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The leaves are shining in the most beautiful colors and pumpkins are taking over the front porches. It’s time to welcome the spookiest of all months: October! To get your desktop ready for fall and the upcoming Halloween season, artists and designers from across the globe once again got their ideas flowing and designed inspiring wallpapers for you to indulge in.

The wallpapers in this post come in versions with and without a calendar for October 2024 and can be downloaded for free. And since so many beautiful and unique designs evolve around our little wallpapers challenge every month (we’ve been running it for more than 13 years already, can you believe it?!), we also added some timeless October treasures from our wallpapers archives to the collection. Maybe you’ll spot one of your almost-forgotten favorites in here, too?

A huge thank you to everyone who shared their wallpapers with us this month — this post wouldn’t exist without you. Happy October!

• You can click on every image to see a larger preview,
• We respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience through their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.
• Submit a wallpaper!
  Did you know that you could get featured in our next wallpapers post, too? We are always looking for creative talent.

Happy Halloween

Designed by Ricardo Gimenes from Spain.

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Reptile Awareness Day

“Let’s celebrate reptiles and raise awareness of their vital role in ecosystems. Many species face threats, so let’s learn, appreciate, and protect these incredible creatures and their habitats!” — Designed by PopArt Studio from Serbia.

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Make Today A Good Day

“‘Make today a good day’ is a simple yet powerful reminder to take control of the present moment. It emphasizes that our attitude and actions shape our experience, encouraging positivity and purpose. Each day brings new opportunities, and by choosing to make it good, we invite growth, joy, and fulfilment into our lives.” — Designed by Hitesh Puri from Delhi, India.

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The Dungeon Master

Designed by Ricardo Gimenes from Spain.

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Happy Dussehra

“I was inspired by Dussehra’s rich symbolism and cultural significance while creating this design. The festival celebrates the triumph of good over evil. The bow and arrow become the central focus, while the bold red background, golden accents, and the temple’s silhouette add a sense of grandeur and spirituality.” — Designed by Cronix from the United States.

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The Crow And The Ghosts

“If my heart were a season, it would be autumn.” — Designed by Lívia Lénárt from Hungary.

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The Night Drive

Designed by Vlad Gerasimov from Georgia.

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Autumn’s Splendor

“The transition to autumn brings forth a rich visual tapestry of warm colors and falling leaves, making it a natural choice for a wallpaper theme.” — Designed by Farhan Srambiyan from India.

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National Fossil Day

“Join us in commemorating National Fossil Day, a day dedicated to honoring the wonders of Earth’s prehistoric past. On this special day, we invite you to step back in time and explore the remarkable world of fossils. These ancient remnants of life on our planet offer a glimpse into the evolution of life, from the tiniest microorganisms to the towering giants that once roamed the Earth.” — Designed by PopArt Studio from Serbia.

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Magical October

“‘I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.’ (L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables)” — Designed by Lívi Lénárt from Hungary.

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Bird Migration Portal

“October is a significant month for me because it is when my favorite type of bird travels south. For that reason I have chosen to write about the swallow. When I was young, I had a bird’s nest not so far from my room window. I watched the birds almost every day; because those swallows always left their nests in October. As a child, I dreamt that they all flew together to a nicer place, where they were not so cold.” — Designed by Eline Claeys from Belgium.

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Ghostbusters

Designed by Ricardo Gimenes from Spain.

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Spooky Town

Designed by Xenia Latii from Germany.

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Hello Autumn

“Did you know that squirrels don’t just eat nuts? They really like to eat fruit, too. Since apples are the seasonal fruit of October, I decided to combine both things into a beautiful image.” — Designed by Erin Troch from Belgium.

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Hanlu

“The term ‘Hanlu’ literally translates as ‘Cold Dew.’ The cold dew brings brisk mornings and evenings. Eventually the briskness will turn cold, as winter is coming soon. And chrysanthemum is the iconic flower of Cold Dew.” — Designed by Hong, ZI-Qing from Taiwan.

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Discovering The Universe

“Autumn is the best moment for discovering the universe. I am looking for a new galaxy or maybe… a UFO!” — Designed by Verónica Valenzuela from Spain.

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King Of The Pirates

Designed by Ricardo Gimenes from Spain.

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Goddess Makosh

“At the end of the kolodar, as everything begins to ripen, the village sets out to harvesting. Together with the farmers goes Makosh, the Goddess of fields and crops, ensuring a prosperous harvest. What she gave her life and health all year round is now mature and rich, thus, as a sign of gratitude, the girls bring her bread and wine. The beautiful game of the goddess makes the hard harvest easier, while the song of the farmer permeates the field.” — Designed by PopArt Studio from Serbia.

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Game Night And Hot Chocolate

“To me, October is all about cozy evenings with hot chocolate, freshly baked cookies, and a game night with friends or family.” — Designed by Lieselot Geirnaert from Belgium.

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Strange October Journey

“October makes the leaves fall to cover the land with lovely auburn colors and brings out all types of weird with them.” — Designed by Mi Ni Studio from Serbia.

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Autumn Deer

Designed by Amy Hamilton from Canada.

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Dope Code

“October is the month when the weather in Poland starts to get colder, and it gets very rainy, too. You can’t always spend your free time outside, so it’s the perfect opportunity to get some hot coffee and work on your next cool web project!” — Designed by Robert Brodziak from Poland.

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Transitions

“To me, October is a transitional month. We gradually slide from summer to autumn. That’s why I chose to use a lot of gradients. I also wanted to work with simple shapes, because I think of October as the ‘back to nature/back to basics month’.” — Designed by Jelle Denturck from Belgium.

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Autumn In The Forest

“Autumn is a wonderful time to go for walks in the forest!” — Designed by Hilda Rytteke from Sweden.

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Shades Of Gold

“We are about to experience the magical imagery of nature, with all the yellows, ochers, oranges, and reds coming our way this fall. With all the subtle sunrises and the burning sunsets before us, we feel so joyful that we are going to shout it out to the world from the top of the mountains.” — Designed by PopArt Studio from Serbia.

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Happy Fall!

“Fall is my favorite season!” — Designed by Thuy Truong from the United States.

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Ghostober

Designed by Ricardo Delgado from Mexico City.

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First Scarf And The Beach

“When I was little, my parents always took me and my sister for a walk at the beach in Nieuwpoort. We didn't really do those beach walks in the summer but always when the sky started to turn gray and the days became colder. My sister and I always took out our warmest scarfs and played in the sand while my parents walked behind us. I really loved those Saturday or Sunday mornings where we were all together. I think October (when it’s not raining) is the perfect month to go to the beach for ‘uitwaaien’ (to blow out), to walk in the wind and take a break and clear your head, relieve the stress or forget one’s problems.” — Designed by Gwen Bogaert from Belgium.

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Turtles In Space

“Finished September, with October comes the month of routines. This year we share it with turtles that explore space.” — Designed by Veronica Valenzuela from Spain.

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Roger That Rogue Rover

“The story is a mash-up of retro science fiction and zombie infection. What would happen if a Mars rover came into contact with an unknown Martian material and got infected with a virus? What if it reversed its intended purpose of research and exploration? Instead choosing a life of chaos and evil. What if they all ran rogue on Mars? Would humans ever dare to voyage to the red planet?” Designed by Frank Candamil from the United States.

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Summer, Don’t Go!

“It would be nice if we could bring summer back, wouldn’t it?” — Designed by Terezija Katona from Serbia.

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Embracing Autumn’s Beauty

“We were inspired by the breathtaking beauty of autumn, with its colorful foliage and the symbolic pumpkin, which epitomizes the season. Incorporating typography allows us to blend aesthetics and functionality, making the calendar not only visually appealing but also useful.” — Designed by WPclerks from India.

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A Positive Fall

“October is the month when fall truly begins, and many people feel tired and depressed in this season. The jumping fox wants you to be happy! Also, foxes always have reminded me of fall because of their beautiful fur colors.” — Designed by Elena Sanchez from Spain.

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It’s no secret that AI is driving marketing industry growth. As a writer in the marketing industry, I've seen it myself.

AI can help with everything from brainstorming to content creation. But another marketing task that AI excels at? Personalization.

I’ve received plenty of personalized marketing assets, and it’s obvious when something uses surface-level personalization and when something is tailored to my specific interests and behaviors — and the latter always grabs my attention.

If you’re interested in using AI personalization in marketing to reach your customers, I put together this guide to help.

Table of Contents

• Why use AI for marketing personalization?
• Benefits of AI Personalization Marketing
• Challenges of AI Personalization Marketing
• Top 5 Use Cases for AI Personalization Marketing

Why use AI for marketing personalization?

In my experience, the biggest reason to use AI to personalize your marketing is that it enables you to scale your personalization efforts.

Marketers are no strangers to using marketing automation tools to personalize emails, generate leads, or set up workflows. Automation tools are great for streamlining recurring marketing tasks.

The difference with using AI for marketing personalization, however, is that AI is dynamic. AI can gather and interpret data, identify opportunities, and adapt to the data being presented.

This means that rather than being a tool to help streamline personalizations, AI can help you personalize your marketing on a deeper level.

Not only does personalization help increase sales, but 96% of marketers also say that a personalized experience increases the chances of buyers becoming repeat customers.

Benefits of AI Personalization Marketing

If you’re like most marketers I know, you already have reliable marketing automations set up. But if you’re curious about taking your automations up a notch, consider adding AI personalization into the mix.

According to marketers I spoke with, here are just a few of the benefits.

Personalization at Scale

According to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report, 77% of marketers who use generative AI say it helps them create more personalized content. On top of that, 56% of those same marketers say their AI-generated content performs the same or better than their fully human-created content.

This demonstrates that AI isn’t a replacement for your current personalization efforts but rather a tool to help you scale them. When you provide the right prompts and have a clear vision of what kind of data you’re looking for, AI can help you reach more customers in a personalized way.

As James Brooks, marketer and founder of Journorobo, puts it: “AI gives us the opportunity to scale the unscalable.”

Brooks adds: “The key is using this creatively, thoughtfully, and putting the effort in upfront. If you put the effort in on the front end and create a great, thorough prompt, it will serve you for months or years to come, every day, on autopilot.”

Lauren Petrullo, CEO and founder of award-winning digital marketing agency Mongoose Media, adds to this sentiment: “The personalization that you can leverage with AI allows the consumer or the subscriber to feel like you’re talking to them one-on-one versus one-to-many,” she says.

Improved Marketing Automations

As I mentioned earlier, every marketer uses marketing automations to streamline their tasks. AI tools can improve your current automations by making them more intelligent and data-driven.

For example, say I have an automation that segments my target audience. AI can take that a step further by identifying patterns and predicting the behaviors of that audience.

This can help me make more informed marketing and business decisions.

Greater Customer Value

Finally, with greater personalization comes greater customer value.

The more details you have about your target audience, the more tailored your marketing will be. This results in them receiving more value than they would have through generic marketing tactics.

Challenges of AI Personalization Marketing

AI personalization tools are not without their flaws. Let’s break down a few of the challenges and how marketers can address them.

Crafting Prompts

The most common challenge I hear about when using AI — and have experienced myself — is with prompting.

AI is smart, but it’s still learning. In fact, most tools need time and a lot of practice (i.e., receiving prompts) to adjust to your voice, tone, and requests.

This can be a challenge when using AI for personalization. Brooks suggests being as specific as possible to generate better prompts:

“Look at a language learning model (LLM) as a person — a VERY intelligent and knowledgable person, but still a person,” he says.

“It cannot read your mind. Set very specific prompts. Tell the LLM exactly what you want: how you want them to write, what you want the outcome to be, how you want things formatted, what you do want, and what you don't want.”

Technical Knowledge

Another challenge marketers may run into is having a lack of technical knowledge.

Marketing personalization at scale requires a bit more technical expertise than using ChatGPT, for instance.

You may need to understand APIs and have a deeper grasp of how AI works to create personalization workflows and automatic outputs.

“Fortunately, with the rise in ‘no-code’ tools, it's never been easier to tap into APIs and automate your marketing,” says Brooks.

“I recommend checking out tools like Make.com and Zapier that natively connect with your favorite marketing tools and AI platforms like OpenAI. A little YouTube-ing can also go a long way to learning this stuff.”

Top 5 Use Cases for AI Personalization Marketing

1. Email Marketing

Sending personalized emails is nothing new. We’ve all been on the receiving end of a marketing email that’s addressed to us, or one reminding us of the item we just viewed while online shopping.

But AI tools can help marketers take it up a notch.

You can use AI to gather customer details such as their birthday, hobbies, professional expertise, and even passions. Then, enter that information into an LLM before sending your marketing emails.

Doing this allows you to send emails that truly speak their language, suggests Brooks.

“You can do this in an automated way using various no-code tools,” he says. “Personally, I use Bento for my emails. “It can make an API call for each email it sends out, meaning that you can send unique emails, per person, even if you are effectively sending a ‘Broadcast’ to thousands of people.”

2. Thought Leadership

Yes, you can use AI to identify thought leadership opportunities.

Let me explain.

As I was researching use cases for this article, I turned to X to ask marketers for examples of how they use AI for personalization.

Image Source

This tweet is how I connected with Brooks, the founder of Journorobo.

He was notified of my tweet through his AI tool, which looks for journalist requests (like the one I shared) and cross-references its user database to send personalized emails to users who match the request.

It even provides recommended talking points based on the users’ bio.

Using AI tools like this one can help marketers discover thought leadership and PR opportunities instantly.

Rather than waiting around for a journalist to reach out and cover your company or interview your marketing leaders, you can be proactive with your thought leadership strategy.

Pro tip: AI can help you jump on an opportunity way before your competition, too. Brooks was one of the first people to respond to my request, and I have no doubt he was able to get ahead because of the personalized AI email he received.

3. Chatbots

AI can also be used to personalize your chatbots.

Whether you have one set up on your website or for Facebook or Instagram, chatbots are essential for personalizing customer interactions.

You can use AI to create a customizable chatbot, like this one from HubSpot, to scale customer support, generate leads, and book more meetings.

An AI chatbot streamlines this process and, thanks to its dynamic memory and adaptability, makes the conversation even more personal.

“AI provides a memory of the conversation that you can incorporate into future messages,” says Petrullo. “You can also have AI read the tonality of someone’s responses, allowing you to respond at the energy level that someone is inputting.”

4. Landing Pages

Another great opportunity to use AI is for programmatic SEO.

Programmatic SEO involves creating landing pages (usually hundreds, sometimes thousands) to automatically target keywords. This process is done in bulk, which means it can take hundreds of hours if you were to do it manually.

AI can help you do this at scale. You can use AI to create hundreds of programmatic landing pages that meet search terms based on industry or location.

Upwork is a great example of this. You can search for any type of freelance service in any city, and Upwork will have a landing page. For example, I searched for “freelance graphic designers Austin,” and this is what showed up.

Image Source

I then searched for “freelance copywriter los angeles,” on Google and an identical landing page from Upwork showed up in the results.

“I‘ve got websites with broad audiences with many different niche interests,” says Brooks. “I’ve used AI to build thousands of landing pages that speak very directly to those niche audiences, making relevant cultural references and using the colloquial language of those niches (even if I know nothing about them!).”

5. Localization and Translation

If you’re expanding into international markets, you can use AI to localize your content by translating it into different languages for your various target markets.

This can be done for programmatic landing pages, as mentioned above. You can also localize ads, product marketing assets, and SEO content.

You don’t necessarily need to be expanding to different countries to take advantage of localization. If your audience is global and you want to personalize the ads or landing pages to their language, AI can automatically translate for you.

It can take years for someone on your team to learn a new language to the point where they can translate marketing content. Even if you have translators on your team, it’s difficult to scale personalized content when you’re manually translating.

“While AI is not equipped to do full empathy mapping and empathy matching, it does have a strong command of language,” says Petrullo. “You can use it as an intersection of common language at scale.”

Scale Your Marketing Personalization With AI

After speaking with marketers and researching different use cases for AI for marketing personalization, my biggest takeaway is that it’s essential if you want to scale.

Personalizing your marketing efforts goes beyond addressing your audience by name in emails. Marketing personalization is about getting to know your customers on a deeper level.

It’s about understanding their interests, behaviors, and how they speak so you can market your products or services in a way that resonates with them more.

Using AI personalization in your marketing means being more data-driven. AI tools will help you identify marketing opportunities, predict customer behaviors, localize your content, and tailor your messaging.

And if you want to do this at scale, employing AI is a must.

A few months after starting a former job, I attended a workshop in which we discussed our brand promise.

It was a clarifying moment for me — despite having a solid mission and vision statement, it was the brand promise that really defined the heart of the company and what my role was.

A brand promise isn‘t just a tagline — it’s a way to show customers what your brand can offer that no one else can.

Like other kinds of promises, brand promises can get complicated. They set high expectations, offer ambitious commitments, and impact relationships.

Let’s talk about what a brand promise is, how to create a brand promise, and see examples from popular B2B and B2C brands. We’ll also share a brand promise template to help you draft your own.

Keep reading or jump ahead to the section you're looking for:

• What is a brand promise?
• Why Your Brand Promise Is Important
• How to Write a Brand Promise
• What makes a brand promise successful?
• Brand Promise Template
• Brand Promise Examples
• Examples of Brand Promises for B2B

Your brand promise should be central to your company, something that remains constant even as the company grows and evolves.

Not every brand promise is explicit — it could also be more of an internal mantra that's shared with employees, investors, and partners.

But if you’ve built a strong brand identity and clear messaging, your brand promise will be evident to your target audience. (And if you're still working on your brand identity and messaging, we've got a free guide to help.)

Brand Promise vs. Tagline

There‘s often some confusion between a brand promise and a tagline, so let’s break it down.

While it can be just as short as a tagline, a brand promise establishes and nurtures a relationship with consumers by telling them, "Hey, this is what you can expect every single time you interact with our brand."

A brand promise isn’t lofty — it’s grounded in the realities of your business. It can:

• Help internal and external stakeholders know what to expect from you.
• Gain consumer trust.
• Be the foundation for your company’s consumer interactions.

A Quick Brand Promise Definition

Brand promises are short statements. They make a commitment to your customer about what your brand will deliver.

It is a promise, after all. So if you break it, it can affect your reputation and your revenue.

For instance, let‘s say your brand promise is "Innovation at every turn," but your company hasn’t released a new product in five years. That can deter potential consumers who have been promised progress but instead get stagnation.

Here are the most common types of brand promises:

• Emotional: A promise appealing to emotion.
• Action-based: A promise tied to a specific action.
• Social: A promise based on ethical or social responsibility.

Why Your Brand Promise Is Important

This message can have a big impact on customer sentiment, brand reputation, and more. A brand promise is a social contract between your company and the customer or consumer.

You may not have a legally binding document swearing that your company will innovate at every turn, but it’s understood that consumers are giving you something (like their hard-earned money) in exchange for a product or service.

It’s the scaled, commercial version of a pinky promise, with your brand holding up one finger and your target audience holding up the other.

And if you’re not taking your brand promise as seriously as a legally binding document, you’re at risk of losing not just your customers, but your market valuation, employees, and other stakeholders.

Delivering on your brand promise can help your business grow by building trust with your target audiences and boosting sales.

But how can you pack all that power into a single message? Let's talk about how to create your brand promise.

How to Write a Brand Promise

1. Focus on your audience.

Your brand promise outlines your commitment to your audience. So, to figure out what your promise should be, your first step is determining what your audience wants from you.

It goes beyond a specific product or service, it‘s more specific to the experience you’re providing.

For instance, Planet Fitness's brand promise is based on people's reluctance to join the gym for fear of judgment and embarrassment. The Planet Fitness brand promises to create an environment that encourages people at all fitness levels to go to the gym and feel comfortable working out.

Another goal of your brand promise is to set you apart from your competitors. What makes you unique — your customer service, your product, your mission, your values? Build on that to make a promise that's distinctive.

In Planet Fitness' case, the brand did something no one else had done: Address the problem with the gym environment, not its users.

As you learn about what your audience wants, keep asking questions. How much do they know about your industry? What information do they need before making a purchase?

It‘s important to remember that your brand promise isn’t simply a slogan or commitment. It's the first step in building a community with shared values. The better you understand your audience, the more likely you are to engage them.

If you haven't already, develop buyer personas and workshop messages that could resonate with each persona.

Featured Resource: Make My Persona

2. Think about your customer touch points.

Your brand promise is your guarantee to customers.

Whether your customer is in-store, on social media, or buying online, place yourself in their shoes and envision how you want those interactions to go. Is there a specific feeling involved? What do they have to gain?

For example, say a customer spends a lot of time on your website but hasn‘t made a purchase. Do you know why they’re hesitating? If you were speaking to this customer in person, what would you say to help them move to the next step?

Once you put those feelings into words, you'll be able to craft a brand promise that reflects the experience you want to promote.

As an exercise, you may find it useful to draft three or more secondary promises for each touch point. They can help you home in on your main brand promise and narrow your focus to how different touch points impact customer experience.

Your ultimate brand promise should be consistent across every touch point. So, the more time you spend looking at it from every angle, the more likely you are to create a powerful brand promise.

Featured Resource: Customer Journey Map Template

3. Keep it simple, unique, and inspiring.

Your brand promise should be clear and to the point — something you can say in one sentence. It won't necessarily be as fun as a tagline, but it should definitely inspire trust and confidence.

Be thoughtful about which words you choose and who your audience is.

Does your brand promise need industry-specific terms? Is your brand promise about selling an offer or explaining your product? Answering these questions can help you find the right vocabulary for your promise.

Next, introduce some play into your writing. Think about your company culture, awakening the senses, and the details that can paint a picture for your audience.

This process will probably give you more copy than you need, but it can help you find an authentic and empathetic voice.

Then you can edit your brand promise into a single succinct statement that is useful, positive, and hopeful.

If you can‘t articulate your promise in this way, perhaps you haven’t fully fleshed out your brand's purpose.

If that's the case, start by asking yourself these questions:

• What should my customers expect from me?
• What does my company stand for?
• What makes us different from our competitors?

What makes a brand promise successful?

“A brand promise,” brand consultant Cornelis Jacobs tells me, “is basically your identity. If your brand didn’t exist, what would the world miss?”

That world doesn’t have to be at a global scale — the target market for a corner bakery might be a single neighborhood. Whether you’re selling cupcakes or iPads, your brand promise has to create and nurture a relationship.

“It’s creating trust,” says Jacobs. “I give money in exchange for a product or service. There’s trust that the brand will deliver on that promise.” Jacobs sees two components to that trust: reliability and delight.

An inability to deliver on your brand promise — “that’s game over,” says Jacobs.

The long-term effects on brand perception can be devastating if you lose credibility by breaking a promise.

Here are four key elements to consider as you craft your brand promise:

Credibility

Your brand promise should be something that your business or product is qualified to offer, and it should be something that you are able to deliver on with excellence, reliability, and delight.

Volvo’s brand promise, for example, hinges on safety. If it was unable to consistently engineer cars with high safety standards, it would lose all credibility.

This statement can also show your commitment to solving a specific problem for your customers.

Actionable

A brand promise is an offer that a business needs to keep. This means that the promise must be something your company can act on.

As you review your brand promise, ask yourself:

• Is your brand promise also a call-to-action?
• What do your customers get in return if they commit to your brand?
• How can your audience engage or get involved with your brand promise?
• What other questions might someone ask after seeing your brand promise?

To be effective, your brand promise needs to be something your stakeholders can act on or see you taking action on, plus why that action is valuable. If your promise is vague or static, you may need to keep working.

Memorable and Emotional

A brand promise “is emotive,” says Jacobs. “It’s not the mind; it’s the heart.”

To evoke strong emotions, ask yourself what emotions you want your customers or audience to feel when they solve a problem using your product or service.

This act of seeing from your customer's perspective can help you create a "sticky" brand promise.

Business Impact

“Brand strategy is ultimately business strategy,” Jacobs tells me. “In economic terms, your brand is probably the single most important asset of any company.”

Your brand promise doesn’t just support what matters most to your business, it is the business.

That means that your brand promise has to be evident in every single touch point: what vendors you choose, what your website looks like, and even how you answer the phone. Jacobs says your brand promise is to “all stakeholders, not just your consumer.”

And there’s really only two options: “You either deliver on the promise, or you don’t.”

It might convey product excellence, drive sales, or expand brand influence. And as people in your organization make decisions, they should do so as champions of the brand.

Brand Promise Template

There isn‘t an exact formula to create your brand promise. But we’ve mentioned that it’s a blend of a few things that make up your company. So here’s a formula you can use to create your promise:

Positioning + Vision + Value Proposition = Your Brand Promise

Write your answers down and start blending these concepts together into one succinct idea.

Crafting your brand promise should be a top priority when developing your identity. Without this core message, you will likely struggle to develop your brand identity and strong messaging to connect with your target audience.

A pro tip from Jacobs: “A brand isn’t what you, the company, says it is. It’s what your customers say it is.”

Your brand promise should be so strong that “there should be no divergence” — that is, your customers should be able to describe your brand promise exactly as you do.

It may take a few sessions to flesh it out — and that's okay. Because once you have it, it will become ingrained both internally and externally as your company grows.

Brand Promise Examples

Keep in mind that some of these examples of brand promises are assumed and some have been shared by the companies (and a couple are completely fictional). Use them as inspiration when crafting your own.

To help you think about your own brand promise from multiple angles, I’ve also included hypothetical situations of what it might look like if some of these brands failed to deliver on their brand promises.

Build the best products in the world and enrich people’s lives. (Apple)

In a 2022 interview with Popular Mechanics, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he tries to “carry on the mission that [Steve Jobs] set in place, to build the best products in the world that enrich people‘s lives. And that hasn’t changed. Lots of things change with time. But the reason for our being is the same.”

Well established as a design and product innovator, Apple’s brand promise is centered around innovation, quality, reliability, and user-friendly design.

If it couldn’t deliver on its brand promise, we might see Apple shipping shoddily designed products that don’t solve any problems for its consumers, something that would do swift and irreparable damage to its brand.

To inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup, one neighborhood at a time. (Starbucks)

Starbucks might even add “one street at time,” so ubiquitous are its stores across America and most corners of the globe.

Starbucks’ core brand promise is customer-focused, establishing its reputation as a customer service company that happens to sell coffee.

Feel empowered and emboldened. (Anima Iris)

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Tennis accessories brand Anima Iris seeks an emotional connection with its target audience by promising that they will feel empowered and emboldened.

Those words also set it apart from competitors and establish some of the expectations its customers should have.

Redefine luxury as accessible and inclusive. (Telfar)

Telfar’s vegan leather shopping bags became a must-have accessory over the last decade or so, thanks to its positioning as an affordable luxury. That’s a tricky sweet spot to maintain, but it’s central to the brand promise.

If it failed to deliver on its brand promise, it could be reflected in prices shooting up beyond what its target consumers could afford, and/or a steep decline in quality.

Inclusion since inception. (Tru Colour)

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Rooted firmly in diversity and inclusion, Tru Colour “believes in the beauty of the individual and exists to provide skin-tone shade bandages and kinesiology tape for everyone.”

Its brand promise indicates that inclusion is a foundational principle, one that will continue to drive the brand as it grows.

Create a safe space for POC to travel and discover new adventures. (Noirbnb)

The stakes are high for Noirbnb, which promises “a safe space for people of color to travel and discover new adventures.”

As such, it’s also a memorable brand promise, particularly for its target audience of people of color who may have felt unsafe on previous travel adventures. This is also a highly actionable brand promise.

Safety for all. (Volvo)

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Volvo’s EVA initiative prioritizes Equal Vehicles for All, “regardless of gender, age, height, weight, or shape.”

If you’ve ever buckled up in a car to find the seat belt at throat height, Volvo’s promise will pique your interest.

This is another highly actionable brand promise, since the burden of proof — and literal life-or-death stakes — rests on Volvo.

Unparalleled luxury and personalized service. (Four Seasons)

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When your name is synonymous with luxury, you’d best be able to deliver on your brand promise.

Customers of Four Seasons properties expect a level of personalized service that sets the brand apart not only from other hotels and resorts, but from other luxury hotel brands. This brand promise is memorable and emotional, appealing to consumers’ desire to be treated like royalty.

Bring stories to life — safely. (Inkheart)

Pretend I’ve been handed the money and the magic needed to build an adventure tour company for fictional places.

My imaginary company is inspired by Cornelia Funke’s 2003 YA book Inkheart, in which a girl learns that her father can bring characters to life simply by reading from them.

Inkheart’s brand promise, “Bring stories to life — safely,” assures its imaginary audience that they can enjoy immersive experiences in their favorite fictional worlds without fear of ogres, vampires, or evil masterminds.

We scare because we care. (Monsters Inc.)

A real brand promise from a fictional brand, Disney Pixar animated classic Monsters Inc. features a company by the same name. Monsters Inc. employs monsters to scare children, whose screams produce clean energy.

Doing double duty as a tagline, “We scare because we care” evokes emotion and establishes the brand’s distinctiveness — while promising legitimate frights.

What‘s common across all these promises is that they never refer to a particular offering or numerical goal. Instead, they are statements that encompass the brand’s broader purpose.

Examples of Brand Promises for B2B

Business-to-business brand promises can be difficult to craft. This is because these relationships are often more about efficiency and ROI than meeting emotional needs.

Check out these B2B brand promise examples to spark your imagination.

Help millions of companies grow better. (HubSpot)

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Here at HubSpot, we offer a complete customer platform that helps businesses connect and grow better. (Psst, that customer platform includes Marketing Hub.)

Our brand promise has broad appeal — “millions of companies” — and demonstrates our commitment to and focus on growth.

See inside any stack, any app, at any scale, anywhere. (Datadog)

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The repeated “any” in Datadog’s brand promise indicates the product’s flexibility, an actionable claim that also differentiates it from its competitors.

Keep a good thing growing. (Recurly)

Recurly, a subscription management service, makes an emotional appeal in its brand promise with the word “growing.” That sense of nurturing is backed up by the actionable claim that it has “a good thing.”

Easy scheduling ahead. (Calendly)

I use Calendly regularly, and I appreciate that it’s simple to use. Calendly’s brand promise focuses on a positive user experience, which directly impact’s the brand’s bottom line.

Unlock the power of gifting at scale. (Reachdesk)

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Reachdesk uses AI to power personalized corporate gifting. Its brand promise hints at the “power” in store for companies that wow and delight their customers.

If it couldn’t deliver on its brand promise: Glitchy AI could lead to gifts that didn’t feel thoughtful or personal, or worse, be embarrassing.

Manage tomorrow’s surprises today. (LogicManager)

LogicManager uses the word “surprises” to indicate that it understands the realities of risk management. That establishes an emotional relationship with its customers — it’s that “hey, you get me” moment.

That emotional plea is backed up by a credible and actionable promise that the enterprise risk management company can predict future risks before they get out of control.

Smarter PR with powerful, easy-to-use software. (Muck Rack)

Muck Rack’s brand promise begins with a superlative, “smarter,” appealing to customers’ desires for growth and improvement. Coupled with “powerful” and “easy-to-use,” Muck Rack sets up an actionable brand promise.

Engineering the extraordinary to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. (Medtronic)

Medtronic, a healthcare tech company, has to persuade potential customers that it can improve (and even extend) quality of life with devices like high-tech pacemakers. That’s a high bar to clear, so it goes straight for an emotional appeal with a brand promise that uses strong verbs like “alleviate” and “restore.”

Empowering small businesses and entrepreneurs with financial tools and services that are accessible, innovative, and user-friendly. (Square)

If you’ve interacted with small businesses, like your neighborhood bookstore or a vendor at the local farmers’ market, you’ve likely used Square to make a payment. Square’s brand promise hinges on accessibility and user-friendliness above all — an inability to deliver would make it unusable by the audience it targets.

Build Your Brand Promise for Lasting Results

Some promises last a lifetime. To make sure that you're creating a brand promise for the long haul, don’t rush through the process.

Drafting a quick slogan is tempting when your team is up against a deadline — but this is a promise to your all your stakeholders, so consider it carefully.

Take a look at the tips, templates, and examples above, and let your creativity run wild. Your brand may already have a strong identity, but how are you committing to your customers? Tell them today, with your brand promise.

How one of Norway's largest importers migrated to WooCommerce and scaled an 800k SKU operation for a better user experience, performance, and results.

With bold, organic shapes and natural textures, jungle and safari fonts are perfect for creating designs that stand out and convey the spirit of the great outdoors.

In this post, we’ve curated a selection of fonts that will help you create visually striking, forest-themed designs. Whether you’re working on branding for eco-friendly products, adventure-themed projects, or wildlife conservation campaigns, these fonts evoke the lush greenery and rugged beauty of the jungle.

These fonts bring a sense of adventure and wilderness to your designs, making them ideal for posters, flyers, packaging, or website headers with a nature-inspired theme.

Tropical Jungle – Fun Jungle Style Font

Tropical Jungle is an enchanting font with a creative design. This bold yet playful typeface takes inspiration from the thrilling wildlife of tropical rainforests around the globe. With over 500 glyphs, featuring jungle animals and a joyous spirit, you’ll find it effortlessly readable and perfect for your creative ventures. It offers support for 76 languages along with swashes, ligatures, and stylistic alternatives.

Jungle Land – Jungle Font

Jungle Land is a display font featuring both uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers, punctuation, and ligature. With its stylish script marrying attractive curves and a fresh urban edge, this font can enhance any design. Its simple installation is compatible with both PC and MAC and supports 17 languages from English to Zulu, making it a versatile fit for logos, brand imagery, product packaging, or social media posts.

Jungle – Handbrush Jungle Font

This is a playful yet robust jungle font inspired by children’s books and handmade street typography. Its versatile design makes it an ideal choice for various projects, including movie titles, logos, branding, social media, blog posts, and even wedding invites. The package includes a range of font formats, punctuation, numerals, ligatures, swashes, and web fonts making it a comprehensive font.

Pine Jungle – Jungle Style Font

Pine Jungle is a jungle-themed font designed with a unique pine forest vibe. It incorporates stars into the design to cultivate a spiritual impression. This font is the perfect fit for all design types, especially those oriented towards nature. Pine Jungle comes in both ‘clean’ TTF and OTF formats, giving you flexibility in your creative ventures.

Woodpecker – Unique Jungle Font

Dive into the wild with the Woodpecker, a unique jungle-themed font. Shaped like chopped wood planks, it perfectly captures the spirit of outdoor adventures and wilderness. Ideal for survival games, jungle posters or park adventures, this font is available in TTF, OTF, and WOFF formats, adding that rustic touch your projects need.

Jungle Cruise – Display Font

Jungle Cruise is a versatile display font that adapts well to any creative project. Its captivating simplicity and legibility make it an ideal choice for a wide range of design applications, from quotes, shirt designs, websites, branding, children’s designs, blogs, logos, to invitations. Provided in OTF, TTF, WOFF, and WOFF2 formats.

Safari – Silhouette Font

Safar is a captivating jungle-themed font that brings the spirit of the wild to your design work. It’s conveniently available in both OTF & TTF formats with extended licensing. This creative asset, which can be instantly downloaded, also offers free updates. And, if you face any problems, prompt customer support is always ready to lend a helping hand.

Graffitopia – Urban Jungle Graffiti Font

Discover the electric vibrancy of Graffitopia – an urban jungle graffiti font that channels the unique spirit of street art. With its distinctive letterforms, every word becomes an impactful artistic statement, bringing raw, underground vibes to your digital designs. Ideal for contemporary projects, edgy logos, and attention-grabbing posters, this font authentically encapsulates the daring creativity of city landscapes.

Urban Stars – Graffiti Urban Jungle Font

Urban Stars is a graffiti-style font, embodying the spirit of urban jungle street art. These dynamic and expressive letterforms are craftily inspired by real graffiti tags, adding bold authenticity to your design work. Ideal for various creative projects, its eye-catching appeal sets your designs apart with a rebellious attitude. Offering versatility and visual impact, Urban Stars ensures a powerful, trendy statement on any platform, from posters to social media graphics.

Pine Forest – Jungle Font

Pine Forest is a playful, hand-drawn typeface, inspired by outdoor adventures. It includes two style options – rough and press – each evoking a uniquely rustic feel. This versatile font is perfect for a variety of designs from logos and branding, to invitations and posters, effortlessly conveying a sense of fun and natural charm.

Forests – Layered Forest Font

This is an engaging jungle font particularly designed with a forest theme. It boasts a simple usability, offering you the flexibility of utilising one, two or all three layers and even adjust their colors to create distinctive effects. Only remember to keep CAPS on as it exclusively supports uppercase letters and numbers.

Jungle Ranger – Playful Jungle Font

Venture into the captivating world of gaming with Jungle Ranger, a playful and lively font designed to excite children and those young at heart. Its bold letters infused with jungle-inspired elements, like leaves and vines, evoke a sense of fun and adventure, making it an ideal choice for not just games, but also movies, posters, and more.

Dense Forest – Unique Jungle Font

Dense Forest is an intriguing typography forest font perfect for bringing an exotic twist to your projects. Ideal for movie titles, album covers, logos, labels, and posters, this font brings the mystery and wildness of the jungle directly into your design. Provided in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats, it enhances creativity and transforms simple ideas into enchanting visuals.

Roaring Jungle – Fun Jungle Font

Unleash the wildness of your designs with Roaring Jungle font. This jungle-inspired font jumbles together attractive curves, stone-style writing and unique shapes. With regular and rough forms, it is perfect for vintage creations, logo designs, packaging, and even merchandise. A versatile asset with a unique flair and multilingual support to make your work not only look terrific, but also universally appealing.

Mystic Forest – Distressed Forest Font

Mystic Forest is a distinctively stylized type face, ideal for enhancing logos, titles, and brief texts. Its distressed effect can also work effectively as a stencil font for street art. The font package includes uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, punctuation, numerals, alternates, ligatures, and even supports multiple languages, packaged in OTF, TTF, WOFF and WOFF2 formats.

Jungle Adventurer – Jungle Font

Jungle Adventurer is a bold, all caps gaming font that boasts a powerful shape with stern sans-serif and sharp corners. Ideal for online games, posters, media pages, and more, this font comes in OTF, TTF, and WOFF for easy compatibility. Offering simple installation on both PC and Mac, the Jungle Adventurer font supports basic latin A-Z, numerical, and punctuation characters.

Northern Passage – Urban Jungle Font

Northern Passage is a handmade display font reflecting love for outdoor adventures with an aged, cabin-in-the-woods feel. An all-caps font ideal for design projects requiring a rustic, woodland aesthetic, it’s readily available for download in otf format.

Forest Trophy – Textured Jungle Font

Forest Trophy is a classic display font featuring a vintage feel with its unique rugged texture. It includes profiles in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats. Offering an array of uppercase and lowercase letters and numerals, this font also supports punctuation and multiple languages. It’s made even more versatile by its availability in three styles – clean, rounded, and textured.

Pinebrick – Modern Urban Jungle Font

Pinebrick is a modern, urban jungle-themed font that authentically captures the mood of nature and forest. Handcrafted, it features a bold, sketchy and rough style, perfect for creating a standout design on posters, shirts or other design requirements. Its array of glyphs, inclusive of uppercase, lowercase, numerals and punctuations, offers a wide variety for creative mixing and matching.

Mirkwood – Elvish Forest Style Font

Mirkwood is an Elvish forest-themed font, ideal for all things mythological and magical. Courtesy of Gienlee Cartoon, Mirkwood incorporates uppercase glyphs, operating smoothly on both PC and Mac without any special software required. When you download, you receive a user-friendly Mirkwood-Regular OTF file.

Forest Line – Condensed Forest Font

Forest Line is a jungle-themed True Type Web font, available in three styles: Light, Regular and Bold. As a creative rendition of the Forest Line Extended Font, it presents a trendier and compact alternative, retaining an air of creativity and usefulness.

Tropica Jungles – Playful Jungle Font

Tropica Jungles is a unique textured display font with a playful, cartoony twist. Perfect for a wide range of applications from logos to novel covers and wedding cards, this creative asset offers upper and lower case letters, numbers, punctuation and multilingual support.

Free Jungle & Forest Fonts

Theforest – Free Serif Font

Theforest is a free serif font that features a unique Jungle-themed letter design. This font is ideal for all sorts of elegant, nature-inspired typography designs. It’s especially perfect for luxury and high-end branding designs. It’s free for personal use.

Forester – Free Urban Jungle Font

Forester is another stylish urban jungle-themed font. This font has a creative handbrush-style letter design that will instantly attract attention. The font is free to use with your personal projects.

Jungle Camp – Free Display Font

This free font comes with a fun and playful letter design that makes it a great choice for crafting titles and headings related to children’s designs. The font is free for personal use only.

The Jungle – Free Handwritten Font

Another unique handwritten font featuring a jungle-themed design. This font comes with a creative look that will fit in well with t-shirts, posters, banners, greeting cards, and various other designs. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Jungle Tribe – Free Cartoon Font

This font is also free to download. Jungle Tribe is a playful cartoon-style font that also features a jungle-themed vibe. The font is ideal for children’s book covers, educational graphics, video games, and much more. It’s free for personal use.

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to create a code in c++ for representing an adjacency matrix using templates and delete node function

In one of my previous articles, I explained how to generate stunning images for free using diffusion models and showed how to generate Stability AI's diffusion models for text-to-image generation.

Since then, the AI domain has progressed considerably, particularly in image generation. Black Forest Labs has released Flux.1 series of state-of-the-art vision models.

In this article, you will see how to use Flux.1 models for text-to-image generation and text-to-image modification. You will import Flux models from Hugging Face and generate images using Python code.

So, let's begin without ado.

Flux models are gated on Hugging Face, meaning you have to log into your account to access Flux models. To do so from a Python application, particularly Jupyter Notebook, you need to download the huggingface_hub module. In addition, you need to download the diffusers module from Hugging Face.

The script below downloads these two modules.

!pip install huggingface_hub
!pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/diffusers.git

Note: To run scripts in this article, you will need Nvidia GPUs. You can use Google Colab, which provides free Nvidia GPUs.

Next, let's import the required libraries into our Python application:

from huggingface_hub import notebook_login
import torch
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from diffusers import FluxPipeline
from diffusers import FluxImg2ImgPipeline
from diffusers.utils import load_image

notebook_login() # you need to log into your hugging face account using access token

Flux models have two variants: timestep-distilled (FLUX.1-schnell) and guidance-distilled (FLUX.1-dev). The timestep-distilled model requires fewer sampling steps and has a maximum sequence length of 256, while the guidance-distilled variant needs about 50 sampling steps for good-quality generation and has no limitations on max sequence length.

We will use the guidance-distilled Flux.1-dev model for text-to-image generation.

The following script creates a Hugging Face pipeline by importing the pretrained Flux.1-dev model from Hugging Face.

pipe = FluxPipeline.from_pretrained("black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16)
pipe.enable_model_cpu_offload()

Next, for image generation, you must pass the text prompt, the output image's height and width, the guidance scale, the number of interference steps, and the maximum sequence length for the input text.

The guidance_scale parameter influences how closely the generated image adheres to the prompt. Its value ranges between 0 and 20. The num_inference_steps determines the number of denoising steps, affecting the quality and generation time. A higher number of inference steps results in a higher-quality image but takes more time to generate.

The following script will generate an image of a girl standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, holding a sign that says, "Welcome to Paris."

prompt = "A little girl standing in front of eifel tower holding a sign that says welcome to Paris"
image = pipe(
    prompt,
    height=1024,
    width=1024,
    guidance_scale=3.5,
    num_inference_steps=50,
    max_sequence_length=512,
    generator=torch.Generator("cpu").manual_seed(0)
).images[0]
image.save("girl-in-paris.png")

Output:

From the above output, you can see that the model can generate a photo-realistic image.

Let's see another example. We will generate an image of a baby riding a line in Times Square, NY, with an elephant in the background.

prompt = "A baby riding a lion in time square new york with elephants in the background"
image = pipe(
    prompt,
    height=1024,
    width=1024,
    guidance_scale=10,
    num_inference_steps=50,
    max_sequence_length=512,
    generator=torch.Generator("cpu").manual_seed(0)
).images[0]
image.save("baby_lion_time_square.png")

Output:

The above output shows that the model could generate all the details specified in the text prompt.

Finally, I will create a simple function that generates an image given a prompt and the output image name. You can use this function to generate images in your code.

def generate_image_from_text(prompt, image_name):
  image = pipe(
    prompt,
    height=1024,
    width=1024,
    guidance_scale=3.5,
    num_inference_steps=50,
    max_sequence_length=512,
    generator=torch.Generator("cpu").manual_seed(0)
  ).images[0]
  image.save(image_name + ".png")


prompt = "A golden duck swimming in a lake with mountains and sunset view in the background"
image_name = "duck_in_lake"
generate_image_from_text(prompt, image_name)

Output:

As you can see from the above output, the Flux.1-dev model generates very high-quality images based on text prompts.

In the next section, you will see how to modify existing images based on text prompts.

We will use the timestep-distilled Flux.1-schnell model for image modification.

The following script creates a Hugging Face pipeline for the Flux.1-schnell model.

device = "cuda"
mod_pipe = FluxImg2ImgPipeline.from_pretrained("black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-schnell", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16)
mod_pipe = mod_pipe.to(device)

We will modify the following Wikipedia image of the Pyramid of Giza by adding birds, camels, and a river.

Input Image:

Image modification is similar to image generation, except we must also pass the strength parameter to the pipeline object. The strength parameter defines the extent to which the original image will be modified.

url = "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/All_Gizah_Pyramids.jpg/1920px-All_Gizah_Pyramids.jpg"
init_image = load_image(url)

prompt = "add birds, camels, and blue river"

images = mod_pipe(
    prompt=prompt,
    image=init_image,
    num_inference_steps=50,
    strength=0.75,
    guidance_scale= 7.5,
    ).images[0]

images.save("pyramids_modified.png")

Output:

In the above image, a few birds and camels are added to the original image.

Let's increase the values of the strength and guidance_scale parameters to see how this affects the original image.

images = mod_pipe(
    prompt=prompt,
    image=init_image,
    num_inference_steps=50,
    strength=0.85,
    guidance_scale= 10.0,
    ).images[0]

images.save("pyramids_modified2.png")

Output:

The above output shows that the original image has been modified much more extensively than the previous modification.

Finally, we will define the modify_image() function, which accepts the image URL, the prompt to modify the image, and the name for the modified image and modifies the passed image.

def modify_image(image_url, prompt, image_name):

  init_image = load_image(url)
  images = mod_pipe(
    prompt=prompt,
    image=init_image,
    num_inference_steps=50,
    strength=0.85,
    guidance_scale= 10.0,
    ).images[0]

  images.save(image_name + ".png")

prompt = "cars, horses"
url = "/content/1280px-Taj_Mahal,_Agra,_India_edit3.jpg"
name = "taj_mahal_modified"

modify_image(url, prompt, name)

Here is the input image.

Input Image:

And here is the modified output. You can see some cars and horses added to the image.

Output:

Flux.1 models are the state-of-the-art image generation models. In this article, you saw how to generate and modify images with text prompts using the Flux.1 models. I encourage you to play around with strength and guidance scale parameters to generate and modify your custom images. Let me know if you like the results.

The creator of CSS has said he originally envisaged CSS as the main web technology to control behavior on web pages, with scripting as a fallback when things weren’t possible declaratively in CSS. The rationale for a CSS-first approach was that “scripting is programming and programming is hard.” Since introducing the :hover pseudo-class, CSS has been standardizing patterns developers create in JavaScript and “harvesting” them into CSS standards. When you think about it like that, it’s almost as if JavaScript is the hack and CSS is the official way.

We can, therefore, feel less dirty implementing script-like behavior with CSS, and we shouldn’t be surprised that something like the new scroll-timeline feature has appeared with pretty good browser support. Too many developers implemented clever parallax scrolling websites, which has summoned the CSS feature genie we cannot put back in its bottle. If you don’t want janky main-thread animations for your next parallax-scrolling website, you must now come to the dark side of hacking CSS. Just kidding, there is also a new JavaScript API for scroll-linked animations if imperative programming better fits your use case.

Migrating a JavaScript sample to CSS

It was satisfyingly simple to fork Chris Coyier’s pre-scroll-timeline example of a scroll-linked animation by replacing the CSS Chris was using to control the animations with just one line of CSS and completely deleting the JavaScript!

body, .progress, .cube {
  animation-timeline: scroll();
}

Using the scroll() function without parameters sets up an “anonymous scroll progress timeline” meaning the browser will base the animation on the nearest ancestor that can scroll vertically if our writing mode is English. Unfortunately, it seems we can only choose to animate based on scrolling along the x or y-axis of a particular element but not both, which would be useful. Being a function, we can pass parameters to scroll(), which provides more control over how we want scrolling to run our animation.

Experimenting with multiple dimensions

Even better is the scroll-scope property. Applying that to a container element means we can animate properties on any chosen ancestor element based on any scrollable element that has the same assigned scope. That got me thinking… Since CSS Houdini lets us register animation-friendly, inheritable properties in CSS, we can combine animations on the same element based on multiple scrollable areas on the page. That opens the door for interesting instructional design possibilities such as my experiment below.

Scrolling the horizontal narrative on the light green card rotates the 3D NES console horizontally and scrolling the vertical narrative on the dark green card rotates the NES console vertically. In my previous article, I noted that my past CSS hacks have always boiled down to hiding and showing finite possibilities using CSS. What interests me about this scroll-based experiment is the combinatorial explosion of combined vertical and horizontal rotations. Animation timelines provide an interactivity in pure CSS that hasn’t been possible in the past.

The implementation details are less important than the timeline-scope usage and the custom properties. We register two custom angle properties:

@property --my-y-angle {
  syntax: "<angle>";
  inherits: true;
  initial-value: 0deg;
}

@property --my-x-angle {
  syntax: "<angle>";
  inherits: true;
  initial-value: -35deg;
}

Then, we “borrow” the NES 3D model from the samples in Julian Garner’s amazing CSS 3D modeling app. We update the .scene class for the 3D to base the rotation on our new variables like this:

.scene {
  transform: rotateY(var(--my-y-angle)) rotateX(var(--my-x-angle));
}

Next, we give the <body> element a timeline-scope with two custom-named scopes.

body {
  timeline-scope: --myScroller,--myScroller2; 
}

I haven’t seen anything officially documented about passing in multiple scopes, but it does work in Google Chrome and Edge. If it’s not a formally supported feature, I hope it will become part of the standard because it is ridiculously handy.

Next, we define the named timelines for the two scrollable cards and the axes we want to trigger our animations.

.card:first-child {
  scroll-timeline-axis: x;
  scroll-timeline-name: --myScroller;
}

.card:nth-child(2) {
  scroll-timeline-axis: y;
  scroll-timeline-name: --myScroller2;
}

And add the animations to the scene:

.scene {
  animation: rotateHorizontal,rotateVertical;
  animation-timeline: --myScroller,--myScroller2;
}

@keyframes rotateHorizontal {
  to {
    --my-y-angle: 360deg;
  }
}

@keyframes rotateVertical {
  to {
    --my-x-angle: 360deg;
  }
}

Since the 3D model inherits the x and y angles from the document body, scrolling the cards now rotates the model in combinations of vertical and horizontal angle changes.

User-controlled animations beyond scrollbars

When you think about it, this behavior isn’t just useful for scroll-driven animations. In the above experiment, we are using the scrollable areas more like sliders that control the properties of our 3D model. After getting it working, I went for a walk and was daydreaming about how cool it would be if actual range inputs could control animation timelines. Then I found out they can! At least in Chrome. Pure CSS CMS anyone?

While we’re commandeering 3D models from Julian Garner, let’s see if we can use range inputs to control his X-wing model.

It’s mind-boggling that we can achieve this with just CSS, and we could do it with an arbitrary number of properties. It doesn’t go far enough for me. I would love to see other input controls that can manipulate animation timelines. Imagine text fields progressing animations as you fill them out, or buttons able to play or reverse animations. The latter can be somewhat achieved by combining the :active pseudo-class with the animation-play-state property. But in my experience when you try to use that to animate multiple custom properties, the browser can get confused. By contrast, animation timelines have been implemented with this use case in mind and therefore work smoothly and exactly as I expected.

I’m not the only one who has noticed the potential for hacking this emergent CSS feature. Someone has already implemented this clever Doom clone by combining scroll-timeline with checkbox hacks. The problem I have is it still doesn’t go far enough. We have enough in Chrome to implement avatar builders using scrollbars and range inputs as game controls. I am excited to experiment with unpredictable, sophisticated experiences that are unprecedented in the era before the scroll-timeline feature. After all, if you had to explain the definition of a video game to an alien, wouldn’t you say it is just a hyper-interactive animation?

---

Slide Through Unlimited Dimensions With CSS Scroll Timelines originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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By definition, an interface is a layer between the user and a system, serving the purpose of communication between them. Interacting with the interface usually requires users to perform certain actions.

Different actions can lead to various outcomes, some of which might be critical.

While we often need to provide additional protection in case users attempt to perform dangerous or irreversible actions, It’s good to remember that one of the ten usability heuristics called “Error Prevention” says:

“Good error messages are important, but the best designs carefully prevent problems from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.”

What Is A Dangerous Action?

Surprisingly, when we talk about dangerous actions, it doesn’t necessarily mean that something is being deleted.

Here’s an example of a dangerous action from the banking application I use:

The bank approved a loan for me, and as soon as I clicked “Get Money,” it meant that I had signed the necessary documents and accepted the loan. All I have to do is tap the yellow button, and I’ll get the money.

As a result of an accidental tap, you might end up taking a loan when you didn’t intend to, which is why this action can be considered significant and dangerous.

Therefore, a dangerous action does not necessarily mean deleting something.

Some examples may include the following:

• Sending an email,
• Placing an order,
• Publishing a post,
• Making a bank transaction,
• Signing a legal document,
• Permanently blocking a user,
• Granting or revoking permissions.

Ways To Confirm Dangerous Actions

There are many methods to prevent users from losing their data or taking irreversible actions unintentionally. One approach is to ask users to explicitly confirm their actions.

There are several ways to implement this, each with its own pros and cons.

Modal Dialogs

First of all, we should understand the difference between modal and non-modal dialogs. It’s better to think about modality state since dialogs, popups, alerts — all of these might be presented either in the modal state or not. I will use the term dialogs as a general reference, but the keyword here is modality.

“Modality is a design technique that presents content in a separate, dedicated mode that prevents interaction with the parent view and requires an explicit action to dismiss.”

— Apple design guides

Modal dialogs require immediate user action. In other words, you cannot continue working with an application until you respond in some way.

Non-modal dialogs, on the other hand, allow you to keep using the application without interruption. A common example of a non-modal element is a toast message that appears in the corner of the screen and does not require you to do anything to continue using the app.

When used properly, modal dialogs are an effective way to prevent accidental clicks on dangerous actions.

The main problem with them is that if they are used to confirm routine actions (such as marking a task as done), they can cause irritation and create a habit of mindlessly confirming them on autopilot.

However, this is one of the most popular methods. Besides, it can be combined with other methods, so let’s dive into it deeper.

When To Use Them

Use modal dialogs when a user action will have serious consequences, especially if the result of the action is irreversible. Typical cases include deleting a post or project, confirming a transaction, and so on.

It depends on what kind of action users want to take, but the main thing to keep in mind is how serious the consequences are and whether the action is reversible or not.

Things To Keep In Mind

1. Avoid vague language.
   If you ask users, “Are you sure?” chances are, they will not have any doubts.
2. In the title, specify what exactly will happen or which entity will be affected (e.g., project name, user name, amount of money).
3. Provide an icon that indicates that the action is dangerous.
   It both increases the chances that users will not automatically confirm it and is good for accessibility reasons (people with color blindness will notice the icon even if it appears grey to them, signaling its importance).
4. In the description, be specific and highlight the necessary information.
5. The CTA button should also contain a word that reflects the action.
   Instead of “Yes” or “Confirm,” use more descriptive options like “Delete,” “Pay $97,” “Make Transaction,” “Send Message,” and so on — including the entity name or amount of money in the button is also helpful. Compare: “Confirm” versus “Pay $97.” The latter is much more specific.

However, this might not be enough.

In some cases, you may require an extra action. A typical solution is to ask users to type something (e.g., a project name) to unblock the CTA button.

Here are a few examples:

ConvertKit asks users to type “DO IT” when removing subscribers.

Pro tip: Note that they placed the buttons on the left side! This is a nice example of applying proximity law. It seems reasonable since the submit button is closer to the form (even if it consists of only one input).

Resend asks users to type “DELETE” if they want to delete an API key, which could have very serious consequences. The API key might be used in many of your apps, and you don’t want to break anything.

This modal is one of the best examples of following the best practices:

• The title says what the action is (“Delete API Key”).
• In the text, they mentioned the name of the API Key in bold and in a different color (“Onboarding”).
• The red label that the action can not be undone makes it clearer that this is a serious action.
• Extra action is required (typing “DELETE”).
• The CTA button has both a color indicator (red usually is used for destructive actions) and a proper label — “Delete API Key”. Not a general word, e.g., “Confirm” or “Delete.”

Notice that Resend also places buttons on the left side, just as ConvertKit does.

Note: While generally disabling submit buttons is considered bad practice, this is one of the cases where it is acceptable. The dialog’s request is clear and straightforward both in ConvertKit and Resend examples.

Moreover, we can even skip the submit button altogether. This applies to cases where users are asked to input an OTP, PIN, or 2FA code. For example, the bank app I use does not even have a log in button.

On the one hand, we still ask users to perform an extra action (input the code). On the other hand, it eliminates the need for an additional click.

Accessibility Concerns

There is ongoing debate about whether or not to include a submit button when entering a simple OTP. By “simple,” I mean one that consists of 4-6 digits.

While I am not an accessibility expert, I don’t see any major downsides to omitting the submit button in straightforward cases like this.

First, the OTP step is typically an intermediate part of the user flow, meaning a form with four inputs appears during some process. The first input is automatically focused, and users can navigate through them using the Tab key.

The key point is that, due to the small amount of information required (four digits), it is generally acceptable to auto-submit the form as soon as the digits are entered, even if a mistake is made.

On the one hand, if we care about accessibility, nothing stops us from providing users control over the inputs. On the other hand, auto-submission streamlines the process in most cases, and in the rare event of an error, the user can easily re-enter the digits.

Danger Zones

For the most critical actions, you may use the so-called “Danger zone” pattern.

A common way to implement this is to either have a dedicated page or place the set of actions at the bottom of the settings/account page.

It might contain one or more actions and is usually combined with other methods, e.g., a modal dialog. The more actions you have, the more likely you’ll need a dedicated page.

When To Use Them

Use a Danger Zone to group actions that are irreversible or have a high potential for data loss or significant outcomes for users.

These actions typically include things like account deletion, data wiping, or permission changes that could affect the user’s access or data.

Things To Keep In Mind

1. Use colors like red, warning icons, or borders to visually differentiate the Danger Zone from the rest of the page.
2. Each action in the Danger Zone should have a clear description of what will happen if the user proceeds so that users understand the potential consequences.
3. Ask users for extra effort. Usually, the actions are irreversible and critical. In this case, you may ask users to repeat their password or use 2FA because if someone else gets access to the page, it will not be that easy to do the harmful action.
4. Keep only truly critical actions there. Avoid making a danger zone for the sake of having one.

Inline Guards

Recently, I discovered that some apps have started using inline confirmation. This means that when you click on a dangerous action, it changes its label and asks you to click again.

This pattern is used by apps like Zapier and Typefully. While at first it seems convenient, it has sparked a lot of discussion and questions on X and Linkedin.

I’ve seen attempts to try to fix accidental double-clicking by changing the position of the inline confirmation label that appears after the first click.

But this creates layout shifts. When users work with the app daily, it may cause more irritation than help.

As an option, we can solve this issue by adding a tiny delay, e.g., 100-200ms, to prevent double-clicking.

It also matters who your users are. Remember the good old days when we used to click a dozen times to launch Internet Explorer and ended up with dozens of open instances?

If your target audience is likely to do this, apparently, the pattern will not work.

However, for apps like Zapier or Typefully, my assumption is that the target audience might benefit from the pattern.

Two-factor Authorization Confirmation

This method involves sending a confirmation request, with or without some kind of verification code, to another place, such as:

• SMS,
• Email,
• Authenticator app on mobile,
• Push notifications (e.g., instead of sending SMS, you may choose to send push notifications),
• Messengers.

Notice: I’m not talking about authentication (namely, login process), but rather a confirmation action.

An example that I personally face a lot is an app for sending cryptocurrency. Since this is a sensitive request, apart from submitting the requisition from a website, I should also approve it via email.

When To Use It

It can be used for such operations as money transfers, ownership transfers, and account deletion (even if you have a danger zone). Most of us use this method quite often when we pay online, and our banks send us OTP (one-time password or one-time code).

It may go after the first initial protection method, e.g., a confirmation dialog.

As you can see, the methods are often combined and used together. We should not consider each of them in isolation but rather in the context of the whole business process.

Passkeys

Passkeys are a modern, password-less authentication method designed to enhance both security and user experience.

“Passkeys are a replacement for passwords. A password is something that can be remembered and typed, and a passkey is a secret stored on one’s devices, unlocked with biometrics.”

— passkeys.dev

There are a few pros of using passkeys over 2FA, both in terms of security and UX:

1. Unlike 2FA, which typically requires entering a code from another device or app (e.g., SMS or authenticator apps), passkeys streamline the confirmation process. They don’t require switching between devices or waiting for a code to arrive, providing immediate authentication.
2. While 2FA provides extra protection, it is vulnerable to phishing, SIM-swapping, or interception. Passkeys are much more resistant to such attacks because they use public-private key cryptography. This means no secret code is ever sent over the network, making it phishing-resistant and not reliant on SMS or email, which can be compromised.
3. Passkeys require less mental effort from users. There’s no need to remember a password or type a code — just authenticate with a fingerprint, facial recognition, or device-specific PIN. This way, we reduce cognitive load.
4. With passkeys, the authentication process is almost instant. Unlike 2FA, where users might have to wait for a code or switch to another device, passkeys give us the opportunity to confirm actions without switching context, e.g., opening your email inbox or copying OTP from a mobile device.

The passkeys are widely supported and more and more companies adopt it.

Second-person Confirmation

This is a mechanism when two users are involved in the process. We may call them initiator and approver.

In this case, the initiator makes a request to take some action while the approver decides whether to confirm it or not.

In both roles, a confirmation dialog or other UI patterns may be used. However, the main idea is to separate responsibilities and decrease the probability of a bad decision.

Actually, you have likely encountered this method many times before. For example, a developer submits a pull request, while a code reviewer decides whether to confirm it or decline.

When To Use It

It is best suited for situations when the seriousness of decisions requires few people involved.

There is a direct analogy from real life. Take a look at the picture below:

The Council of Physicians reminds us that in medicine, seeking a second opinion is crucial, as collaboration and diverse perspectives often result in more informed decisions and better patient care. This is a perfect example of when a second opinion or an approver is essential.

Here, you will find some apps that use this method:

• GitHub, as previously mentioned, for merging pull requests.
• Jira and other similar apps. For example, when you move issues through a certain workflow stage, it may require manager approval.
• Banking applications. When you make a high-value transaction, it could be necessary to verify it for legal issues.
• Deel, which is a global hiring and payroll. One part (e.g., employer) draws up a contract and sends it to another part (e.g., freelancer), and the freelancer accepts it.

But here is the thing: We can consider it a separate method or rather an approach for implementing business logic because even if another person confirms an action, it is still a dangerous action, with the only difference being that now it’s another person who should approve it.

So, all of the examples mentioned above are not exactly a standalone specific way to protect users from making wrong decisions from the UI point of view. It’s rather an approach that helps us to reduce the number of critical mistakes.

Do We Actually Need To Ask Users?

When you ask users to take action, you should be aware of its original purpose.

The fact that users make actions does not mean that they make them consciously.

There are many behavioral phenomena that come from psychology, to name a few:

• Cognitive inertia: The tendency of a person to stick to familiar decisions, even if they are not suitable for the current situation. For instance, the vast majority of people don’t read user agreements. They simply agree with the lengthy text because it’s necessary from the legal point of view.
• Availability Heuristic: People often make decisions based on information that is easily accessible or familiar to them rather than making a mental effort. When users see the same confirmation popups, they might automatically accept them based on their previous successful experience. Of course, sooner or later, it might not work, and the acceptance of required action can lead to bad consequences.
• Cognitive Miser: The human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. This explains why many users just click “yes” or “agree” without carefully reading the text.
• Quite a representative example is banner blindness, even though not related to confirmation but, in fact, revolves around the same human behavior idiosyncrasies.

A reasonable question that may arise: What are the alternatives?

Even though we cannot entirely affect users’ behavior, there are a few tactics we can use.

Delaying

In some scenarios, we can artificially delay the task execution in a graceful way.

One of my favorite examples is an app called Glovo, which is a food delivery app. Let’s have a look at the three screens you will see when you order something.

The first screen is a cart with items you chose to buy (and an annoying promotion of subscription that takes ⅓ of the screen).

After you tap the “confirm order” button, you’ll see the second screen, which asks you whether everything is correct. However, the information appears gradually with fade-in animation. Also, you can see there is a progress bar, which is a fake one.

After a few seconds, you’ll see another screen that shows that the app is trying to charge your card; this time, it’s a real process. After the transaction proceeds, you’ll see the status of the order and approximate delivery time.

Pro tip: When you show the status of the order and visually highlight or animate the first step, it makes users more confident that the order will be completed. Because of the trick that is called Goal-Gradient Effect.

You’ve just paid, and “something starts happening” (at least visually), which is a sign that “Oh, they should have already started preparing my order. That’s nice!”

The purpose of the screen with a fake progress bar is to let users verify the order details and confirm them.

But this is done in a very exquisite way:

1. On the first screen, you click “confirm order”. It doesn’t invoke any modals or popups, such as “Are you sure?”.
2. On the second screen, users can see how information about their order appears right away, and the scroll bar at the bottom goes further. It seems like that app is doing something, but it’s an illusion. An illusion that makes you take another quick look at what you’ve just ordered.

In the previous version of the app, you couldn’t even skip the process; you could only cancel it. Now they added the “Continue” button, which is essentially “Yes, I’m sure” confirmation.

This means that we return back again to the drawbacks of classic confirmation modals since users can skip the process. But the approach is different: it’s a combination of a feedback loop from the app and skipping the process.

This combination makes users pay attention to the address, order, and price at least sometimes, and it gives them time to cancel the order, while in the classic approach, the confirmation is “yes or no?” which is more likely to be confirmed right away.

The Undo Option

The undo pattern allows users to reverse an action they have just performed, providing a safety net that reduces anxiety around making mistakes.

Unlike confirmation modals that interrupt the workflow to ask for user confirmation, the undo pattern provides a smoother experience by allowing actions to be completed with the option to reverse them if needed.

When To Use It

It works perfectly fine for non-destructive, reversible actions &mdashl actions that don’t have significant and immediate consequences:

• Reversing actions when editing a document (The beloved ctrl + z shortcut);
• Removing a file (if it goes to the trash bin first);
• Changing the status of a task (e.g., if you accidentally marked a task completed);
• Deleting a message in a chat;
• Applying filters to a photo.

Combined with a timer, you can extend the number of options since such tasks as sending an email or making a money transfer could be undone.

When You Cannot Use It

It’s not suitable for actions that have serious consequences, such as the following:

• Deleting an account;
• Submitting legal documents;
• Purchasing goods (refund is not the same as the undo option);
• Making requests for third-party APIs (in most cases).

How To Implement Them?

1. The most common way that most people use every day is to provide a shortcut (ctrl + z). However, it’s constrained to some cases, such as text editors, moving files between folders, and so on.
2. Toasts are probably the most common way to implement these web and mobile apps. The only thing that you should keep in mind is that it should stand out enough to be noticed. Hiding them in a corner with a tiny message and color that is not noticeable might not work — especially on wide screens.
3. A straightforward solution is simply to have a button that does the undo option. Preferably close to the button that evokes the action that you want to undo.

The undo option is tightly related to the concept called soft deleting, which is widely used in backend frameworks such as Laravel.

The concept means that when users delete something via the UI, it looks like it has been deleted, but in the database, we keep the data but mark it as deleted. The data is not lost, which is why the undo option is possible since we don’t actually delete anything but rather mark it as deleted.

This is a good technique to ensure that data is never lost. However, not every table needs this.

For example, if you delete an account and don't want users to restore it (perhaps due to legal regulations), then you should erase the data completely. But in many cases, it might be a good idea to consider soft deleting. In the worst case, you’ll be able to manually restore user data if it cannot be done via the UI for some reason.

Conclusion

There’s something I want everyone to keep in mind, regardless of who you are or what you do.

Every situation is unique. A certain approach might work or fail for a variety of reasons. You might sometimes wonder why a specific decision was made, but you may not realize how many times the interface was revised based on real user feedback.

User behavior is affected by many factors, including country, age, culture, education, familiarity with certain patterns, disabilities, and more.

What’s crucial is to stay in control of your data and users and be prepared to respond when something goes wrong. Following best practices is important, but you must still verify if they work in your specific case.

Just like in chess, there are many rules — and even more exceptions.

Further Reading

• Modality, Apple
• “An effective ‘Cancel’ dialog confirmation on Web,” João Bexiga
• “Confirm or undo? Which is the better option?,” Josh Wayne
• “Understanding Soft Delete and Hard Delete,” Suraj Singh Bisht
• “Confirmation Dialogs Can Prevent User Errors — If Not Overused,” Jakob Nielsen
• “Microcopy for confirmation dialogues,” Kinneret Yifrah
• What is a passkey?, passkeys.io

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Miriam Suzanne’s in the middle of a redesign of her personal website. It began in August 2022. She’s made an entire series out of the work that’s worth your time, but I wanted to call out the fifth and latest installment because she presents a problem that I think we can all relate to:

But the walls got in my way. Instead of minimal renovation, I got just far enough to live with it and then started a brand new Eleventy repo.

The plan was to prototype […] and bring back well-formed solutions. To echo Dave Rupert, prototyping is useful. It’s easier to play with new ideas when you’re not carrying a decade of content and old code along with you.

But prototyping evolved into what I would call tinkering (complimentary). Maybe I mean procrastinating (also complimentary), but it’s a wandering process that also helps me better understand what I want from a website. I might not make visible progress over two years, but I start to form a point of view […]. Keeping things easy is always where things get complicated. And it brings me back to where my redesign started – a desire to clarify the information architecture. Not only for visitors, but for myself.

Don’t even tell me you’ve never been there! Jim Neilsen blogged along similar lines. You get a stroke of inspiration that’s the kernel of some idea that motivates you to start, you know, working on it. There’s no real plan, perhaps. The idea and inspiration are more than enough to get you going… that is until you hit a snag. And what I appreciate about Miriam’s post is that she’s calling out content as the snag. Well, not so much a snag as a return to the founding principle for the redesign: a refined content architecture.

• Sometimes I do events where I speak, or teach a workshop, or perform. Events happen at a time and place.
• Sometimes I create artifacts like a book or an album, a website, or specification. Artifacts often have a home URL. They might have a launch date, but they are not date-specific.
• Some of my projects are other channels with their own feeds, their own events and artifacts.
• Those channels are often maintained by an organization that I work with long-term. A band, a web agency, a performance company, etc.

These boundaries aren’t always clean. A post that remains relevant could be considered an artifact. Events can generate artifacts, and vice versa. An entire organization might exist to curate a single channel.

So, Miriam’s done poking at visual prototypes and ready to pour the filling into the pie crust. I relate with this having recently futzed with the content architecure of this site. I find it tough to start with a solidified design before I know what content is going into it. But I also find it tough to work with no shape at all. In my case, CSS-Tricks has a well-established design that’s evolved, mostly outside of me. I love the design but it’s an inherited one and I’m integrating content around it. Design is the constraint. If I had the luxury of stripping the building to the studs, I might take a different approach because then I could “paint” around it. Content would be the constraint.

It’s yet another version of the Chicken-Egg dilemma. I still think of the (capital-W) Web as a content medium at least in a UA style sense in that it’s the default. It’s more than that, of course. I’m a content designer at heart (and trade) but I’m hesitant to cry “content is king” which reminded me of something I wrote for an end-of-year series we did here answering the question: What is one thing people can do to make their website better? My answer: Read your website.

We start to see the power of content when we open up our understanding of what it is, what it does, and where it’s used. That might make content one of the most extensible problem-solving tools in your metaphorical shed—it makes sites more accessible, extracts Google-juicing superpowers, converts sales, and creates pathways for users to accomplish what they need to do.

And as far as prioritizing content or design, or…?

The two work hand-in-hand. I’d even go so far as to say that a lot of design is about enhancing what is communicated on a page. There is no upstaging one or the other. Think of content and design as supporting one another, where the sum of both creates a compelling call-to-action, long-form post, hero banner, and so on. We often think of patterns in a design system as a collection of components that are stitched together to create something new. Pairing content and design works much the same way.

I’d forgotten those words, so I appreciate Miriam giving me a reason to revisit them. We all need to be recalibrated every so often — swap out air filters, top off the fluids, and rotate the ol’ tires. And an old dog like me needs it a little more often. I spent a few more minutes in that end-of-year series and found a few other choice quotes about the content-design continuum that may serve as inspiration for you, me, or maybe even Miriam as she continues the process of aggragating her distributed self.

This sounds serious, but don’t worry — the site’s purpose is key. If you’re building a personal portfolio, go wild! However, if someone’s trying to file a tax return, whimsical loading animations aren’t likely to be well-received. On the other hand, an animated progress bar could be a nice touch while providing visual feedback on the user’s action.

Cassie Evans, “Empathetic Animation”

Remember, the web is an interactive platform — take advantage of that, where appropriate (less is more, accessibility is integral, and you need to know your audience). Whether that’s scrollytelling, captioned video, and heck, maybe for your audience, now’s the time to start looking into AR/VR! Who knows. Sometimes you just need to try stuff out and see what sticks. Just be careful. Experimentation is great, but we need to make sure we’re bringing everyone along for the ride.

Mel Choyce, “Show, Don’t Tell”

Your personal site is a statement of who you are and what you want to do. If you showcase your favorite type of work, you’ll get more requests for similar projects or jobs — feeding back into a virtuous cycle of doing more of what you love.

Amelia Wattenberger, “Exactly What You Want”

And one of my favorites:

But the prime reason to have a personal website is in the name: it is your personalhome on the web. Since its early days, the web has been about sharing information and freedom of expression. Personal websites still deliver on that promise. Nowhere else do you have that much freedom to create and share your work and to tell your personal story. It is your chance to show what you stand for, to be different, and to be specific. Your site lets you be uniquely you and it can be whatever you imagine it to be.

So if you have a personal site, make sure to put in the work and attention to make it truly yours. Make it personal. Fine-tune the typography, add a theme switcher, or incorporate other quirky little details that add personality. As Sarah Drasner writes, you can feel it if a site is done with care and excitement. Those are the sites that are a joy to visit and will be remembered.

Matthias Ott, “Make it Personal”

That last one has the added perk of reminding me how incredibly great Sarah Drasner is.

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Aggregating my distributed self originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better.

A habit that has woven itself through many facets of my life, like parenthood, my health, and entrepreneurship, is a consistent check-in I like to do with how I’m growing.

I often call it a ‘life inventory’ where I scoop up everything I’m working on, learning, and feeling, and ask myself about what’s going well and what needs to shift.

Inevitably, I spend a little bit of my check-in time wandering back down memory lane to the beginning stages of starting my business. With over a decade’s worth of experience, successes, trials, and a whole lot of teachable moments, it’s normal to wonder what I might’ve done differently if I knew then what I know now.

While I could wax poetic about all the things I wish I could share with my 20-something self, the advice I would give for starting my business is rather simple.

‘Keeping it simple’ might be the best way to summarize what I’ve learned about almost everything in life. So, take a step back with me to those early days while I share what I’d do first, without overthinking, if I was starting my business over today.

Maybe you’re looking for a fresh start in your business or a little insight from a seasoned entrepreneur as you start on your own business journey. I hope this advice helps not only give you that clearer starting line you’re looking for but also combats that pressure to start perfectly.

I know you want to mitigate risk and avoid as many pitfalls as possible. But the learning curve is part of the journey. In the meantime, let these five insights guide your vision and keep that process as light, fun, and adventurous as possible!

The First Things I’d Do If Starting My Business Over

1. Start an email list.

Starting an email list has to be my first piece of advice for you because I cannot count how often I’ve guided new business owners and entrepreneurs to do this over the years.

I learned how much easier growing a business can be when you don’t have to count on platforms you don’t own and can’t control to deliver your valuable messages to the people you’re creating for.

While social media is important it can also be a space where you waste time, money, and creative energy trying to engage your audience that lives on the other side of a strict, ever-changing social media algorithm.

My advice? Start an email list as soon as possible before any of those resources are spent in places that won’t deliver tangible results. A nurtured email list means you’re showing up in the inboxes of people who want to hear from you, buy from you, and stick around for your stories and growth.

On social media, they might tap that follow button, but from there, they might not see your content for weeks, months, or even years.

And unlike your social media pages, your email list isn’t one hacking incident away from being totally erased, it’s an asset that you own. That’s a powerful difference from what any other platform can offer you online.

As you create new offers (paid or free), you’re able to see if what you’re serving up is irresistible enough for people to want to exchange their email addresses for it. As a new business owner, this is an easy, free way to start gauging what your audience wants most from you.

2. Find a mentor.

Mentorship can feel like a big move for a new business owner … with an even bigger price tag. We crave answers and guidance in the beginning, but usually with a beginner budget, we tend to keep mentorship on the back burner.

I spent a little too much time piecing together my own plan out of stubbornness and feeling like I needed to earn all my advice.

But, as someone who eventually would become a mentor to many, I realized how much mentors want to give their advice to newbies! And not all mentorship needs to be one-on-one or costly. There are mentorship opportunities all around us if we know where to look.

First, look for free learning pathways. Tune into a podcast, like Goal Digger, my business and marketing podcast, where I share not only what I’m learning in business but open up conversations with amazing thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries to pull out their insight, too.

Plus, I even drop episodes that are live mentorship and coaching sessions with all kinds of people who are at their own starting lines or turning points in business.

Learning from other leaders who inspire you can also be as easy as taking a digital course. They can teach you through their course that can come at a more accessible price point while delivering their brilliance right to your screen.

Find someone who’s gone before you and is doing something similar to what you want to do or how you want to do it. Look for people who align with the kind of business owner you want to become. If they have a course, take it. If they have a book, read it. If they host live classes or have an online community, grab a seat.

Eventually, whenever you’re ready, you might even go out on a limb and ask them to mentor you in whatever capacity they can. You might just land your dream mentor!

3. Share your focus and goals.

This can be a tough part of starting a business because the pressure to be impressive or show off our success can keep us from showing the building process.

The journey doesn’t always look ‘pretty’, and it can be tempting to hide those parts (like when we clean up our entire house before the house cleaner comes over.)

But looking back, I regret those moments when I hid my learning process, waiting for everything to be ‘perfect,’ keeping me from growth because when is anything ever perfect? Letting people in on my journey is when my business completely shifted and growth started building in huge waves.

My audience responded to these seemingly messy or incomplete glimpses into my process with a resounding “This is so real!” We related on a whole new level and more people wanted to work with me, trust me as a client, and buy into my new offers.

Beyond ‘being relatable’, here’s why sharing your process and focus is so effective: you want your offers to make sense to the people you’re making them for. The only way they’re going to get the clearest picture of your offer is to let them in long before you finally share the ‘tada!’ moment.

Surprise drives way less results than anticipation. Show your people what you’re working on and allow them to support and champion you!

4. Get clear on your brand vision.

Starting your business is already a massively pride-worthy moment.

I was so proud to finally get out of my corporate, windowless office and launch into my career as a photographer and then as a digital marketer, but what I needed to get grounded with was my brand. Early on, I genuinely didn’t know the difference between my business and my brand.

An easy way to boil it down is that your business is simply your offer. It’s the solution you give your clients, the service you sell, the products you produce! But your brand is your personality behind every offer, service, and product. Sure, Audi makes cars, but how a person sells them makes all the difference, right?

From your social media, your website, your ads, your blogs, and everywhere else you show up online, your personality should be visible. Don’t hide behind your offers or think that they speak for themselves.

In fact, you’re their best advocate. Your excitement and confidence in what you’ve created is what resonates with your audience!

Your personality can show up long before you even have something to sell. Think about how you show up on social media.

• Do you know why you’re posting or creating?
• When you take a step back, is your brand vision clear with everything you post?
• Can you see your own unique perspective, flavor, and approach woven into your captions and images?

If you’re struggling here, I’ve coined a social content approach called the JK5 that might help keep your creative flow simple.

Every time you go to create a post, choose one from your five unique content pillars that guide your content creation and show your brand personality to your followers. It could be parenthood, pets, style, interior design, poetry, or anything that shows who YOU are!

If you want to learn more about the JK5 and your brand pillars, listen to this episode of my podcast!

5. Choose your tools wisely.

I learned this analogy through my experience as a photographer, juggling a variety of lenses in my camera bag. I felt this pressure when I was just starting out to have every single lens for every possible scenario.

As my business grew, I bought new lenses but learned that there were just a few that I would reach for over and over again. I didn’t need all the shiny tools right away, and in many cases, never needed them at all.

When you’re just starting your business, you’ll probably be inundated by all the options for the best tools and platforms out there. It’ll make your head spin.

But most of them aren’t necessary for what you need on day one. You don’t have to spend your time and money merely looking like a business when that could easily distract you from being able to do the real work.

Take a few steps back and analyze what your biggest needs are. Differentiate between the ‘nice to haves’ and the ‘need to haves’ to keep your growth moving forward.

A key to helping yourself know the difference is by looking at the tasks that are already on your to-do list vs the ones that you’re looking forward to doing in the future.

For instance, you might need to invest in accounting software before the bells and whistles for your website. In fact, I’ll fully admit that I didn’t have a real branded, designer-made logo until THIS year.

You can go farther than you ever imagined with much less than you think!

Honor Your Own Journey

Overall, the biggest surprise to me is that I don’t actually want to redo any of it.

As someone who takes so much joy in the learning process itself, it’s only through the hiccups, the guesses, the mistakes, and the early days that I was able to awaken the unrelenting life-long learner and educator in me.

My learning journey is the only reason I can have hindsight enough to meet people at their starting lines or messy middles and be able to help them skip some of the confusion. I love helping smooth out the starting lines.

You’re so much more capable of amazing things than you might know, so any chance I get to help people like you get there is a joy.

So, while these are in some ways insights born out of moments of ‘regret,’ I would say I have a much greater appreciation for them as transformative experiences.

Honor your own flubs and challenges along the way! They’ve not only helped YOU become who you are and the skills you carry, but they’re also a pathway for you to help others make it through the mess as we’re all out here just trying to figure it out as we go.

Every year we see new trends emerge in the world of design. While most of these new trends fade away with time, some remain to change and influence the industry for the better.

In this post, we explore the ever-evolving world of illustration trends and designs. From the rise of AI-assisted drawings to the resurgence of retro and psychedelic art, these are the trends you can expect to see more of this year.

Let’s take a look at some of the top upcoming illustration trends and how you can apply them in your own designs and projects. Some of these trends will not only be popular but also groundbreaking by bringing in new advancements and innovations.

1. AI-Assisted Illustrations

Designers have different opinions about the advancements of AI and how it’s impacting the industry. However, AI has clearly made work much easier for us. And that’s the main goal of using AI. It should not be used to replace designers but to enhance your workflow and make you more efficient.

Adobe understood this concept better than most other AI startups. During the Adobe MAX 2023 event, Adobe showed how they have improved Adobe Illustrator to help artists and designers create art more easily.

You can now generate vectors with text prompts, find exact matches for fonts, create icons, get variations of your illustrations, copy art styles, and more. These new tools will save you a ton of time and supercharge your process of finding inspiration, coming up with different concepts, and experimenting with different ideas.

2. Representation of Diversity

One of the trends that we hope to see more of this year is illustrations that represent diversity, culture, and traditions. We saw many brands and companies use these beautiful illustrations on their marketing campaigns, websites, and social media platforms to promote inclusiveness and diverse representation.

This trend is not just about representation, it’s also about celebrating different cultures, expanding the boundaries of perspectives, and bringing people together. It’s a mission that we will always promote with an open heart.

3. Colorful Abstract

Abstract illustrations have been a powerful visual form that amplifies storytelling for many years. This year, we expect to see this art trend continue to grow.

These beautiful illustrations excel at captivating audiences with colorful visuals and communicating ideas, moods, and messages much more effectively. Whether it’s for branding design or packaging design, colorful abstract illustrations fit perfectly for many types of projects as well.

4. Retro and Psychedelic

We all have a soft spot for those classic and groovy illustrations full of vibrant colors and weird shapes. Last year, we saw many artists combine this retro style from the 70s and 80s with psychedelic-style art to create very uncommon and trippy illustrations.

We’ve been seeing these retro and psychedelic illustrations on everything from product packaging designs to website designs and even branding designs. It seems to be getting more popular with casual and lifestyle brands that target younger audiences as well.

5. Art Deco

The Art Deco design trend is commonly used in various types of packaging designs, brand identities, and graphic designs as a way of showing off elegance and sophistication. It’s a trend that’s been around for decades but over the past few years we saw this trend being used more commonly by modern brands.

This trend will likely continue to be popular in the world of design and illustrations thanks to its ability to combine vintage aesthetics with futuristic vibes. Especially when it comes to luxury and high-end illustrations, Art Deco is unmatched for creating unique nostalgic feels.

6. Comic Book Art

The illustrations done in comic book art style are another new trend that’s slowly gaining momentum in the design world. This trend helps add a playful, humorous, and exaggerated look to your illustrations to create a bold retro aesthetic for various types of designs.

Whether it’s website design, poster design, or packaging design, comic book-style art blends perfectly with many different types of mediums as well. It’s also quite effective for brand storytelling and creating designs that communicate with the audience more effectively.

7. Doodle Art

No matter how old we get, we all have childhood memories that we always long for. Doodle art is a trend that’s designed to take you back to that wonderful childhood while evoking a sense of playfulness and free spirit. It’s one of the reasons why this trend has been around for such a long time and it will continue to be as effective as ever before.

Many popular brands have been using doodle art and illustrations as a way to create a more relaxed vibe and also bring out a sense of joy in the audience at the same time. The quirkiness and the imperfections of this art style allow any business or brand to strip away the formalities and create a close connection with its target audience.

8. Surrealism

The unreal, bizarre, and nightmare-ish surrealism illustration trend continues to surprise us every year by maintaining its popularity across many different industries. When it comes to creating designs that spark curiosity and imagination, nothing comes close to surrealist illustrations.

The distorted human figures, weird manipulations, and the weird elements used in surrealist illustrations often have hidden meanings and tell a story that explores controversial topics. And it opens up new doors for artists, media, and brands to share their narratives in mesmerizing ways.

9. Textured Illustrations

We went through several different illustration trends over the years from flat design to minimal artwork and the latest to join this lineup is the textured illustrations trend. This new trend sees illustrations getting a much-needed texture upgrade that adds more depth to the overall look and feel.

Textured illustrations will be one of the most popular illustration trends this year for two main reasons. First, they add an authentic and hand-crafted look to digital illustrations. Second, they create a more rugged and tactile vibe for the illustrations, replacing the overly smooth, artificial look of ordinary digital art.

10. Line Art

The great thing about line art illustrations is their versatility. Line art drawings can be as simple as a few lines or complex artwork but they will always maintain an overall simple and minimal look. This gives line art illustrations a classic yet timeless look.

Especially when designing illustrations for digital platforms, minimalist line art is an obvious choice as it reduces file sizes and helps improve performance. They are also quite effective in conveying ideas and creating adaptable art across different platforms and mediums.

11. Realistic 3D Art

3D art generation tools like Blender and Unreal Engine received significant updates last year that expanded their capabilities beyond our imagination. Designers have been using these tools to generate ultra-realistic 3D art and illustrations and the results were mind-blowing.

We will surely see more of these realistic 3D art and illustrations this year as well. Especially since the demand for this art is increasing as more industries seem to be embracing this new trend.

12. Nostalgia

When it comes to creating art and illustrations that connect with the audience on a personal level, nostalgic art is the perfect way to go. These illustrations excel at evoking emotions and good memories from the past and go a long way to establishing a strong connection with the audience.

Many brands have been using this trend to create emotional connections with their customers while also celebrating the history and good times from the past.

13. Geometric Art

There were many interesting art and design trends over the years that were inspired by the geometric style of art, including the popular Bauhaus style. And now, they are slowly influencing illustrations as well.

Illustrations inspired by geometric art styles have their own unique styles and we love how artists keep reinventing this trend while putting their own unique spins to create cool artworks.

14. Cartoon and Comic

Caroon and comic-themed illustrations do two things perfectly: They are great at adding a sense of whimsy to your creations and also conveying emotions more effectively.

When it comes to educational projects, casual and fun designs, and even creating mascots, and characters that represent brands, cartoon-style illustrations have been the ideal choice for decades.

Even though it’s not a new trend, we will surely see more cartoon and comic-style illustrations this year. Because it simply works wonders!

15. Outline Drawings

This is an illustration trend that will never go out of style. Because it’s the perfect style for creating art and illustrations that exude elegance and simplicity.

Outline drawings and illustrations have a particular way of creating a minimalist vibe for any other project. It helps create that subtle, fine art-style look that you can’t achieve with any other illustration style. And that’s why it will always be a trend you can rely on.

16. Brave and Bold

Recently, designers have been creating some radical and bold creations, much more than they used to. Mainly because modern brands and businesses now seek to create more open and authentic identities. And these brave and bold illustrations help achieve that goal.

This is a trend we would love to see more of this year. We are particularly curious how designers and artists will handle this experimental illustration style.

Conclusion

There will also be many other new trends this year, possibly ones we couldn’t even imagine. So be sure to keep an eye out for those. You can always check out our Trends category to stay on top of your game.