind of agency do you want to be? What vibe do you want to set for yourself? That's the person you should hire,” says Gunning. “Maybe you're an experiential, creative shop that makes mesmerizing experiences in retail. Or maybe you are a tech agency that provides scalable turnkey ways for brands of all shapes and sizes to build websites. Start with the insight about your audience that differentiates you - that real whitespace you’re filling - then hire around that.” For her own agency, Crush, Gunning envisioned building a company that produces unforgettable brands for launch. She knew that in order to create experiences people couldn’t stop thinking about (much like a crush), she’d need to bring on people who understand how to stand out from a crowd and invite clients who really want to push the envelope. You might be looking for something different for your agency, “but the ultimate hiring decision always needs to be based on the questions: Who are we? And who should we be?’” Then, you can tailor your interview questions accordingly. Think of hiring like casting for a film “I view marketing teams and CMO/CEO matches like directors and producers view casting for a show or movie,” says Gunning. “Casting is the most important part of building an effective and inspired organization, and it's especially imperative in marketing.” Much like a film producer picks the director - a single decision that majorly shapes the entire project - the CEO must also act as a steward for the business by bringing on a CMO with the right vision, technical skills and style. If Steven Spielberg or Guillermo Del Toro direct the same script, you’ll get two very different outcomes, even though both have experience and talent. Test for corporate compatibility “Another important factor for hiring marketing leadership is the CEO/CMO compatibility,” Gunning says. “It’s often understated, but it can make or break a project.” That’s not to say that subject matter expertise isn’t critical, only that it’s the start of your hiring considerations, rather than the end all be all. To that effect, Gunning recommends avoiding interviews and going for work dates instead. Conversational walks, coffee and lunch are fun ways to engage in fluid and organic conversations and gauge a candidates’ personality. “Create the interview environment that’s indicative of the person you want to cast,” she says. But don’t fall into the trap of hiring your friends. You want people who can challenge your point of view and introduce a new skill set to the team. That’s all to say, compatibility is one of the most important aspects when it comes to scouting a team for the C-Suite, but it’s not the only factor to consider. Be your own client With the demanding speed of agency life, it’s often easy to forget to treat your own brand with the same love and care you’d provide your clients. At its core, Gunning believes that agency development is largely the same as brand building. “You need to be clear about why you exist,” she says. “Why do you do what you do, and how is it different? You’ll find the best talent in that definition.” If you’re unclear about who to hire as your next CMO or marketing leader, turn inwards and assess not just where your agency is compared to where it needs to be, but also who your agency is and who it will become with your new hire.

Watching Youtube, scrolling through Facebook or posting to Linkedin all have a carbon cost, and it’s likely higher than you think. The average digital ad campaign emits over 5.4 tons of CO2 based on the carbon costs of producing, distributing and measuring the campaign. Emails are another unsuspecting culprit. According to Mike Berners-Lee's research in his book How Bad Are Bananas?, the footprint of a short email is estimated at 0.3 grams of CO2 (which can grow up to 17g for longer threads). At approximately 347.3 billion emails sent every day (according to research by Zippia) - or roughly 4 million per second - the carbon footprint of email tennis starts to add up. Reduce your agency's carbon footprint with some easy-to-implement tips and tricks that won’t pinch your pocket or slow down your workflows. Get creative with your marketing creative Videoweek recommends slashing your production costs by opting to use 3D models in your creatives (as opposed to full on video shoots) and keeping videos short-form. This will inevitably change the type of content you produce, but as a general rule of thumb, staying digital with your creative production reduces your overall carbon footprint. Asset optimization is also a quick win for agencies: ensure files are small and universally accessible across applications (ie: PDF, SVG, png and jpeg for most tools). Of course, this offers other benefits, such as improving overall page performance to foster a better customer experience. Lastly, get creative with word-of-mouth marketing. While it’s more difficult to measure than digital ads, word of mouth marketing impressions result in five times more sales than a paid media impression, and people are 90% more likely to trust and buy from a brand recommended by a friend, according to Invespcro. Take a public stand for climate change If you think environmentalism is a competitive disadvantage, think again. Without necessary changes to the corporate landscape’s carbon footprint, there won’t be a competitive playfield to begin with. There are numerous climate pledges you can enroll your agency into, including The Climate Pledge and Ad Net Zero, each with their own dedicated community of companies involved, as well as an action plan to cut down on carbon emissions. On our end, we release an annual ESG report detailing our environmental impact (among other statements such as DEI and governance). Consider publishing an annual report of your own, and crystalize an action plan by starting with the end in mind that you want to achieve, then working backwards to devise a strategy to get your agency there. Invest in carbon offsetting Carbon offsetting is a way for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and support climate change mitigation efforts. It means investing in projects that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, including renewable energy projects, afforestation (planting trees), and energy-efficient building projects, or methane capture projects, among others. Typically this is achieved through the purchase of carbon credits. A single carbon credit represents one metric ton of carbon dioxide or equivalent greenhouse gas emissions that have been prevented or removed from the atmosphere by a project. By purchasing carbon credits, a business is essentially funding a project that reduces emissions elsewhere, which offsets the emissions produced by their own operations. Carbon offsetting is not a solution to the climate crisis in and of itself, but it can be a useful tool for businesses that are working to reduce their carbon footprint. It allows them to take responsibility for their emissions and invest in projects that have a positive impact on the environment. However, it's important to note that carbon offsetting should not be seen as a substitute for reducing emissions at the source. The most effective way for agencies to address their carbon footprint is to reduce emissions as much as possible, and then offset the remainder.

Between scheduling meetings across time zones and supporting colleagues as they navigate the complexities introduced by Covid (yes, still), it can be a feat to get everyone to hop on a call, let alone remain present. And what about fueling that elusive thing, creativity, when burnout is on your team’s doorstep? Deadlines need to be met, clients need to be pitched, deliverables need to be sent. So, what’s the best route to elevate a creative team’s role within a company, and encourage divergent thinking without derailing business objectives or eroding team morale? The approach is diverse, but direct. To keep creative teams motivated, be the leader you’d want: someone humble with clear communication who fosters authentic buy-in and inclusivity. Basically, be real, but don’t be a jerk. More on how to motivate your creative teams to do their best work in stressful times: Nurture positive inner work life As a leader, it’s key to both absorb pressures from stakeholders, board members, or c-suite colleagues and advocate for your creative team. Be sure that all messaging of need-to-know information is actionable and productive. A board member didn’t like the latest social media post for a client? Keep that to yourself, but do extract their actionable feedback and offer it constructively. Similarly, it’s important to contain pressure you might be receiving, whether it be from the c-suite or a difficult client. While easy to do, try to avoid allowing it to cloud communication, clear goal setting, or other productive input for your creative team. When leadership leans on creative teams with high pressure, short deadlines, and a lack of understanding (or at the least, appreciation), this might breed motivation, but not the kind that’s going to inform talent retention, or frankly, great work. Without authentic buy-in from the creative team, these leadership mechanisms will repeatedly fall flat. And research backs this up. For creative teams to be authentically motivated, they first need to feel secure and encouraged while nurturing “a positive inner work life,” according to an article in the Harvard Business Review by leading researchers, Teresa Amabile, Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven Kramer, independent researcher who has served as a postdoctoral research associate at Vanderbilt University, psychology professor at Brandeis University, and a researcher at Epidemiological Resources in Massachusetts. As part of their research, Amabile and Kramer reviewed 12,000 diary entries completed by 26 different project teams belonging to seven companies to identify workplace attributes that can make up a positive inner work life: intrinsic motivation, positive perceptions of their colleagues and employer, and happy emotions. In addition to these components, they also established the importance of what they named the “progress principle,” which names progress in meaningful work as the top factor when it comes to heightening motivation, emotions and perceptions. Progress in meaningful work, they say, cultivates positive inner work life. Through the diary entries of study participants, Amabile and Kramer discovered that workers who had a “best day” could account for progress made on a project. The alternative? Setbacks, which led to workers’ “worst days.” Set small goals for big wins According to the progress principle and inner work life theory, Amabile and Kramer suggest that workers will be most inclined to achieve a positive inner work life partly with the clarity (and achievement) of small goals, which feed into a large KPI. “Across all types of events our participants reported, a notable proportion (28%) of incidents that had a minor impact on the project had a major impact on people’s feelings about it,” Amabile and Kramer write in the Harvard Business Review. “Because inner work life has such a potent effect on creativity and productivity, and because small but consistent steps forward, shared by many people, can accumulate into excellent execution, progress events that often go unnoticed are critical to the overall performance of organizations.” Small goals occur more frequently, Amabile and Kramer assert, and as such, are breadcrumbs to bigger wins. “Even small wins can boost inner work life tremendously,” write Amabile and Kramer. “Many of the progress events our research participants reported represented only minor steps forward. Yet they often evoked outsize positive reactions.” Forward motion is essential to building ongoing creativity and positive inner work life, they say. But it matters how these small goals are accomplished, clarified a study in a 2023 issue of Journal of Creative Behavior. Here, researchers noted that while there has been robust research on the impact of goal setting on productivity, less has been conducted on the impact of goal type on creativity. For the study, researchers analyzed whether outcome or process goals are most successful in maintaining creativity among teams. Outcome goals are intent on reaching a destination no matter the path while progress goals are mainly focused on the steps taken to achieve a goal. The experiment tracked creativity among 560 university students as they participated in community service projects — and the type of goal that led to higher creativity levels. The findings: Creative performance was at its highest when the students were given clear outcome goals — versus a vague destination. On the flip side, general outcome goals, or none at all, led to low creative productivity. Share direct goals and KPIs, then let the creatives do what they do best: out-of-the-box thinking. Be direct, specific and humble To usher in all of this positive inner work life and buy-in, leaders are best suited to be direct and specific. Don’t beat around the bush, but don’t patronize your team, either. Enter the groundbreaking book and all-encompassing leadership technique, Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Founded on the principle, “Care personally, challenge directly,” Radical Candor provides a blueprint to dispel toxic workplace cultures and provide tactical tools to people managers. Scott explains in a deep dive on the approach in her blog that naming the approach “radical candor” emphasizes the empathy, compassion and kind straightforwardness that can get lost in corporate environments. As the workplace continues to evolve, leaders must listen rather than lecture. What this means: Set up feedback cycles to understand how management is perceived among employees. According to research in a 2020 issue of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, leaders who are humble have the highest positive impact on the creative teams they manage. It makes sense. To invigorate creativity among your team, consider the environment most conducive to collaboration and creativity: clear outcome goals, positive inner work life, self-awareness and non-judgmental feedback.

In 2017 the internet was a different place. It was before the D2C revolution. Before web3. Before COVID. This internet-of-then was the business landscape that we started Alright Studio in, with the intention of being a different kind of digitally-focused agency. Our edge was—and in many ways, still is—the harmony of aesthetics and function, knowing one can’t hit without the other. Over the past six years, we’ve worked with over a hundred clients, many of which you’ve probably heard of: Post Malone, Noom, Blank Street, AriZona Iced Tea, Steve Madden, Great Jones, Dame Products. A solid third of the clients we’ve worked with required identity development. Over three-quarters required art direction. In the end, not a single client required web design alone. What soon became clear was the fact that, even though our focus was typically on web design, our scope of work was always much more broad. And while many of our clients come to us for “just” a website, the strategic, creative, and complicated process of actually creating a site that effectively communicates what a brand is online often led to an entirely new identity. Done correctly, web design is never just web design—it’s branding. Work for Post Malone ('Twelve Carat Toothache'), Roberta's, Symbol, Body, Unspun, and Love Injection. Courtesy Alright Studio. Branding with a capital B Branding is messy. It’s personal and opinionated. Branding is also, by nature, a line item. Every creative agency you meet will sell the client a different suite of services that really boils down to a nice-looking brand book and a set of rules. The problem is that these rules, while valuable, expensive, and packed to the gills with work (often done for work’s sake), rarely answered the fundamental question of how a brand should look, sound, and act online. So we began to ask ourselves questions that were avant-garde at the time, if table stakes for web design today: What if the margins were super tight? What if the logo took up the entire above-the-fold? Could the informational pages have tiny type with lots of info? These choices weren’t merely based on our desire to be contrarians. They were reflections of our clients’ existing brands, and strategic ways for us to nail the sometimes esoteric, often nebulous, directives clients gave us through scoping and onboarding. But as the budgets got bigger and the services we were hired for began to expand, it forced us to grapple with the idea that we were often re-articulating opinions, inventing new points-of-view, or completely reinventing work that had been done by other parties in order to make our deliverable—the website—function effectively on the internet. We learned quickly that while our full-time job was making these websites, most of our clients had never gone through the process of launching a big site before—much less a new brand to market. We found ourselves regularly educating clients on how to launch their businesses. There was so much to consider beyond just the design of the site: copy, photography, illustrations, merchandising, lead times, fulfillment, analytics, sales channels, requisite third party tools. Design for Luaka Bop, a record label founded by David Byrne. Project included animation, art direction, design, dev, eComm, strategy. Courtesy Alright Studio. What we didn’t yet know was how to ask for the time and money we really needed to solve these problems for people. Instead, we tried to just do it all ourselves, ad-hoc and as quickly as possible (or at least before the client could get pissed off at us). Not quite sure how to talk about your company? We’ll draft a positioning statement. Need copy there? We’ll write a line, leave it in the design, and see if anyone asks us to remove it. Subpar product imagery? We’ll ship the items to our co-working space in Brooklyn, book the conference room, and shoot everything ourselves in an afternoon. Need illustrations for your services? We can get pretty dangerous in Illustrator. Of course, none of that is what we were hired for. Our clients just wanted a website. But whether they knew it or not, they needed all of this other stuff, too! And we were always at least willing, if not happy, to provide the full suite of services. But when clients didn’t think they needed to consider these other details, they’d get frustrated that we were trying to up-sell them, dragging our feet, or simply not executing the thing we had been hired for. At its root, what they needed was Branding. Yes, with a capital B. The bits and pieces that uniquely and fundamentally define a company, and that you need before you can really start making things from the point of view of that business. The big shift that allowed us to have more license in defining how we work came when we had accumulated, almost by accident, a portfolio of diverse projects that showcased a range of approaches to problem solving—many of which effectively solved “capital B” Branding challenges. The breadth of that portfolio then allowed us to begin telling our clients what they actually needed, rather than letting what they thought they needed define our scopes. We were figuring it out :) The Alright Studio website, which launched in 2023. Courtesy Alright Studio. Mutual uncertainty, mutual evolution Then, the world changed. Alright was technically born in 2017, but was ultimately molded by the COVID-19 pandemic three years later. Businesses the world-over tried to figure out how to keep the lights on—ours included. Alright’s nimble nature and our, at the time, outrageously low budgets (seriously, we’ve been rejected for not charging enough) set us up remarkably well to evolve with our clients as they scrambled to figure out what was coming next. With client budgets vacillating between “help me out, it’s a pandemic” and “I have all this PPP money I don’t know what to do with,” we began diversifying our outputs. We did this to make sure our projects could actually launch, and also because we were getting inquiries that were like nothing we had ever been contacted for prior. From set building and art direction to physical product design to developing bespoke back-end infrastructures, and constant strategy and copywriting; it was all over the place. We moved entire brick-and-mortar businesses to online stores. We helped design, name, and brand a hyper-technical N95 mask. We did several socially distant photo shoots. And we were always thinking about imbuing the identity of our client into our work, based on what they were coming to us for. More than anything, though, we put our heads down and just worked and worked, sometimes for-profit and sometimes just to have something fun to do while stuck inside. Work for Miracle Seltzer, Dame, One Canopy, Trippin, Great Jones, Bilt (including credit card design). Courtesy Alright Studio. Throughout the pandemic, our clients were both understanding and grateful when we presented solutions to their business or brand problems. They knew that they were out of their collective depths (to be honest, so were we), and they were willing to defer to another party to help them change tack. Our collaborations with fast-moving upstarts throughout the pandemic allowed us to intentionally evolve our process, so that we truly understand what a client needs before a project begins, rather than assuming that a client only needs our help with web design and development, because that’s what they told us. It also led us to change our process of client education. We explain everything that goes into a website, from photography to copy to the implications of different content management systems, in plain English, from the start. The biggest goal in our pandemic engagements was making sure our clients felt heard and seen, and understood exactly what we would be delivering. Pre-emptive problem solving That has gone on to define who we are today, and how we work. Consider some of our work from 2021 and 2022; our first in the post-pandemic world. We worked with the conscious travel company Trippin—for a year—to come up with a design system that felt like it was at the intersection of digital product and editorial experience. The brief to us was, more or less, to make their site—a veritable digital travel platform—more performant, organized, maintainable by their in-house staff, and mobile-friendly. We mapped their entire site, spanning thousands of articles, to clean up data structures and pathways, and identify the design cues that made Trippin, Trippin. We ultimately re-platformed them entirely, in the interest of performance and organization, and developed a net new design system, with design studio All Purpose, that was subtly referential of post cards from all over the world. Great Jones, a design-forward, direct-to-consumer cookware company, came to us in the late summer of 2021 to markedly improve its eCommerce and transactional experience, while keeping the panache that already made the brand instantly recognizable—all before Black Friday. We started with our own research, auditing, and technical discovery. This all resulted in an internal brief to ourselves focused on much more than improvements to their eComm experience: We developed a retooled and robust site map, components and features, then wireframes of all core site pages, a tech plan, and, finally, full fidelity design. The re-launch of sexual wellness company Dame’s eCommerce marketplace is perhaps the ultimate case study of web work as brand identity development. Dame briefed us to take the brand’s visual language out of its circa-2018 DTC design cues (think: flat, saturated colors and humanist sans serifs), while paying keen attention to site performance and conversion. Alright Studio united and re-designed intimate wellness company Dame's eComm and editorial platforms so they visually coordinate. Courtesy Alright Studio. In order to truly evolve the brand and create a site that not only left 2018 in the past, but felt fresh for the present, we ultimately recommended uniting Dame's eCommerce platform with its editorial platform. At the time, these platforms were two distinct web properties, each defined by distinct visuals and tones of voice. We then doubled down on Dame’s iconic blue as its primary brand color, and balanced that identifiably digital hue with warm imagery that feels both cutting edge and comfortable. And lastly, we rounded out the new iteration of the brand with upbeat, sex-positive copy writing. Every project, in one way or another, is Branding. This could be a big (or small) website, a social campaign, or a packaging refresh. If a client has come to you, as an agency, they want your out-of-house perspective on how to present themselves. It’s on you to explain that pushing a brand’s identity doesn’t necessarily mean they need a new logo; it means creating a web experience that feels harmonious and authentic and distinctly that brand, no matter the user’s point of entry. Execution and aesthetics exist in harmony; if it’s not functional, it’s not beautiful. To be meticulous in both means you have to be meticulous in defining what needs to be done. So what makes a site functional? Sometimes a client needs your guidance in defining that. We’ve learned to define it broadly.

Lips on the cusp of a kiss. Reflective bubbles frothing over a bar of soap. A vibrant slice of tomato glistening with water droplets, beckoning a bite. Over the past two years, brands have been getting up close and personal, with macro product imagery offering a photographic tease consumers can almost feel, touch, or taste. You’ve probably seen this approach to product photography, which uses a macro lens to capture tightly cropped, super high-resolution shots, cross your feed lately. Categories as widespread as food & beverage, home furnishings, consumer packaged goods, beauty, cannabis, and fashion are embracing the zoomed-in look, using it to convey a sense of immediacy, highlight product quality, and provide consumers with an up-close-and-personal view of their offerings. The popularity of this style has grown exponentially as brands have begun to recognize its ability to create a high-end, editorial aesthetic that is both enticing and hyper-clickable—bringing us closer to the objects we desire. The use of contemporary macro photography in branding is grounded in the work of editorial-forward photographers like Bobby Doherty and Grant Cornett, who cut their teeth in the publishing world in the 2010s before making the jump into brand creative. While working in editorial, both photographers captured a wide range of products with close up, high dynamic range (HDR) shots. (Consider this seductive photo of a glazed ham, by Cornett for Gather Journal in 2018, or this $18,000 diamond bracelet by Doherty while he was on staff at New York Magazine.) Photographs by Bobby Doherty for DTC skincare company Soft Services. Images courtesy Soft Services. The same year that Gather published Cornett’s photo alongside its glazed ham recipe, then-Chobani creative director Lisa Smith commissioned him to shoot the photography for Chobani’s rebrand, making the yogurt company one of the earliest to lean into the photographic style, and the company one of Cornett’s earliest brand-side collaborations. Doherty in particular has become the secret weapon for many high profile brands; he’s shot the hero photography for On Rye (2017; a now defunct Pentagram project), followed in quick succession by Cometeer (2020), Pure Beauty (2021), Soft Services (2021; founded by alumnae of Glossier, another brand that loves its close-ups), and most recently, Starface (2022). Cut to present day, and a slew of kindred-spirits have tapped into this previously niche editorial aesthetic in order to imbue their commercial offerings with a more elevated tone. The most immediate example of this trend is in the food & beverage space. In addition to the previously mentioned Cometeer and On Rye, recent rebrands by JKR for Popeyes, Heinz, Dunkin’, and Burger King—the last of which elicited near universal admiration from extremely-online designers everywhere upon its launch in January 2021—have all utilized macro product shots. Images 1-4 by Bobby Doherty for DTC coffee company Cometeer. Courtesy Creech Studio, which developed the company's brand identity. Images 5-6 for skincare company F. Miller, which mimics the wavy product hover interactions on its site. Courtesy F. Miller. For Burger King, a new approach to art direction was part of an effort to communicate the company’s updated mission to remove artificial ingredients, pivot consumer perception, and showcase fresh ingredients; all by “maximizing craveability” with up-close-and-personal photography, says Lisa Smith, who is now executive creative director at JKR. “Macro allows us to simply show these new, higher quality ingredients directly,” Smith says. As to the approach’s broad industry appeal, Smith speculates that within QSR (“quality service restaurants,” aka fast-food) especially, macro photography connotes elevation and luxury, making customers feel more at ease indulging in products traditionally associated with lower-quality and cost. Macro captures the ephemeral textures of a fresh meal. Images 1-2 for Burger King courtesy JKR. Images 3-6 by Bobby Doherty for On Rye, courtesy Jesse Reed. In an era of online shopping, close-up photography can also be a powerful tool to show the craftsmanship of physical products, too. If you’re shopping for a wedding ring in person, you can take the time to touch the metal and examine the gemstones carefully to gauge whether they’re worth the price—even using a magnifying glass if you need to. Macro photography serves the same purpose, with the camera serving as appraiser, mediated on screen. In this way, macro photography is almost synesthetic, or cross-sensory: the hyperreality of showing the texture of a beauty product in high definition is an approximation of putting the product on your hand to feel the texture, or a close-up of a juicy burger a placeholder for the ability to walk into a restaurant and smell the grill at work. Ali Ozden, creative director at Sydney-based Universal Favourite, points to this sensory-blending aspect of macro as the driving force behind its inclusion in the studio’s recent work for Australian sexual wellness company LBDO: “by seeing the soft silicon of a vibrator, glistening with spots of moisture, you get a feel for what it might be like in your hand, or how the products might move across your skin.” Images 1-3 by Daniela Spector for intimate wellness brand Maude, courtesy Daniela Spector. Images 4-6 for digital-first sexual wellness brand LBDO courtesy Universal Favourite, which developed its brand identity. The seductive, sensorial potential of macro photography is something several other brands have tapped into for their art direction as well, like intimate wellness brand Maude, for their recent wheatpaste campaign, or body-based skincare brand Soft Services, which utilizes cheekily soft-core close-ups of knees, backs, butts, and crotches in brand photography in an effort to highlight the efficacy of products. In all three cases, macro close-ups allowed these brands to nod to the erotic nature of their products without actually showing anything explicit—in a tight crop, a close up of a knee can feel just as sultry as cleavage, eliciting all the attention of a full-body nude without actually freeing the nipple. To that end, while the current love for macro photography is certainly aesthetically driven, it’s also heavily bolstered by the broad versatility of close-up photography. In an era of multi-channel activations, zoomed-in and densely patterned imagery is extremely flexible—you can crop it, rotate it, or resize it without repercussion, making a single image asset suitable for an Instagram tile and a billboard alike (meaning less budget needed for image licensing, wherein brands have to partially or fully buy the rights to imagery from photographers). Product photography for Australian food coloring company Colour Mill, courtesy Universal Favourite. The allover “full-bleed” effect of a tight repeated texture, as in Creech Studio’s bubbly work for Zero Acre Farms, is also highly versatile in applications that require both text or logo and image. Whereas a standard distance lifestyle photo might have high contrast between lights and darks and a range of colors, the relative flatness in tonal variation and cover of a textural macro shot means it holds up well against overlaid content. This use case is especially salient given the general increase in brands producing blog content in recent years. [Related: How Spotify canvases are changing the way we experience music] Shooting macro photography requires specialized lenses, a good food or prop stylist, and most of all, a skilled photographer. To borrow a concept from renowned photographer Irving Penn, a photographer is like an expert surgeon, and the camera a knife; framing a scene, especially such a close-up one, requires constant, thoughtful choices about what to cut from the world and what to keep. That said—shooting a single object with a tight crop is in some ways lower-lift than having a stylist spend hours sourcing props and staging a full environmental scene, scouting and securing locations, or paying models and licensing their likeness for several years. For small brands, macro can be an economical way to capture just a few assets with the help of a small team and limited studio space. It also plays well with 3D-rendered elements, allowing brands to rely on a wide range of image generation methods, and even fewer collaborators, without feeling “off brand.” JKR’s work for Kraft Mac & Cheese, where CGI drips of cheese and photos of fields of noodles utilize the same visual motifs being one such example. Macro photography for Kraft Mac & Cheese, with 3D-rendered elements and CGI cheese sauce drips. Images courtesy JKR. Photographer Daniela Spector, who shot the macro-oriented campaign for Maude mentioned above, thinks this convergence of real and unreal is par for the course with extreme close-up. She explains that the human eye is more akin to a 35mm lens than a macro one—meaning that viewing a macro version of a scene isn’t something we can do naturally. “Macro photography delves into the abstract,” she says. “It mystifies the viewer and creates curiosity. Even if it’s only for a moment, until the eye adjusts and understands what it’s seeing. The imagery is a discovery process before the product itself. And who doesn’t love a bit of mystery?” Or, she adds, “Maybe the popularity has something to do with everyone’s increasing desire to suspend belief and disassociate from the never-ending barrage of reality.”

K-Pop star Psy’s “Gangnam style” became the first music video to hit a billion views on YouTube way back in 2012. In retrospect, it was also the beginning of a global phenomenon. Today, the fandom has only grown: In K-Pop, celebrities aren’t performers, they’re idols. K-pop fans are stans, using the power of their ardent fan community to flood Twitter, shape politics, and sell out shows. If you just take into account streaming, K-pop had almost 8 billion monthly streams on Spotify in 2022—nearly one stream per person on the planet. More popular than ever before, K-Pop fans themselves are spread across the globe: according to Statista, only 10% of fans are based in South Korea, where the genre originates. At the center of the fandom are designers, who have had a huge hand in translating a band’s vision across the globe—and across languages. Their designs bring a band’s story to life, stop scrolls, and drive sales. According to the designers we spoke to, the most important part of designing for a global scale is to visually communicate in a way that is both universal and distinct to the mood and messaging of the artist’s music; in the case of K-Pop, through bold type, geometric motifs, and warm minimalist aesthetics. Designed band merch and collateral are core parts of K-Pop culture. In K-Pop, physical CDs and albums have had a staying power not seen in other genres, largely due to the fact that the physical takeaway serves as not only a keepsake, but also a form of potential interaction between artists (or idols) and their fans, as the CD purchases are often part of getting access to artist meet and greets. But like any artist in today’s digital world, the biggest K-Pop bands, like BTS, BlackPink, EXO, TXT, and Red Velvet need to compete for eyeballs in ever more congested social feeds and grow their audience wherever they are. Studio XXX's type-forward work for BTS. Images courtesy JiYoon Lee and Studio XXX. No one knows this better than the designers and studios that have visualized the magic of their music, and are helping to push the wave forward in the process, like graphic designer and founder of Studio XXX Jiyoon Lee, who has worked with global stars like BTS, TXT, LOONA, and Kang Daniel to bring their projects' stories to life. (You might recognize Lee’s most famous work in TXT’s Blue Orangeade lyric video, Stray Kids’ Go, and Kang Daniel’s Color On Me.) For Lee, the use of bold typography is essential, and she regularly uses it in her designs to create an eye-catching visual niche. This is apparent in the work she’s done for BTS albums and EPs. Consider her lettering for the band’s third album, Love Yourself: Tear, which is in a handwritten scrawl. For the album, she wanted to connect fans to a soft, warm feeling by conveying a personal message of hope and friendship. But she especially loves working with big, bold fonts and geometric patterns in the form of circles, squares, and equilateral triangles, which she considers to be her signature, and has since become a trademark of its own in K-Pop’s graphic design landscape. [Related: How Spotify canvases are changing the way we experience music] According to A Ji Hye, graphic designer and co-founder of Seoul-based design studio Sparks Edition, which is responsible for a large number of graphic design projects for BTS, including this card co-branded for fandom platform Weverse projects, there are different ways these typographic techniques work. Some could be in the form of bold, kinetic, and bright shapes written in the Korean alphabet (known as Hangul) or the English alphabet. Most of these can be achieved by mixing these fonts in a vivid form. “Showing the diversity of typography, by using different alphabets, type designs, and [varying] their degree of readability, makes typography an interesting and crucial part of K-Pop,” A Ji Hye says. CD packaging and collateral for BTS, by Seoul-based design studio Sparks Edition. Images courtesy Sparks Edition. Jiyoon Lee feels like this is a welcome but trying process, as fans can rely on the visuals and aesthetic to convey the stories that they’re unable to understand in Korean. She and Nae Ra agree that the most important part of designing for a global scale is to convey the feelings and emotions that the Idol intends to share, despite language barriers. To them, these albums are visual commodities that carry commercial values. For a while, neon colors dominated the industry, but now designers are finding themselves going for a kind of warm minimalism, by using more muted and soft looks that work hand in hand with geometric shapes and sans serif fonts. Lee and Ji Hye agree that a minimalist look can set a design apart in the K-Pop world, causing the creative to stand out more clearly, and create a cleaner look in the overall branding of these projects. Organic designs, informed by nature, are also used by K-Pop idols to create a sense of authenticity. Ji Hye feels that it’s essential for the creative collateral to communicate a modern and environmentally sustainable outlook by using colors like terracotta, sand, sienna, and tan. Another variation of this is the use of subdued and dark colors, which are apparent in designer and founder of StudioGraey Nae Ra’s work with Red Velvet’s Cookie Jar and posters for SHINee. To Nae Ra, it’s more about the color saturation, and using classic serif fonts that are elegant, readable, and evoke a sense of nostalgia in fans as a mechanism to stand out to your audience. Studio Graey design work for K-Pop groups Kwon Yuri, Red Velvet, and Pristin. Images courtesy Studio Graey. Now, even K-Pop design has a fandom of its own. It’s become a common practice for K-Pop groups to announce official, specific Pantone colors for use in fan art. A quick search for the keywords “K-Pop graphic design” on TikTok shows thousands of videos of engaged fans and designers recreating K-Pop design projects and fanart of their own. These videos have garnered over 7 billion views at the time of publication—and have created a community of online K-Pop design enthusiasts in the process. Although designing for a global audience was never something Lee foresaw, she’s come to appreciate audience involvement all the same; making an effort to listen to the community on social media and input their suggestions into her work. As the demand for K-Pop grows, Lee says she feels increased pressure to deliver incredible work. “It’s a happy and rewarding feeling that can be overwhelming,” she says, because she also feels “pressured to put out amazing designs.” But she adds, “I find myself growing each day because of this.”

The past few years brought seismic shifts to the social media landscape, thanks to the rise of TikTok, Facebook’s massive rebrand initiative as Meta and Elon Musk’s rocky acquisition of Twitter. Authentic content is on the up (see: the rise of BeReal), and people are starting to lose trust in influencers. De-influencing, defined as the act of telling people what not to buy on social media, is trending after the now infamous Tarte Dubai trip, despite the industry growing tenfold since 2016. Is the influencer a dying breed? No, but the state of influencing is changing. Here’s what agencies can expect in the year ahead. The state of influencer marketing 2023 Although the influencer marketing industry was valued at $16.4 billion in 2022—an 18.8 percent increase from 2021 — it pales in comparison to the 42.3 percent increase from 2020 to 2021. Still, when people ask, “is influencer marketing on the decline?,” the answer remains a firm “no.” Here’s why: The huge spike in influencer marketing from 2020 to 2021 is largely credited to the pandemic, so those numbers would be hard to replicate in a year of standard consumer behavior. Still, the average growth rate per year from 2016 to 2022 actually exceeds it, at 46.9 percent, according to a recent Oberlo report. That’s not to say influencer marketing doesn’t have its controversies. At the end of January, beauty influencer Mikayla Nogueira rattled TikTok with a controversial sponsored post for L’Oreal where she was accused of wearing fake eyelashes to show the “after” of a mascara product, and has since been accused of editing other images on Instagram. It all raises an eyebrow towards the future of influencer marketing. So, what will influencer marketing look like in 2023? Partnerships might look different than they did in years past, but there are still opportunities to work with influencers. Here are some influencer trends to help your clients nail their social media strategy in the current climate. The rise of micro-influencers and nano-influencers One of the reasons consumers used to trust influencer recommendations is because influencers on social media felt like people they know — like friends. Once considered more trustworthy than traditional celebrities, many have since amassed enough of a following to elevate their status to something of a mini-celeb. To that end, it’s not always the biggest stars with the largest following that will have the greatest impact on your campaigns. Reach influencers with smaller audiences that best align with your target demographics. Micro-influencers (between 5,000 to 100,000 followers) and nano-influencers (fewer than 5,000 followers) operate within niche communities and typically receive the greatest levels of engagement. Indeed, brands exhibit a strong preference for working with nano- and micro-influencers over macro-influencers and celebrities, according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s State of Influencer Marketing 2023: Benchmark Report. Thankfully, those are easier to find and connect with now than ever. The influencer pool only continues to expand — with some estimates putting the count at 37 million influencer accounts on a single platform today — and people continue to carve out more and more specific topics to specialize in. Agencies shouldn’t have a difficult time locating the best match for their clients, no matter how narrow the scope. Even better, sticking with smaller influencers is also friendlier on your clients’ budgets than trying to pin down those competitive celebrity accounts. It also enables you to work with more than one influencer, branching out by targeting different niche markets with different collaborations. AI influencers and computer-generated spokespeople Who can forget when Microsoft released Tay seven years ago, only to rescind the Twitterbot just 16 hours after launch when it started posting inflammatory and offensive remarks? More recently, LensaAI, an app that produces ‘magical avatars’ based on ten user-provided images has been accused of demonstrating sexism in AI. There’s still a lot to figure out in this space. The plus side of working with a virtual influencer is that you can fully control brand representation from these artificial entities if you oversee their output and don’t leave anything to automation. As the technology (and subsequently our collective understanding) develops, this may be something agencies and their clients will want to consider. User-generated content (UGC) Do you need to pay an influencer to become a fan of your client’s brand … or can existing fans and followers become your influencers? In some cases, fantastic testimonials and outspoken fans resonate so deeply with prospective customers that they can play a major role in decision-making and significantly increase conversion. Not to mention, this is a more authentic expression of your brand since you’re featuring people who truly want to share their positive experiences as opposed to people you’ve paid to do so. Start by interviewing real users, then turn their stories into influencer-worthy content that you can promote across social media. The longer-term collaborator It’s not uncommon for clients to jump at the opportunity to work with big, recognizable names. But their budget may only cover a one-time sponsored post. Instead, discuss the potential benefits of finding an influencer who is passionate about your client’s brand and willing to work with the company on a longer-term contract, involving multiple posts and mentions over time. Consistent content featuring your client’s brand will make the relationship feel more authentic to the influencer’s followers and generate stronger interest and higher conversion. For example, your influencer might share a post featuring your client on their account — and a few weeks later, appear at one of your client’s events (and post from it). This is especially useful if you find local influencers who can make regular appearances or those who have lots of connections within the community your client is targeting. Some ways to find them: Browse LinkedIn to learn who’s connected to your client’s industry-relevant groups Research local events and learn about keynote speakers and organizers; attend those where networking might help you get a better grasp of the key players are in the local area Monitor what your audience is sharing and talking about; your perfect influencer might not have the highest following on a personal account, but they might still be generating buzz among the groups that best represent your demographics These deeper relationships can go beyond a series of social media posts, developing into long-term brand ambassadorships. Such influencers can also provide valuable insights for new product development and offer creative input for marketing campaigns. The in-house-fluencer Who says companies can’t create their own influencers? Put an existing employee in the spotlight on social media and boost their presence among the brand’s target audience. In some cases, a clear candidate might come to mind — whether it’s an entry-level hire with an acting background, or a particularly charismatic CEO or other senior leader. Agencies can offer their assistance in assessing the best candidate to ensure their personal brand aligns with the needs, values, and messaging of the company. For B2B marketing, this strategy is commonly employed by having senior leadership teams post “wins” and industry insights on LinkedIn — it can be further amplified by appearances at conferences, webinars, and other events. For B2C marketing, highlighting one individual’s presence across customer-facing channels and encouraging direct engagement between the in-house “celebrity” and customers can enhance trust. It’s always easier to connect with an individual than a company, but no one says that individual has to be a stranger with 30K followers and a mastery of Instagram filters. Sometimes, it's better if it’s someone less known - but more real.

“Design system” and “style guide” are two of the most common terms in design. When designers discuss a product, they often mention one or another during the conversation. Although both terms are not new, there are still a lot of misunderstandings regarding what exactly they mean. This article explains design system vs style guide, what design features each has, and how product teams can utilize both to make their design process more efficient. What is a design system? A design system is a collection of reusable functional elements, including components and interaction patterns, that allows product teams to create a unified, consistent experience across all digital products that an organization offers. Components, design tokens, pattern libraries, and guidelines are the four main categories that make up a design system. Let’s dive into more detail. 1. Component A component is a modular piece of a user interface, such as a button, card, or data table. Think of a component as a building block that allows designers to create a product. Well-designed components share two integral properties—reusability and modularity. First, components in a design system are designed to be reusable, meaning they have a visual consistency that allows them to be used across a brand’s multiple products and projects, without having to be redesigned each time. For example, the same call to action button can be used for a contact form or as a primary call to action button on the landing page. A component’s second necessary property, modularity, means that it's possible to combine a few components to create a new component. For example, you can combine a button and a card and create a component card with a button. 2. Design token Design tokens are the visual design elements of a user interface, such as color, typography, spacing, and more, represented as variables in a common format, such as CSS style property, that are used to construct and maintain a design system. No matter what design the team creates, whether it’s a mobile design or CMS web design, design tokens make it easier to turn the design into code. For example, suppose you specify a token with a name “primary-color” and set a value for it. When developers will implement your design, instead of hardcoding a value, they will use the token “primary-color.” So that the CSS code will look like this: “h1 { color: primary }”. 3. Pattern library A pattern library is a subset of a design system; it's a collection of design patterns that can be used to build user interfaces. Common examples of design patterns are navigation menus, data input forms, etc. The goal of a pattern library is to provide a repository of well-designed patterns that can be used to create consistent and efficient user interfaces. A pattern library allows designers to create specific components and write guidelines for using them to create consistent and efficient user interfaces. 4. Guidelines Guidelines are the set of rules and best practices that advise how product teams should use components and visual styles. Unlike style guidelines, which we’ll get into more below, design system guidelines describe how components should behave functionally, and how users are expected to interact with them. Explicitly written guidelines help onboard new designers to the product since they help them understand how to make the interface functional and visually consistent. Within guidelines is a subcategory called brand guidelines, or a set of rules and standards that define an organization's brand identity, including its visual elements (such as the brand's logo, typography, and color palette) and the tone of voice that the organization uses to communicate with its audience. The difference between a UI kit and a design system A UI kit and a design system are both tools for organizing and managing the design of a product, but they serve different purposes. A UI kit is a collection of pre-designed graphical user interface elements, such as buttons, forms, and icons, that can be used to create user interfaces. On the other hand, a design system is created specifically for a particular organization. The goal of a design system is to provide a unified and consistent design experience across all products and platforms that this organization offers so that every element in a design system aligns with the brand's established standards. Why do designers use a design system? There are several reasons why product teams should use design systems: 1. It's a single source of truth Design systems become a single source of truth for all designers involved in the product design process. Whenever designers need to create a new design or modify an existing one, they rely on the design system to get all the required information. Having a single source of truth is especially important on large-scale projects when multiple designers or design teams work together to create a product. Design systems help to avoid situations when different team members do the same work twice (i.e. design the same component) or when team members create their own unique set of components that conflict with other parts of the designed product (visual or functional inconsistency). 2. It allows for scalability Design systems make it easier for the design team to update design elements. As a product grows and becomes more sophisticated, the ability to introduce changes in the design without significant reworks becomes integral. 3. It encourages teamwork Well-crafted design systems result from the co-creation of designers and developers involved in the product design process. Since both parties contribute to the design system, it helps to establish a strong bond between two teams—not only do the teams share the same visual and functional language when building a product, but they also actively collaborate during product design and development. What are examples of design systems? Here are some of the most well-known design system examples: 1. Material Design by Google Material Design is a comprehensive design system that includes visual design guidelines, interaction patterns, and a library of reusable components for designing and building digital products. Material Design was originally designed for Google's web products and Android, but because this design system is so versatile, it can be used for different product types. 2. Atlassian Design System Atlassian, a company behind Jira and Confusion, has a solid design system that provides guidelines, components, and style guides for creating visually and functionally consistent experiences across the Atlassian product suite. What is a style guide in design? As the name suggests, a style guide is a collection of visual styles used in a product design, including colors, typefaces, imagery, and negative space. A style guide is a part of the design system that defines the visual language of the product. Style guides can serve as a reference for designers and developers, providing a guide for creating new design elements that align with the established standards for the visual language. Design system vs style guide: what's the difference? A style guide is a subclass of a design system that defines the visual language of the product. A style guide only covers visual styles such as colors, typefaces, and white space (like kerning, leading, margins, padding, etc). On the other hand, design systems go beyond just the visual design—the components are created on top of the visual styles defined in the style guide. The design system also specifies the rules that help product team members use design consistently. For example, a design system might determine the exact font size that should be used in a component, like an input field. Consistency, efficiency, scalability Those are the benefits that design systems bring to the organization. Design systems and style guides offer design features that make it easier for designers and developers to create cohesive and user-friendly products even as products and platforms evolve and grow over time. By establishing a solid foundation for a product's visual and functional design, design systems can help streamline the design process and support collaboration between people involved in the design process.

BeReal, the French photo-sharing app that tapped into a desire to reimagine the social media experience, is at a juncture. After a year that saw the app downloaded a whopping 93.5 million times and consistently top the Apple and Google App charts, user stagnation has set in, leading some to believe it’s destined to become the next Clubhouse. Centered around authenticity, BeReal’s core feature is a daily notification that encourages users to share a “genuine” photo of themselves and their surroundings within a randomly selected two-minute window every day. While its candid concept undoubtedly struck a chord with people – particularly Gen Z – BeReal has failed to move beyond its initial idea nor launch a model that can be monetized. This impasse presented an opportunity for incumbent platforms to step in and copycat its feature, resulting in the likes of TikTok Now and Instagram’s Candid Stories, leaving BeReal, its investors, and users wondering what’s next. Some brands such as American Eagle Outfitters, e.l.f. Cosmetics and Chipotle have dabbled in the platform, offering promos and discounts but with limited success because, ultimately, BeReal provides no functionality for marketers. “A few well-known brands are still using it,” says Matt Navarra, a leading social media consultant who has previously advised the likes of Google, Meta and Pinterest. “But its own terms of service say an advertiser is not permitted on the platform, and it has no features to help brands. In fact, it inhibits brands because you have a limited number of friend connections you can make.” Shachaf Rodberg, Wix’s marketing trend analyst, says people’s growing disenchantment with brands portraying an always-positive, inauthentic side helped catapult BeReal’s popularity. That coincided with an increasing desire by people to be part of – and restrict their content to – smaller online circles, a trend further driven by Covid-19 when most of us were stuck at home yearning for meaningful human contact. “People are moving towards smaller social groups, and posting and sharing in DMs or on WhatsApp, and not showing everything to the public,” explains Rodberg. “You can see it particularly with Gen Z. They have a public persona different from what they share with close friends. This has contributed to the drive towards authenticity. People are getting fed up having a public display, and even those who want to become influencers are still looking for closer relationships.” While it remains to be seen if and how brands can use BeReal meaningfully in the future, the platform’s phenomenon – and the rise of other apps like Poparazzi, Locket and Slay – tells us that people are longing for a more intimate and real experience online. With this in mind, Rodberg shares five ways you can help clients be relevant to those consumers seeking authenticity. Show your vulnerable side People connect with brands that show a human side, according to Rodberg. And humans are not polished or perfect. He highlights the case of Amercian olive oil startup Graza, which recently disappointed customers by delivering their holiday gifts late and poorly packaged. Rather than get PR executives to pour over the most suitable response, company chief executive Andrew Benin wrote a lengthy email entitled “Learning from our mistakes” and hit send to over 35,000 customers. Littered with grammatical errors and typos but expressing genuine regret, the correspondence received an overwhelmingly positive response. That’s not to say every company head should be given free rein on crisis communications, but it’s a lesson in how it can pay to be raw and honest with your words rather than stiff and safe through corporate speak. Put your people in front of your brand Companies that put their founders or employees front and center make real people an extension of the brand. According to Rodberg, it’s an excellent way for brands to resonate with consumers by making them feel they have a direct relationship with the company. He cites AI platform Gong as a company whose employees produce engaging content and become thought leaders on social media. Customer communications platform Intercom is another company that knows how to put a face to its brand. Editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, Jason Feifer, believes companies can successfully utilize their people externally and show authenticity by nailing their thought leadership strategy. Inject personality where you can Humor and personality can go a long way for brands and give consumers a sense that they’re engaging with companies on a human level. Rodberg sees brands like Burger King, Air, Wendy’s, and Ryanair as leaders in this space, winning over audiences with their smart, timely and sometimes audacious social media content. “It's like when you go on Twitter, and it feels like the person in charge of the Twitter account is running the whole company,” he says. “They just happen to do it through a brand’s account. It can be tough for brands to let go and trust an employee or team with that freedom, but if done right, it’s a great way for them to connect.” Before injecting personality into your social content, know your platforms and behave according to the channel. Your Twitter persona and its content might not resonate with the LinkedIn posse. However, keep your tone of voice consistent throughout to build familiarity with your audience. Take your audience behind the scenes To deliver a product or service, every company undergoes a process, whether in production or through a supply chain. Rodberg believes this offers brands an opportunity to bring people behind the scenes to show how they do things and create a sense of transparency between brand and consumer. Software company 37signals does a great job showing users under the hood, creating videos such as ‘A week in the life of a product designer’ where an employee shares their screen and goes into fine detail about their day-to-day work. A glance at the comments section tells you it’s highly relatable content. This transparent approach to marketing, championed by founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, is becoming ever more embedded in the 37signals brand. Think about how your clients can let the outside world in and make their audience feel like they’re getting a rare glimpse of something special. Encourage customers to share their stories User-generated content created and shared by a community of brand advocates is a surefire way to show authenticity and build trust among your audience. Workspace platform Notion has an extensive community shouting about its products, which it files under the Spotted on YouTube section of its YouTube channel. Then there’s the super creative wheelchair cover design company Izzy Wheels, which has built a massive following of happy online customers (cleverly called ‘spokes-people’) who proudly share their purchased designs on social media. User generated content also fits nicely with the lo-fi content trend being adopted by both small and large companies, something Wix Partner Daniel Azarian foresees continuing beyond 2023. Consider these tactics to get your clients’ authentic expression out into the world. According to Rodberg and Navarra, irrespective of whether BeReal finds its place within the social media landscape, people’s desire for authenticity will remain. “For the next few years, I don't see it changing,” says Rodberg. “In fact, I think it will come into sharper focus because that’s the expectation of the market. More and more brands will have to adjust their strategy to connect with these customers.” Navarra predicts a similar outcome. “Being ‘authentic’ has become a bit of a cliché or an overused buzzword in the past few years,” he says. “But the need for brands and creators to build an honest, deeper connection with their audience is an ongoing requirement.”