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While I’m not a business owner and haven’t branded my own business, I’ve been an employee at companies that have undergone large-scale rebrands.

Most recently, Nickelodeon, where I work full-time in marketing, pulled off a rebranding strategy in 2023 for the first time in 14 years.

We brought back the “splat,” a shape inspired by Nickelodeon’s iconic green slime, as a tactic to tap into both kids and their nostalgic parents who are former 90s Nick Kids themselves. This was part of an effort to position Nickelodeon as a brand that brings families across generations together to enjoy quality time.

In my opinion, this is an example of a company rebranding correctly and out of necessity. In a competitive entertainment landscape fighting for kids’ attention, Nickelodeon knew we couldn’t keep doing more of the same.

Sometimes (but not all the time!), one of the best ways to move forward is by leaning on and adapting past successes.

It’s not easy to know when is the right time to invest in a rebrand and how to handle that rebrand successfully, so I‘ve prepared this post to help guide the process, plus examples of other brands who’ve successfully rebranded their website, name, logo, mission, and purpose.

Table of Contents

• What is rebranding?
• Rebranding Strategy
• How to Rebrand a Company
• Rebranding Examples
• The Right (and Wrong) Reasons to Rebrand
• Partial vs. Total Rebrand
• Bad Rebranding Examples

Understanding what rebranding is is only part of the battle. Now, you must ensure you have the right reasons to rebrand.

The Right (and Wrong) Reasons to Rebrand

Rebrands are complicated and carry big risks.

Even big brands aren't immune — just look at X, which is considered one of the biggest recent rebranding fails. Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X in 2023 by renaming and restyling the entire brand.

As a result, 78% of U.S. iOS users gave the app 1-star reviews, compared to 50% two weeks prior. Most of the negative reviews mentioned disliking the new name and logo.

While it will take time to see the true long-term effects of this rebranding, it’s clear that abrupt, random changes to brands with generally positive sentiments and long-standing reputations can be incredibly detrimental.

That’s why knowing the risks of rebranding can help determine whether or not you're jumping into a rebrand for the right reasons.

If sales have been slow or brand awareness efforts don't seem to be paying off, rebranding may not be the best immediate step.

These issues can potentially be solved with a new content marketing strategy or by conducting market research to identify the underlying cause.

But if you‘re considering a rebrand because your company’s vision, mission, values, and market are no longer reflected in your brand, then a rebrand might be the right decision.

There are a few other major reasons you might consider a rebrand. I will demonstrate these reasons using my fictitious indoor cycling business, Psyched 2 Cyc.

4 Right Reasons for Rebranding

New Locations

Psyched 2 Cyc started as a singular, local studio in New York City, so I selected a punny name that likely only works in English.

After growing throughout NYC and the country, my business is now looking to expand to non-English, international markets that may not identify with the business name. This could be a good time to consider a full brand rename.

Market Repositioning

The name Psyched 2 Cyc was chosen with young fitness enthusiasts at heart — hence the abbreviated word “Cyc” and the use of “2” instead of “to.”

But I’d now like to target older consumers interested in improving their fitness with a low-impact workout like indoor cycling.

Thus, I may need to refresh my brand name (or consider rewriting it in full as Psyched to Cycle) to better resonate with people of all ages.

New Philosophy

I started my business as primarily an indoor cycling studio. Thus, our mission, vision, and values all surround the idea of fitness, health, and wellness through the use of an indoor bike.

If I want to expand my business to include another modality, such as strength, yoga, or running, it makes sense to want to reevaluate my brand. That way, I can build new MVVs that align with the growing business offerings.

Mergers and Acquisitions

To grow my business, audience, and offerings, I have partnered with a strength training studio, Sweat Power.

Combining our two brands either means that we agree to adopt the branding of one of the studios, or we must work together to come up with a new name, logo, and positioning that best reflects our new brand.

Additionally, here are a few reasons not to rebrand.

4 Wrong Reasons for Rebranding

Boredom

It’s been more than two decades, and I’m feeling uninspired by the logo and slogan I selected back when I first launched Psyched 2 Cyc. I’m itching for some change that will refresh my business and make it look more elevated.

However, my customers (who see my branding much less frequently) might love — or quickly recognize — the signature color and logo I’ve come to loathe. I should consider how a sudden change to my branding could leave consumers confused or disappointed.

Covering Up a Crisis

One of my business’s executives recently received bad press that has reflected badly on Psyched 2 Cyc. I’m desperate for a big rebranding shift that will help us move past this period of negativity.

However, most consumers and employees are smart enough to see right through my rebrand and recognize it for what it is — a cover-up. It’s best to handle bad press with respect, authenticity, and actionable change.

Impact and Ego

I’ve recently hired some new leaders who are excited about a rebranding as they feel they were brought in to help freshen up Psyched 2 Cyc’s brand. They want to refresh our mission statement and values.

However, the kind of institutional change they want to implement doesn’t justify a rebrand. It’s more about them making their mark and producing radical change.

Looking for Attention

Classes have been half-full at best, and several instructors have recently quit. I’m tempted to execute a rebrand to bring life back to the brand and encourage new instructors to want to teach at Psyched 2 Cyc.

At best, this may generate some short-term buzz without any sales and marketing strategy to sustain it. At worst, I could lose brand recognition and set back sales and marketing efforts even more.

If you've determined a rebrand is still the right choice for you, keep reading to learn how to devise a rebranding strategy.

Rebranding efforts may include:

1. Creating a new logo.

One of the main strategies of rebranding is creating a new logo. A new logo is a clear sign to consumers that your brand's identity is different. A new logo can involve new colors, modern typography, or a new icon that better represents your brand.

Pro tip: Use your brand's vision, mission, and values to inspire your new aesthetic. For instance, Pepsi rebranded in 2023 for the first time in 14 years for its 125th anniversary.

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The logo still uses the essence of the past logo, which helps maintain consistency and brand recognition with loyal customers. However, the new logo incorporates bolder colors and a vintage appearance that ties back to the company’s long heritage.

I also appreciate that the logo is now more compact, making it easier to place on products and ads. Lastly, Pepsi has made its brand name much easier to read in the new logo, in all-caps and bold black font, rather than the blue, wavy, lower-case previous version.

2. Shifting brand position.

Unfortunately, rebranding isn’t as easy as hiring an agency to redesign your logo. It’s essential to shift your brand positioning.

The products, services, or content being marketed need to communicate a certain message, whether that's a mission, values, or vision.

This is the best way to set your brand apart from competitors and draw in consumers aligned with these beliefs.

Pro tip: Chances are, you'll need to reestablish a unique selling proposition and take stock of what distinguishes your brand from the crowd. This will help you better connect with you target audience and understand your position in the market.

In 2015, Gucci shifted its brand positioning to appeal to younger generations. To do this, they pivoted from polished and provocative to quirky and contemporary. They also focused more on communication that would resonate on Instagram and adopted a progressive stance on gender fluidity.

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These changes significantly increased sales with Millennial and Gen Z consumers who were able to better resonate with Gucci’s mission, values, and vision.

3. Creating new ads.

Once the logo and messaging are locked, it's time to create new advertisements and content with this messaging in mind.

These ads should communicate the changes to your brand and what they mean for customers. This can help draw in a new demographic and reach larger audiences.

Pro tip: New logos and messaging will only go far if you can invest in marketing to show the world these rebranding changes. For instance, Eurostar rebranded in 2023 after merging with Thalys, a French-Belgian high-speed train operator, as part of a goal to reach 30 million passengers by 2030.

After updating visual elements, the brand, now Eurostar Group, created an ad campaign around the slogan “Together We Go Further,” involving a promo, out-of-home, and digital.

The campaign highlighted the brand’s key traits — European, inclusive, unique, and sustainable — to emphasize the excitement of discovering a vibrant world of travel through Europe.

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The overall rebranding strategy resulted in route growth in 2023 in major routes, such as Paris to London and Paris to Amsterdam, as well as an increase in online sales, website conversions, and mobile app downloads.

4. Changing your brand's voice.

The last step of a solid rebranding strategy is changing the brand‘s voice.

This is the perspective from which you write all your marketing content. Your voice can be formal, casual, witty, or whatever tone best reflects your brand. Change your brand’s voice accordingly and announce your rebrand in this new tone.

Pro tip: Think of your brand as a person. When they walk into a party, are they cracking jokes and the life of the party, or are they professional and no-nonsense? Use your brand personality to inform this brand voice.

Duolingo began as a traditional language learning app and has since evolved into a silly, humorously-aggressive brand. Users started creating memes in 2019 about the evil owl mascot, Duo, who would berate them to practice.

The brand leaned into this personality and adapted its brand voice to fit this new persona.

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The brand voice is now very quirky, personable, and young, and, at times, leans into the “evil Duo” voice which has made it ultra-popular on social media.

Embracing this brand voice has aided Duolingo’s entire rebranding strategy, as it now leans on the voice to dictate its brand identity, marketing methods, goals, and target audience.

Not all rebrands are created equal, so let's first consider whether a partial or total rebrand is the best option for your business.

Partial vs. Total Rebrand

The more established your business and brand, the more you have to lose from a rebrand. If your business is more mature, a partial rebrand can help you retain the brand loyalty you've built, while refreshing your image to keep up with the times.

Think of a partial rebrand as an adjustment focused on visual brand identity to suit new offerings or markets, as opposed to a complete identity crisis.

That‘s not to say that a partial rebrand can’t be effective. Just look at Pringles.

They redesigned their mascot, Mr. P, in 2021 with a more simple, contemporary look. This partial rebrand helped them maintain their iconic brand identity while giving their mascot a bold, refreshed appearance.

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However, if the goal is a complete identity shift involving your company's mission, vision, and values, a total rebrand might be necessary.

This option is typically suited to situations like mergers, product overhauls, and other similarly foundational shifts.

If a partial rebrand is a quick touch-up, the total rebrand is a complete makeover.

Take a look at the following five steps to successfully implement a rebrand.

1. Reestablish your brand's audience and market.

Let’s return to my fictional indoor cycling business, Psyched 2 Cyc. When I got into this business, I expected my target audience to be in their 20s and early 30s, since that is the most common demographic for other cycling studios like SoulCycle.

However, after extensive market research, I realized my target market was different from what I had assumed.

Key research found that 50% of respondents spend less than 10 minutes traveling to cycling classes, and 92% complete the trip in under 30 minutes. That means only 8% of participants are willing to travel more than 30 minutes to my studio.

This has changed my entire philosophy since the neighborhood my studio launched in has a slightly older demographic (30s-40s adults with families).

Now, I can re-establish my brand’s audience and market, knowing I will have the most luck drawing in new members who live within 30 (or ideally 10!) minutes of the studio.

Pro tip: Focus groups are a great way to discover (or re-discover) your target market. You may be surprised to find that your audience isn’t who you thought it was.

2. Redefine your company's vision, mission, and values.

What am I doing? How am I doing it? Why am I doing it?

These are the three questions I will ask myself when reevaluating my vision, mission, and values for Psyched 2 Cyc’s rebrand. These messaging foundations will likely change as my company grows.

New products, priorities, services, or stakeholders can completely undo what once seemed like a given.

Here is how I will analyze the following factors to gauge which parts of my brand will need some TLC.

Vision

Vision is the “What am I doing?” of the puzzle. It’s the North Star for every action my company undertakes, and it's critical to have a firm understanding of my vision before moving forward.

Originally when I founded Psyched 2 Cyc, I simply wanted to build a new cycling studio since it’s a modality I love. Now that I have established my brand in this way, I can adapt my vision to be more specific or forward-thinking.

I founded the studio originally to target women since women are a large portion of indoor cycling participants. After all, 67% of U.S. Peloton owners are women, and women are the fastest-growing demographic in indoor cycling in 2024, with a 9% increase in cycling activities.

However, now that I’ve established my brand in the eyes of women, I’d like to rebrand to be more inclusive to both men and women.

Just because women are a large percentage of indoor cycling enthusiasts doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for men here, too.

Mission

The mission is the “How am I doing it?” component. This is my company's roadmap for how we will achieve the vision of drawing in more males to my brand.

I’m interested in adding a virtual component to my brand since 26% of Les Mills survey respondents regularly attend virtual indoor cycling classes. On top of that, data found that men are more likely to attend virtual classes than women.

This could be a great way to draw in men who may not be as inclined to take classes in a live studio but would be interested in doing so at home.

My mission is to incorporate virtual classes to target more men in a predominantly female space.

Values

Values are the “Why am I doing this” element. It’s why I’m working towards my vision and dedicated to my mission.

Now that I have adapted my vision and mission, I should accordingly adapt my values to align with this new strategy. For example, I will incorporate the following new values:

• Raise the bar. This is both a play on words (since the handlebar is a key part of any bike) and a commitment to continuously compete with yesterday’s performance.
• Room for all. This again has a dual meaning: as I embark on a journey to create a more inclusive space for all people in a predominantly young, female environment, this value will be essential. But it also indicates that Psyched 2 Cyc will create a literal “room” for all; whether in our studio room or your room at home taking a virtual class.

Understandably, some of my founding values might become unsustainable. It’s more effective to prioritize new values rather than cling to past ones, which may limit change.

Brand Voice

Now that I’ve shifted my vision, mission, and values while rebranding, how I convey these aspects of my company will also have to change. What I’m saying is changing, so how I say it will also need to change.

For instance, I have been using a tone of voice that’s young, modern, and feminine. Now that I’m shifting to target a slightly older demographic and males, I will want to adapt my language to be more attractive to these audiences.

3. Rename your company during a rebrand.

Changing names is a big undertaking and can cost brand recognition and organic search traffic in one fell swoop. I would only rename Psyched 2 Cyc if it’s a dire need and I had a plan for recovery as part of my post-rebrand strategy.

As mentioned earlier, I selected the name to attract a younger audience, which is why I used “2” instead of “to” and the shortened term “Cyc.”

Perhaps, in wanting to rebrand to attract my slightly older target audience, I may reconsider changing the name to resonate better with the residents in the surrounding area.

Ideally, the best course of action is to keep the same name to retain brand recognition, but if I want to better align with my new company identity, I can return to the drawing board.

Pro tip: It can be difficult to begin your brainstorming session. Some starter ideas for the renaming process are:

• Make a new word
• Use an old word in new ways
• Say what I do (literally)
• Modify a word's spelling
• Add a prefix or suffix
• Look to other languages
• Bring two words together
• Create an acronym
• Use a location

4. Reconsider your brand's slogan.

A good slogan is catchy and will capture my company's mission and vision. Unlike changing names, changing slogans is a little easier for my marketing efforts, so I won’t lose sight of my existing customers tied to the Psyched 2 Cyc brand.

That doesn’t mean I won’t still consider this carefully and ensure I’m changing the slogan for the right reasons.

Repetition builds recognition, and I don’t want to change too many aspects of my brand that people have come to love and remember.

An idea for a new slogan for Psyched 2 Cyc that can better represent my new mission and vision would be “Spin, Your Way.”

This highlights the purpose (an indoor cycling studio) and emphasizes that we are trying to be more inclusive and that there is space for anyone, regardless of age, ability, or class style preference.

Pro tip: Slogans can be equally as difficult to come up with as brand names. Some ways to discover new ideas for slogans are:

• Make a claim
• Get metaphorical
• Use poetic language
• Provide instructions
• Leverage labels
• Compliment customers

5. Rebuild your brand identity.

The tangible elements I use to communicate the Psyched 2 Cyc brand have been in play for several years, which has given me plenty of time to reconsider their strengths and weaknesses before deciding to replace some of them.

Refreshing some of the visual components of my brand could be a great way to rebrand without changing something as drastic as the company name or slogan.

I can consider redesigning my logo, using new colors in my brand material, or even creating new brand guidelines.

Logo

When I selected my initial logo, I had little budget and couldn’t invest dollars into hiring an external agency to design some options. Instead, I had the help of an artist friend who designed my idea for me.

Unfortunately, I don’t think my logo has a real impact on customers. It’s very generic and doesn’t reflect what is unique about Psyched 2 Cyc. So, I will return to the basics of what makes a good logo to help me get it right this time.

• Stay simple. Jamming as much symbolism as possible into a logo generally doesn't work well and can become too complex or confusing for customers to understand. Now that my brand is more established, I can show confidence with a simple, clean logo.
• Make an impact. While it’s important to be simple, I still want to make my logo memorable. There are a lot of indoor cycling brands out there, and I want my logo to be bold enough to stand out amongst competitors.
• Be adaptable. I didn’t initially consider the limitations of my original logo. Now that I know all the places my logo lives — digitally on my website, app, and social media; in print on products like fitness apparel, water bottles, and our cycling shoes; and in a huge, neon sign in the studio — I can keep these channels in mind during the redesign.
• Aim for appropriate. I designed the logo for a younger, female audience, and now that I’m expanding my target market, I might want a logo that better attracts this audience.
• Look to the long term. This rebrand will likely cost me a lot of money, so I don’t want to do another one anytime soon. Therefore, I will consider my vision, mission, values, and purpose to ensure my new logo can support them in the long run.
• Maintain through-lines. The logo, while not as much as the name, is still one of my brand's most memorable components. I want to avoid losing brand recognition by maintaining the parts of my old logo that worked.

Take a look at the Nickelodeon logo change from 2023 below. We retained the same iconic orange color and font but re-incorporated the “splat,” which would be memorable with parents.

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Color Palette

I know color is very impactful in branding — some colors are now synonymous with the brands that use them, like McDonald's yellow. However, choosing the right color can be difficult, so I might consider changing the color to reflect Psyched 2 Cyc’s rebrand.

For example, our brand logo is currently red, which I chose since red is a vibrant, powerful color that reflects fitness well. However, I now see how many competitors also have red logos, such as CycleBar, and want to choose a new color that can stand out.

According to the psychology of color, green can represent growth, freshness, and health, which resonates with fitness well. It also has an adventurous, competitive personality, which ties fairly well with cycling.

Therefore, I might consider changing my logo to dark green, especially since I don’t know many fitness brands with a green logo.

Before making any drastic changes, I will check how the color shows up on-screen and in print to ensure consistency and that I like the look.

Typography

I chose an expressive, regal font for my original logo to help it pop and appear elevated against competitors. However, I now realize that it doesn’t represent my brand well — too much sophistication can make the brand come across as elite and inaccessible to the average person, which is not what Psyched 2 Cyc is about.

When reevaluating fonts, I will ensure the font is consistent with my target market and messaging uncovered in the rebrand. A more traditional serif or sans-serif font may be better suited when trying to attract a slightly older demographic.

I will also ensure that the font is easily accessible for web design and offers various weights and cuts for different channels.

Take the 2023 Minute Maid logo rebrand, for instance, in which they adopted a softer, bolder, and more inviting new font.

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Shapes and Imagery Revisited

Like logo, color palette, and typography, my imagery and shapes play a vital role in Psyched 2 Cyc’s brand identity. In changing those other visual elements, it makes sense to reconsider my imagery and shapes to keep everything cohesive in the rebrand.

Since I want my studio to be more approachable to new demographics, such as older people and men, I might consider softer lines and rounder shapes that provide a more welcoming appearance to new customers.

Of course, having everything visually aligned isn’t enough. These visual elements must support the core messages of my brand, too.

Brand Guidelines

After going through all the trouble of creating a new brand identity for my business, I want to use all these elements correctly.

Having brand guidelines will help guide me in the rebranding process to ensure consistency in this new stage for Psyched 2 Cyc.

Brand guidelines will be especially critical when showcasing my new logo. These guidelines will make it as easy as possible for customers to see, recognize, and remember my logo, making up for any lost familiarity from the original logo.

When writing my logo guidelines, I will consider the following:

• Logo elements. What visual elements make up my logo? When and how are each of them used?
• Color variations. What does the colored version of my logo look like? What about black and white? When are each of these used?
• Clear space. Also called padding, this is the space around my logo that prevents overlap or obscuring. I will aim for at least 10% of width at all times.
• Unacceptable uses. What can never be done to my logo? What color variations, rotations, scaling, etc. do I want to avoid?

These guidelines will be essential for me to distribute to my team so everyone has the information they need to handle the rebrand effortlessly.

It will be important for my team members and external agencies we hire to help us with the website and app redesign, building out our rebrand campaign, and creating new marketing materials.

6. Track brand sentiment along the way.

Though part of the reason for my rebrand is to attract new customers, my current customers are loyal and trusted. Therefore, I will get feedback from them on the rebrand elements I am considering.

I plan to conduct focus groups to see if the new branding images and messages communicate my new mission, values, and vision. If I don't receive positive feedback, I may need to go back to the drawing board.

I know one of the most crucial steps in rebranding is tracking brand sentiment before, during, and after a rebrand launch, so I will look at brand sentiment before the rebrand to see what current or potential customers like and dislike about Psyched 2 Cyc’s branding.

Is it clear what our brand offers? Is the branding consistent? How does it compare to similar indoor cycling studios? What is something about our branding that either drew them in or made them reconsider joining our studio?

With these answers in mind, I can conduct my rebrand strategically, adding new messaging that aligns with my audience. As a plus, this also helps my current customers feel valued since their thoughts will be taken into consideration.

7. Plan a successful launch.

The rebrand will only be successful and meaningful if people actually know it’s happening. Therefore, I know that I can’t simply change the colors, fonts, and logo on our Psyched 2 Cyc website, app, and social media. I need to communicate what the rebrand means and let people know we’ve made intentional growth.

First, I plan to run a marketing campaign involving digital display banners, print ads, and a short promo that can run on TV and social media.

I will also organize a press release to announce the launch of our rebrand that will sit on our website and social channels. This allows me to share exactly why Psyched 2 Cyc needed a rebrand and what it means for our future.

This will be the perfect way for us to reset and remain consistent and on-brand in all marketing efforts moving forward.

We’ve lost our way over the past few years as priorities changed to membership retention, but I believe a solid rebrand will help redefine our branding.

Now that we‘ve explored various aspects of rebranding regarding my fictional brand Psyched 2 Cyc, let’s take a look at some real-world examples for further inspiration.

1. 7UP

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7UP’s new identity was inspired by the soda itself. The company wanted to create a new visual identity that captures the soda’s effervescent essence while modernizing with changing times.

They first handled this with a new “UPliftment” positioning, based on its history of being enjoyed in joyful moments with loved ones. This new strategy promises to “offer light relief from the mundanities of daily life.”

To feed into this “UP” movement, the brand angled its new logo up to focus on upward movement. 7UP also wanted to embrace its global audience, so the packaging logo was designed to be translated into various languages for worldwide unification.

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These changes, and the new citrus colors in the palette, have helped 7UP create a bolder, brighter, more confident, and “bubbly” persona, while still staying true to its green color. This rebrand has been widely applauded for its simplistic, minimalistic, and modern execution.

2. LG

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LG first hinted at its upcoming rebrand in April 2023 with the debut of its new and improved logo — maintaining the same icon but transitioning it from 3D to 2D. The new logo is also animated and expressive and can perform eight motions (including nodding and winking).

Beyond the logo change, LG introduced a younger and more playful appearance in August 2023 with new brand characters, Joy and Ryder, that showcase LG’s fun side while playing into the company’s heritage and Korean culture.

To add even more energy to their rebrand, LG also integrated a brighter, bolder shade of red into their color palette.

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They even incorporated new values, such as “Warmth to Power a Smile,” and made their “Life’s Good” slogan more prominent in marketing. These changes were part of an effort to attract Millennial and Gen Z audiences and redefine the brand as innovative, modern, and people-centric.

3. Reddit

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The biggest change in Reddit’s 2023 rebrand was bringing their iconic mascot Snoo to life with a new dynamic 3D look. Snoo is less robotic and more a playful creature who can perform eight motions, such as spinning.

The brand repositioned Reddit as “the heart of the internet” to highlight its role in society as a space for communication and discourse. This repositioning is also evident in the frame around Snoo and the “d” in the Reddit logo, which are now speech bubbles to emphasize the same point.

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Reddit’s new brand identity also involves four pillars: “inherently eclectic”, “positively different”, “delightfully absurd”, and “genuinely candid”, which help tie all these changes and refreshes together.

The rebrand was done to modernize Reddit’s look with changes such as 3D design elements, a simplified color palette, and new typefaces, while re-emphasizing what people already know and love Reddit for — being a hub for community and conversation.

4. Jell-O

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The 2023 Jell-O rebrand involved a change in logo and packaging for all products. The goal was to attract younger parents and kids with playful, simple, colorful imagery and bring back some of the “jiggly fun and...wonder” that has always been associated with the brand.

This new positioning played into the new designs by incorporating a modern aesthetic while showcasing the many fun flavors Jell-O has to offer. The logo shifted to a blockier sans serif font against a white background for a 3D effect, with the “O” resting slightly above.

The packaging also now includes cartoonish images of pudding swirls and jelly fruit instead of the more realistic images previously shown. This helps the brand target younger parents with fruit images that reveal healthier options while making the packaging more eccentric and light-hearted.

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This rebrand was well-received as consumers saw it as a way to significantly modernize the branding while maintaining some of its classic, beloved traits.

5. WhatsApp

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As part of the parent company Meta, which faced significant backlash for its 2021 rebrand, WhatsApp has remained relatively scandal-free. Thus, it seems the 2023 rebrand was aimed at helping set WhatsApp apart from the rest of Meta’s brands.

The goal was to evolve the brand from a social media tool to a “secure, intimate product designed to give anyone … the ability to connect and enact change.” The team worked to further the notion of “Forward. Together” based on WhatsApp being a trusted platform for safe, reliable global connection.

The color palette aligns with various product touchpoints, and new graphic modules allow for flexible storytelling. They also capture the spirit of WhatsApp by visually showcasing how back and forth communication looks.

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Since WhatsApp has nearly three billion global active users, the rebrand created a unified look that would resonate with people everywhere, regardless of age, region, literacy, or bandwidth.

It successfully established itself as a communication tool while prioritizing brand recognition with an unchanged logo and commitment to the brand’s iconic green color.

Bad Rebranding Examples

1. Comcast

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Comcast has been known to have the most hated customer service in the United States. So, the company changed its name and rebranded its logo to Xfinity. However, the company didn't change its history of bad practices.

While the company could have worked on improving customer support, they spent money on a cosmetic upgrade, which didn't help them earn back the trust of their customers. Superficial updates like a name and logo change can’t help a company unless followed by brand identity and reputation changes.

Beyond this, the name change itself is perplexing and, frankly, a waste of money and time. Many customers were confused about whether Comcast and Xfinity were the same thing, or if one owned the other. This is the exact fear in an abrupt brand name change — causing audience confusion or ridicule which can lead to a loss in current and potential customers.

2. Gap

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Remember that list of reasons to and not to rebrand above? Gap made the mistake of rebranding for seemingly no reason. The company changed its logo and caused outrage among its customers. Just six days later, the company returned to its original logo.

The new logo didn't communicate anything new about the brand and took the personality out of Gap’s logo. Additionally, customers had an emotional bond with the logo, and changing it for no reason caused upset customers.

Rather than immediately coming clean, Gap tried to justify the new logo as a deliberate move to crowdsource new ideas for a logo. As this was met with even more criticism, the brand quickly reinstated its original logo and finally acknowledged its error.

Overall, the urge to quickly modernize a logo has been seen as a panic strategy, rather than one rooted in a true desire to shift a brand’s positioning or perception. If there’s nothing to back up a move this big (and expensive), it is more than likely to receive negative backlash.

3. Weight Watchers

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Weight Watchers changed its name and logo to shift its focus from weight loss and dieting to wellness. However, the new name WW left consumers confused. People didn’t know what it stood for, and it erased brand recognition.

The rebrand was also handled rather abruptly. There wasn’t enough lead time to prepare consumers for the name and strategy change. To add to it, the "Wellness that Works” slogan didn’t inform consumers of what was going to change about the brand.

While the reasoning behind the rebrand was positive, the follow-through left people wanting more. Weight Watchers should have better explained why it was making this shift and how it would handle this change — preferably with new product or service offerings.

Are you ready to rebrand?

From the examples shared above, it’s clear that the most successful rebrands were ones that were centered around customers in some way.

Whether it was LG aligning with the interests of younger consumers or Jell-O returning to its playful roots, these brands made necessary changes to restate their presence in either the same or a new market.

The important thing to keep in mind if your business is ready to tackle a rebrand is that clear intentions and brand consistency are key. This post taught me that you need legitimate reasons for seeing a rebrand through.

But you also need to be able to handle the time and budget it will take to make all the changes and launch a marketing campaign to reveal the rebrand to your audience.

When you’re ready to make these changes, make them count.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Almost every marketing prediction, resource, or how-to guide includes the same advice: video needs to be part of your strategy. But what type of video marketing is most important right now?

From super-short (micro) video clips, to live video on social media, to full-production ads and stories, we’re going to look at some of the top video marketing trends for the year and how you can incorporate them into your design and marketing plans.

And here’s why it matters, U.S. adults spent 149 minutes per day watching digital video in 2021 and that number is only expected to rise.

Let’s dive in, and embrace video as the new marketing channel you need to get right!

1. AI-Assisted Videos

The entire marketing industry was revolutionized within a few months with the rise of AI-powered tools. A video production that took days or weeks to complete now only takes a few hours. A video that required a thousand-dollar budget now only requires a subscription to a couple of AI tools.

The entire process of creating videos can now be done with the help of AI. From creating the script with ChatGPT to generating voiceovers, stock videos, music, images, and even editing can be done with AI.

Some aspects of this process are not perfect. For example, generating stock videos still needs a little bit of improvement. But you won’t have to wait too long. Even Adobe is working on its next-gen generative AI that supports creating entire videos with text prompts, which will be available this year.

With the help of AI tools, every marketer will be capable of taking on bigger projects and be more efficient than ever before. It will surely have a big impact on the video marketing industry in 2024.

2. Branded Video Podcasts

Podcasts have been growing in popularity over the years very slowly and today they are one of the most effective mediums of marketing and promotions. As a result, they soon transitioned from audio-only medium to video format, especially with Spotify and YouTube introducing support for video podcasts.

Brands are now taking advantage of this new video marketing format by producing their own branded video podcasts. Wix, Shopify, and Microsoft Xbox are among the many brands that now have active podcasts to talk about their products, services, and success stories.

These long-form video podcasts are more than just about promotions. They are also about sharing deep and meaningful conversations with the people in charge of the company and giving the audience insights into what goes behind the scenes in an entertaining way.

3. Podcast Clips

A side benefit of producing a video podcast is how you can repurpose it to create content for other platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Some of the most popular and successful types of content on these platforms have been short clips taken from podcast interviews as they make people stop and listen to tips and advice from influential people.

If you look closer, you’ll notice that every podcast channel now has a separate clips channel where they share short-form clips from their podcast episodes in the form of TikToks, Instagram stories, or YouTube shorts. This offers a simple, low-effort way to reach audiences on different platforms while also boosting engagement.

4. Event Livestreams

For a long time, annual conferences, product reveals, and special events from big companies were limited to the press. If we wanted to know what the new iPhone looked like or what kind of new features we could expect to see in the new Photoshop update, we had to wait until a press outlet published a story about it. But not anymore.

Event live streams were popularized by Apple a few years ago. Their over-the-stop and engaging style of live-streaming events were watched by millions of people around the world. Many other companies followed this strategy to livestream their own events online for everyone to see.

Now, even small startups and brands host special events to announce their latest products and updates. This has proven to be an effective approach to reach a wider audience across different platforms.

5. Personal Interviews and Tours

Exclusive office tours and behind-the-scenes videos are nothing new. Many big corporations have been doing it for years. Recently we saw a new trend in this marketing strategy where key employees and CEOs give more meaningful interviews and tours of their personal lives.

Mark Zuckerberg gave a very personal interview where he not only shared insights into his day-to-day life and his newfound hobbies but also detailed his plans for future products. IBM also offered influencers a tour of its innovative quantum computer. Elon Musk continued to provide tours of SpaceX to content creators. And it looks like more brands and companies are starting to follow this trend, now more than ever.

6. Daily Life Vlogs

Encouraging employees to share their daily life around the office environment is another effective video marketing strategy that promotes brands in a subtly indirect but more meaningful way.

Typing “day in my life” into the search bar on any video-based social media platform will show you thousands of videos created by employees of various types of companies. While most of these videos aren’t produced by brands, giving employees the freedom to create these videos helps promote brands and their work culture to the world.

This style of indirect marketing videos is much more effective at connecting with an audience than even Superbowl ads. As they help build trust, loyalty, and confidence on a personal level.

7. Edgy Brand Videos

Videos revealing the deepest secrets of brands and their marketing strategies are one of the most refreshingly unique video marketing trends we’ve been seeing over the past few months.

Popularized by independent and smaller startups, like Nothing, these edgy videos skip the traditional formats of “official” and “professional” video content to build trust and connect with audiences in a creative way.

One of the videos made by Nothing, the UK-based smartphone maker, revealed how they tricked the media to reveal their latest product by pretending to leak information. Their YouTube channel has many other videos challenging the practices used by competitors and comparing products as well.

8. Short Film Commercials

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Many brands have been making adverts disguised as short films. For a long time, these were only made by big corporations and brands such as BMW, Marriot, Coca-Cola, and Porsche. Today, it’s much easier and cheaper to develop such short film commercials.

Brands are now commissioning influencers and content creators to make long-form adverts disguised as short film-style videos. These influencers create interesting, engaging, and entertaining videos that seamlessly integrate products and brands within the story.

Rather than buying ad spots in YouTube videos or blatantly sponsoring TikTok videos, funding a short film-style video makes sense for a brand to promote products in a more natural and seamless way, while also supporting content creators at the same time.

9. Seamless Loop

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Contrary to popular belief, TikTok and YouTube shorts aren’t always about recreating awkward dances and reacting to funny videos. Content creators are now much smarter and more creative when it comes to making more entertaining videos.

One of the popular trends on these short video platforms is the seamless looping video. These videos are brilliantly designed to make the clip playable endlessly, over and over again. And they are quite mesmerizing to watch.

A few brands have been utilizing this trend to their advantage by making seamless loop videos that have users staring at the screen for a long time. And we will likely see more marketers incorporating this strategy into their video marketing campaigns this year.

10. Behind-the-scenes videos

The behind-the-scenes videos are one of the tried and true methods of marketing and promoting a brand. However, most marketers aren’t taking advantage of this video marketing method.

Giving your audience and customers a behind-the-scenes look at a brand and how it operates is an effective way of building trust, loyalty, and transparency. Many big brands have done this in the past. However, that old approach no longer interests the younger audiences.

Now, you have to be more creative and engaging when creating quick behind-the-scenes videos for platforms like TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Instagram Reels. There’s plenty of opportunity here for marketers to capitalize on.

11. Influencer Explainer Videos

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We went through a series of trends related to explainer videos in the past, from whiteboard explainers to animation explainers, motion graphics explainers, and more. The latest trend, however, may not surprise you at all.

The newest trend in explainer videos is influencer explainers. These videos involve getting influencers to create more in-depth explainer videos that dive deep into a product and its features.

These are not product reviews or feature overviews. These explainers are more focused and detailed, similar to online courses and tutorials. Influencers such as Thomas Frank does these types of videos quite brilliantly. Some of his videos are an hour long and yet they get millions of views.

It’s an effective video marketing strategy for two reasons: They don’t push a product forcefully, instead, they promote how to use it. The second benefit is these videos are more authentic than paid reviews or adverts.

12. “Shorts”

YouTube Shorts launched in late 2020 and has been steadily growing in popularity. It’s the vertical format, short form answer to video with a style that’s a lot like TikTok or Instagram Reels.

Shorts have more than 5 trillion views. So, it’s pretty obvious that this style is trending.

These videos are only a few seconds and tell a quick story. Much of the content is user generated but it has some value for marketing as well. Common video topics include pranks, silly animals, and how-tos. The latter might be the most useful for video marketing.

13. Trending Audio

Another video marketing trend that’s been fueled by TikTok and Instagram is trending audio clips on videos. These sound clips might include popular songs, voiceovers, or other sound effects that the video tries to match.

These videos can get a lot of play and may also trend with other elements such as hashtags.

For video marketing purposes, trending sound can be a quick way to hop on a trend and generate engagement, but you will have a very limited time window to act and get your video posted before the trend fades again.

14. Sequential Storytelling

YouTube, a Google company, has put a lot of time and effort into what makes great video content. Their research shows that videos with sequential storytelling – something with a beginning, middle, and end – perform better and create more effective ads.

It’s not that surprising when you think about it. With the rise of streaming television and YouTube as an entertainment platform where users watch more and longer-form videos, the narrative format is more important than ever.

This is a trend that works for YouTube and almost anywhere else you plan to use video content. It works for short and long videos as well. The common denominator is that you just have to remember to tell a story that will resonate with audiences.

From YouTube:

“Video ad sequencing updates the traditional model, allowing you to serve up a planned sequence of ads that tell a story to customers across their purchase journey. New technology makes sequencing manageable and offers gains for marketers. It’s proven to be more memorable than the 30-second ad spot.”

So what does this mean? You can tell a single story across multiple videos, picking up where you left off in one and starting again in another. Keep building the video story over time.

15. User-Generated Video

User-generated video has long been popular with social media but it is everywhere you look. Even video that’s not user-generated often has that authentic look to it.

Think about many of the videos you’ve watched recently – from dances on TikTok to commercials – almost every other video looks like something someone did on the fly. There’s less perceived production and more of a look-at-what-I-just-made feel to it.

Even one of the most famous “user-generated” movies is making a comeback with a Blair Witch sequel (Escape Blair Witch) in late 2021.

16. Interactive Video

Interactive video comes in a lot of forms. It could be virtual reality or a game or accompanying elements, links, or options on a website or with a shared post.

One thing is trending though – you have to give users something to do once they’ve watched the video. Continue the engagement. Don’t let it stop with a view. Users who stick with you and watch a video are already engaged with your brand and content and are even more likely to continue that engagement. Keep the connection with an interactive opportunity.

The key to making interactivity work is to ensure that it aligns with the video itself. The link or next action should be intuitive and interesting.

Take note of how Maybelline, above, layers video behind a box that includes a call to action. This simple layering of elements can help keep users engaging with content longer thanks to a video hook. When you think of videos and interactivity, consider ways outside of AR and VR to implement them.

17. TikTok Style

If you have scrolled any social media feed, almost every video is using the fun, fast, energetic style made popular on TikTok. These short videos explain or tell about one thing with crazy dance moves, funny jingles, and stunts or pranks.

This silly and fun style is carrying over into marketing as well. (The Washington Post has a popular TikTok account that “sells” the news in this format.)

The trick to this video style is a marriage of information and entertainment. And it’s harder than it looks. To make the most of it for true marketing purposes, you should plan to storyboard ideas first.

18. Longer-Format Video

Some videos seem to be getting shorter and shorter, but longer format videos are on the rise. People are getting more used to watching full-length videos online, from social media clips and interviews that last several minutes to full episodic videos on YouTube.

The trick to longer-format video is that it has to be good. (Think of getting sucked into those recipe demos on Facebook. They might last 2 minutes but you want to see the finished food.)

Did you know that longer videos can actually result in higher engagement rates? A study by Twentythree.net found that videos longer than 15 minutes account for 50 percent of all video engagement, but only 8 percent of content. Think about that for a minute. You can produce fewer, longer videos and get greater results.

Subaru took its popular “Dog Tested” campaign to YouTube, showing outtakes from the ad campaign. The behind-the-scenes video is one minute long and the channel has more than 318,000 subscribers. (Think about it: These are people that looked for a commercial to watch online.)

19. Educational and Training Content

From FAQs to learning how to use a new product to online learning in a university setting, educational and training content is one of the most in-demand types of video content.

According to a report by Wyzowl, 68% of consumers prefer watching videos to learn about new products or services. That is more than reading articles, infographics, ebooks, and manuals, or seeing presentations combined.

If you are struggling with what type of video content to produce, this is the place to start. Create something that helps users better understand who you are, what you do, or your service or product offerings. And share it!

20. More Live “Stories”

Live “stories” aren’t just for Instagram. They are taking over all kinds of video formats in public and more private spaces, such as web chatting or conferences.

In-the-moment video creates an authentic connection with users that they like.

According to Livestream, 80% of audiences said they would rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog post, and 82% preferred live video to social media posts.

So, if you aren’t going live, it might be time to think about it. Just remember to keep the video succinct and to the point and make sure the video and audio quality is good. The No. 1 reason viewers turn away from live video is poor quality.

And if the video includes timeless content, consider flagging or highlighting it so that it can be replayed later.

21. More Personal Video Interactions

You can thank the pandemic for this video marketing trend, but more people are interacting individually or in groups using live video chat.

Zooming has become a verb that refers to this type of video. And it will spill over to person-to-person marketing. From styles and recorded videos that look like video chats to actually scheduling chats for sales purposes, expect a lot more person-to-person interaction using video.

22. Soundless Optimization

Social media has changed the game when it comes to video marketing. A significant number of users are watching without sound.

There are plenty of reasons for this from not wanting co-workers to hear what’s on the screen next to them, to watching a video in public places on phones, to general annoyance at audio. But you need to create video for those who don’t want to listen.

Captioning and on-screen instructions or information are vital to ensure that video content fully reaches the audience. This can impact the way you record video for marketing and how you edit for playback.

The good news is that optimizing for soundless playback can actually help make video content accessible to more people. We’ve got a guide to accessibility for you here, and it includes some tools for captioning video.

23. Less Production

Highly produced video is out – unless you are making a movie – and quick action, blog-style video is in. The rise in video on social media and YouTube has changed the value of production for viewers.

The other reason for this trending video marketing technique? It’s fast, agile, and adaptable.

Rather than sending a simple tweet, people can engage with each other online using video messaging. Think of how many more video requests you are getting, though direct message feeds (such as LinkedIn) to public channels (Facebook and Instagram).

24. Vlogging vs. Blogging

Vlogging on YouTube (and other video sources) is the new blogging. Video diaries, reviews, and tutorials are a great way to help people find your product or service.

Plus, it is a growing marketing segment.

Vlogging is getting more mainstream all the time with tools such as Instagram TV and the do-it-yourself nature of these videos. You don’t have to have high-end equipment to tell a video story online, just a phone, an inexpensive microphone, editing software (or an app), and YouTube.

25. Vertical Video

Some of you are going to cringe: vertical video is here to stay (for a while anyway).

You can thank Instagram Stories and TV for that. But Facebook and YouTube also support vertical video. And think about how you actually hold your phone – it’s vertically.

Square videos are also gaining some popularity, although not to the same degree.

It’s all about where you plan to post and share. Horizontal video is still best for websites being viewed on wide-screen monitors and video ad formats (although some of those are more square). Vertical video is the thing for social media.

26. Super Short Video Ads

What if your video ad finishes playing before the “skip” option pops up? It kind of ensures that all the content will be seen.

Super short (or micro) video ads are catching on.

The challenge is creating something cool enough to click in 6 to 10 seconds. But short-form video ads can tease users just enough to make them want more. Use fast-paced or highly engaging visuals to grab users and lure them to your website with this video marketing trend.

27. Searchable Video

If you are creating video, make sure Google can find it. The search engine giant is crawling video and results will show in search and video search results.

The better information you provide, the better it will look when people find video content from search. Google has plenty of information on how to structure video content to make the most of search.

While this trend has less to do with video content, it has a great impact on your overall marketing efforts. If you are spending the time to create video, take a few extra minutes to make sure it will get seen by as many people as possible.

28. Shoppable Video Content

Videos have slowly been creeping into e-commerce. And not just for online reviewers.

Shoppable videos are short video clips that allow users to click (tap) and buy instantly. They don’t have to leave the video to make the conversion.

You essentially mimic the experience of a website (think about your hero header or key b-roll elements) so shoppers can make a purchase without leaving social media or the website they are on. You are probably seeing these videos all the time — they commonly pop up in between Instagram Stories from people you follow.

Shoppable content is growing. The format is simple: Create a video showcasing a product or service and then allow users to swipe-to-buy using Instagram or Snapchat ads.

29. Less Production

Video marketing trends used to always focus on production and cinematography. Not anymore.

Today’s video marketing is all about creating authentic content that people trust. They should think it is real – overly polished video might not seem as approachable or realistic.

The good news is that this is easier for you. Much of the video content on social media is actually produced on tablets and phones. Plus, you won’t feel bad about using a low-budget option only a handful of times before moving on to something else.

30. Optimize for Different Channels

The type, size, and format of video can impact how engaging it is to different sets of users. The days where you can create one clip and use it everywhere are gone.

Think about it: Sound vs. no sound, horizontal vs. vertical orientation, shoppable link or not, and the list goes on. You need a clip for each specific platform to get the best results possible.

Editing software will be your best friend here because you can take the same basic piece of video and crop, edit, and export by channel. It’s worth the time to get the highest engagement rates possible.

Conclusion

Even if you aren’t a videographer, figuring out how video will incorporate into marketing and design plans is important. It will likely continue to grow as part of your online strategy.

Use video in website designs, in social media, and as stand-alone advertising to engage with users in a way that they find highly engaging.

Fonts with a serene and earthy vibe are an excellent choice for giving a more authentic and grounded look to your typography designs. And that’s exactly the theme of this fonts collection.

In this post, we are showcasing some of the best nature fonts with earthy, rugged, and organic looks. These are must-have fonts for reminding the digital world of the beauty of nature.

When crafting logos, headings, and typography for eco-friendly brands, outdoor-themed businesses, or organic products, your choice of font will go a long way to establishing authority and authenticity.

You’ll find plenty of incredible nature fonts here for all those types of design projects. Be sure to download the free nature fonts as well.

Beauty Nature – Beautiful Script Font

Combined with an intricate design and elegantly flowing letters, this font gives you an opportunity to craft typography designs that stands out from the crowd. It features a collection of leaf-themed swashes that creates a nature-inspired look for your title and heading designs. The font includes regular and italic styles as well as multilingual support.

LUPINES – Cute Handwriting Nature Font

Lupines is a cute handwriting font that features nature-themed thin letters with a narrow design. This font is perfect for designing typography for labels, badges, and flyers related to nature and the environment. It includes a set of foliage, floral, and nature-themed shapes as a bonus in EPS format as well.

Branch Font – Creative Earthy Font

An aptly named font with an earthy and natural vibe. Branch font comes with a set of letters that look like tree branches. It will surely add a more creative and nature-themed look to your typography, especially for floral wedding invitations, greeting cards, and logos.

Zaitun – Bold Nature-Themed Font

This font features a very natural-looking letter design with a marker pen-style feel. The thick letters with uneven strokes give a very unique look to each of its characters as well. The font is an ideal choice for crafting logos and branding designs for nature-themed businesses and products.

Bonfire – Handcrafted Earthy Font

Bonfire is a handcrafted font featuring a rough textured design that gives off a very earthy vibe. It will go along perfectly with title and heading designs related to nature, outdoor, and adventure-themed projects. The font comes in regular and rough styles and it only includes all-caps letters.

Botanical – Free Hand Drawn Nature Font

You can download this font for free to craft beautiful nature-themed text. It features a botanical-inspired design with hand-lettered characters. It has serif all-caps letters with a set of alternates. The font is free for personal use only.

Tropical Jungle – Nature Font

Unleash your wild side with the Tropical Jungle nature-themed font. Bold and playful, this font is inspired by nature’s splendor in South America, Africa, and Asia’s tropical rainforests. From monkeys swinging through the trees to butterflies dancing between flowers, each of the 500+ glyphs encapsulates these joyful scenes.

Agetya – Decorative Serif Font

Agetya is a nature-themed typeface perfect for creating standout quotes, logos, and magazine headers, among other items. Delivered in TTF, OTF and WOFF formats, it offers an array of uppercase and lowercase options, ligatures, alternates, numerals, punctuations, and two versions: regular and outline.

Natures – Decorative Earthy Font

This is a unique display font adorned with floral motifs. Featuring standard characters and punctuation, this font bestows an organic, artistic look to your typography. Perfect for nature-themed designs, wedding invitations, or eco-friendly products, it adds a touch of natural beauty to your work.

Branchy – Creative Nature Font

Branchy is a marvelously unique, nature-inspired display font featuring handcrafted letters entwined with branch-like elements. This bold, fun font adds an elegant, distinctive flair to projects from branding to posters, packaging to artistic designs. The decorative nature makes it ideal for headlines.

Balmy Morning – Earthy Font Duo

Balmy Morning is a delightful, earth-toned script font featuring delicate floral adornments within each character. Ideal for invitations, greeting cards, and brand logos, this font offers whimsical elegance to your designs. It includes Balmy Morning Color in SVG-OTF format, Block, and Script in OTF format.

Naturel – Handwritten Nature Font

Naturel is a captivating, handwritten display font inspired by the beauty of nature. With its smooth, flowing characters and handcrafted appeal, it perfectly complements eco-friendly branding, rustic invitations, and artisanal packaging. Its versatility suits various platforms from digital to print, effortlessly attracting attention to your designs.

Da Bamboo – Modern Decorative Font

Da Bamboo is a modern decorative font that perfectly blends nature-inspired aesthetics with a contemporary twist. Ideal for a range of uses, from branding and packaging to posters and invitations, its sophisticated and unique characters add an organic touch to any design project.

Quokky – Condensed Fun Nature Font

Quokky is a playful nature-themed font. It’s perfect for many creative uses, from flyers to quotes, posters, packaging, and more. Its features include uppercase, numbers, punctuation, multiple language support, private use area encoding, and OpenType format.

World Madly – Nature Themed Font

World Madly is a uniquely delightful and quirky nature-themed typeface. It exhibits a playful charm with its distinctive rounded and condensed letters, and boasts ten varied environmentally-inspired alternatives. Ideal for designs themed around Earth Day, green initiatives, or simply expressing your love for the planet, this font can add a touch of eco-consciousness to your projects.

Earthbound – Organic Nature Font

Earthbound is a rustic and inviting font that channels the quiet beauty of rural landscapes. Evoking the idyllic charm of country life, this typeface imbues your projects with authenticity, warmth, and simplicity. With its handcrafted lettering and gentle rounded edges, Earthbound is ideal for crafting signs, packaging, or invites with a nostalgic and earthy appeal.

Restless – Free Brush Script Nature Font

This font comes with a very natural-flowing brush lettering design. It takes inspiration from nature-themed elements and has both uppercase and lowercase letters. This font is also free for personal use.

Nature Force – Calligraphy Nature Font

The earthy nature of this font will add an extra natural look to your calligraphy-style typography designs. It’s especially perfect for greeting cards and smooth poster titles, magazine covers, and website headers. The font includes lots of ligatures and multilingual support as well.

The Virnature – Nature Script Font

When you combine nature with elegance, you will get a result that looks just like this. Virnature is a classy script font that features a beautifully flowing letter design. This font has an ideal look for crafting nature-inspired logos, titles, and headings for wine bottle labels, greeting cards, posters, and much more.

Earth Tone – Organic Earthy Font Family

This is a family of sans-serif fonts that feature beautiful organic letter designs. It has fonts with light, regular, and bold weights with natural hand-crafted look and feel. These fonts are perfect for everything from eco-friendly brand designs to custom t-shirts, quotes, and product labels.

Secret Nature – Creative Nature Font

A very creative script font featuring floral-themed decorative elements. This font is a perfect fit for designing beautiful titles for greeting cards and wedding invitations. The font includes uppercase and lowercase characters with decorative leaves illustrations.

EARTH – Nature-Themed Display Font

Another nature-inspired display font with stylish decorative elements. This font is most suitable for crafting typography for movie posters, book covers, and various other entertaining designs. It’s especially great for enchanting and fantasy-themed projects.

Monique Script – Free Nature Font

This beautiful script font also has a stylish letter design with a simple and natural vibe. It’s ideal for crafting signature-style logos for brands as well as for business cards. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Adhellia – Free Script Earthy Font

Adhellia is a script font with a casual look and feel. It includes a set of bold characters with an earthy vibe. The font is especially suitable for modern logos and packaging designs. You can use it freely with personal designs.

The Moot Jungle – Nature Font

With a touch of authenticity and wild variations in letter design, this font will help you craft unique and attractive typography designs for various types of projects. It includes lots of fantastic alternate characters for adding that extra special decorative elements to your logo, title, and heading designs. The font includes over 700 glyphs.

Pine Jungle – Decorative Nature Font

Pine Jungle is a creative display font that features a set of characters that’s been crafted to depict a pine forest. Each letter in this font features pine trees with a starry sky. You craft stylish t-shirts, book covers, and posters with this font. It includes all-caps letters only.

Black Ground – Rustic Earthy Font

This font features a rustic design with a strong rugged letter design. Using the font, you can design bold titles and headings with a masculine look. Especially for men’s fashion brands, luxury watches, high-end lifestyle products, and more. The font includes uppercase and lowercase characters with alternates.

Earth Elements – Handwritten Nature Font

A unique nature-themed font with a rough letter design. This font features a creative handwritten look with textured letters. It’s been designed by hand with real oil crayons. The font comes with a lot of additional elements, including ligatures, hand-painted backgrounds, textures, and more.

Pretty Garden – Unique Earthy Font

Pretty Garden is a pretty font indeed. It has a beautiful earthy design featuring handcrafted letters. It will instantly add a personal touch to your text while making them look natural and creative. There are 3 styles of fonts included in this pack, script, sans, and serif fonts. As a bonus, there’s a doodle dingbat font as well.

Nature – Free Script Nature Font

This free nature font is perfect for adding a natural look to your graphic designs. It has script letters with swirly strokes and swashes. It goes perfectly with product tags and greeting cards. The font is free to use with personal projects.

Sunflower Signature – Free Earthy Font

This font takes inspiration from sunflowers and offers you a gorgeous-looking set of letters to craft beautiful and romantic titles. It’s a signature-style font with earthy vibes that includes uppercase and lowercase characters. It’s free for personal use.

Bristol – Creative Nature Font

Bristol is a creative and decorative nature font inspired by the city in the UK. It features a set of unique carved letters with floral-themed elements. The font is a perfect choice for branding designs related to healthy foods, natural products, outdoor brands, and more.

Arthicoke – Decorative Nature-Themed Font

Arthicoke is another decorative font that comes with a nature-inspired letter design. This font has beautiful swirly edges that add a playful and casual feel to every letter. It’s ideal for product labels, packaging designs, and overall adding a fresh vibe to your graphic designs. The font includes ligatures and alternates too.

Refresh Screen – Nature-Themed Font Family

A family of brush fonts featuring hand-crafted letter designs. The condensed and narrow design of this font will allow you to craft trendy titles and headings for posters, banners, flyers, and more. The font comes in 5 styles that pair quite well together.

Verdant – Botanical Nature Earthy Font

This font has the perfect look for crafting logos, badges, and label designs for brands related to beauty products. The font features letters with beautiful botanical and floral elements. It’s ideal for nature-themed luxury branding designs as well.

Bottania – Handwritten Nature Font

Bottania is a handwritten font featuring thick letters with a nature-themed design. The font has charming and uneven strokes across all of its letters that add an authentic look to typography designs. It includes both uppercase and lowercase letters.

Nature Quest – Playful Nature Font

This font is made for all your fun, creative, and playful typography designs. It has a set of cartoon-style letters with a nature-inspired design. It’s especially great for crafting fun titles for designs related to kids and school projects.

You can find more great fonts for your inspiration in our best business and corporate fonts collection.

Being a marketer is hard — I feel it’s always been this way, but now the pressure to deliver results is even higher. Companies are cutting their marketing budgets and watching every penny before deciding what to spend it on.

Fortunately, we now have access to many tools, including AI, which can make our work a little bit easier.

While some of these tools can take over routine, time-consuming tasks, others provide valuable insights that can aid us in decision-making. I think that AI is a real lifesaver when it comes to conversion rate optimization.

In this post, I am going to explain why you should give it a shot, as well as cover the main use cases.

Table of Contents

• Why use AI for conversion rate optimization?
• How to Apply AI to Your CRO Strategy

Why use AI for conversion rate optimization?

Understand customers better — and faster.

If you’ve ever had to sift through hundreds of CRM records to identify common customer behaviors, then you know how much time (and brainpower!) it requires to reach conclusions.

Luckily, anyone working on CRO can now use AI to analyze customer data rapidly and at scale. I’d even go so far as to say that this AI application is quickly becoming the new standard for data-driven teams.

A survey run as part of HubSpot’s and The Next Wave’s 2024 “How AI Is Driving Personal Productivity and Business Growth” report found that 70% of marketers already use AI to conduct more data analyses, while 64% use it specifically to understand their customers’ profiles better.

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Naturally, I’m not suggesting that AI replaces all the customer data analysis work — you still need a CRO specialist. Still, equipping them with AI-powered tools lets them focus their manual efforts on areas that truly need human expertise.

React to “anomalies” quicker.

People are great at spotting patterns — including those in data. But, if given a vast database, they can’t go through it as quickly as AI can.

When it comes to subtle yet potentially significant trends in customer behavior, it can take a human days, if not weeks, to spot them. And, by the time they do, they could already be causing massive problems, like a drop in conversion rates from one channel or a lower average order value (AOV).

AI tools can analyze your leads and sales data round the clock, seven days a week. If they spot any disturbing, recurring user behavior, it can send you an alert straight away. This way, you can take action ASAP to address the problem.

This shows that people and AI can work in synergy — AI’s efficiency allows for real-time insights, while humans can work on adopting new business strategies.

Focus more on critical tasks.

Marketers are busy, with dozens of tasks they need to handle at once and a few meetings in between.

No wonder that as many as 73% of those surveyed by HubSpot admit to using AI for conversion rate optimization as it gives them more time to focus on creative work, which demands human attention.

By “outsourcing” routine tasks to AI, marketers can get a few extra hours in their workday and dedicate them to more strategic work, like brand positioning or market research.

Optimizes your conversion points — even if you lack real-life data.

I believe that this AI CRO mechanism doesn’t receive the recognition it deserves.

You can have AI analyze your assets, like landing pages or emails, even before you launch a product or campaign.

A great example is one of VWO’s free tools, i.e., their AI-powered heatmap generator. While it doesn’t cross-reference your customer data, it tells you if there are any usability issues that could block leads from converting.

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Gavin Yi, Founder & CEO of Yijin Hardware, told me that he used AI-driven heatmap analyses to check if their mobile app’s existing design promotes conversions.

Yi told me he found out that certain CTAs and buttons were placed too low on the layout.

This meant lost opportunities because users wouldn’t scroll far enough to see them.

“By using the insights from the heatmap, I successfully repositioned crucial elements higher up on the mobile layout, resulting in an instant spike of conversions from this platform,” he says.

Yi also adds that this AI CRO strategy showed the company how they can adjust the user interface for those accessing their product on various devices.

How to Apply AI to Your CRO Strategy

1. Collect data and segment your customers.

Before you start with AI conversion rate optimization, you need to figure out the basics, i.e. gather the data and split your customers into segments. The good news is, AI can help you with the latter.

It can analyze data from various sources like your website, app, social media, etc., and turn it into insights that will aid you in categorizing users into specific groups.

You can then start personalizing your marketing efforts, which will hopefully improve your conversion rate.

This kind of approach works nicely for InboxAlly. Their Head of Partnership, John Simmons, told me they use AI to understand each customer’s unique needs and preferences. By doing so, they can deliver hyper-relevant experiences that speak to them directly, which has proven game-changing when it comes to CRO.

“When we implemented AI-powered personalization on our product pages, we saw a 12% increase in add-to-cart rates. The system was able to discern each visitor‘s preferences based on their on-site behavior and serve them the optimal product imagery, content, promotions, etc., to compel a purchase.

We’ve since rolled this out across our site, leading to over $2 million in incremental revenue annually,” says Simmons.

What’s the secret to making AI work for CRO? Simmons suggests starting small and identifying a few quick-win use cases where AI can enhance relevance.

“As you demonstrate success, you can expand into more advanced applications. The key is pairing the technology with clear business objectives. Used strategically, AI can have an outsized impact on your CRO and customer experience efforts,” he adds.

2. Analyze customer data to personalize their experience.

These days customers expect personalization; it’s been the norm for quite some time. However, AI brings personalization to a whole new level.

It can analyze browsing patterns and provide customized website content, product recommendations, and offers in real-time.

By serving content that is relevant to the target audience, brands can not only enhance engagement but also improve conversion rates.

Imagine you run an ecommerce store selling electronics. One of the visitors searches for eco-friendly products and buys a smart thermostat.

The next time they visit your site, you could add a banner featuring the latest solar-powered gadgets or provide recommendations for energy-efficient home appliances to improve your chances of conversion.

3. Automate A/B tests in your customer acquisition funnel.

If there is one thing I’ve learned during my marketing career, it is that effective marketing is all about testing. If you want to boost your conversion rate, you need to befriend A/B testing. Luckily, you can now fully automate it with AI, which significantly speeds up the process.

Rather than manually creating and monitoring split tests, you can turn to tools like Optimizely or VWO to run multivariate tests. You can then analyze tons of variations to pick the one that drives the most conversions.

AI is really incredible at analyzing data in real-time. It can literally detect minute differences in user interaction patterns and make instant adjustments — something that a human could never do.

It can help you optimize your landing pages, CTAs, and user flows.

4. Use predictive analytics tools.

These AI conversion rate optimization tools let you forecast user behavior — or even market trends. As a result, you have more time to ideate how you can optimize your strategy.

Think, predicting what types of products will be a “hit” this upcoming Christmas season and stocking up in advance. Or knowing with high probability that a client will need to upgrade to a higher plan soon, and sending them a discount offer.

Mary Zhang, Head of Marketing and Finance at Dgtl Infra, told me that her company developed an entire AI-powered client success prediction model to optimize its customer acquisition funnel.

The algorithm analyzes three types of data, i.e., historical records, user engagement patterns, and industry trends to predict which leads are most likely to become successful long-term clients.

“This model goes beyond traditional lead scoring, because we focus on forecasting potential client lifetime value and alignment with our services,” Zhang says. “The results have been remarkable: Our sales team's efficiency increased by 35%, client retention rate improved by 28%, and the average deal size grew by 40%.”

5. Visualize your customers’ journey.

Customer journeys can be complicated. And it’s hard to spot a bottleneck without visualizing every single step that a user must take. So, why not use AI to analyze data from each channel to identify places where users drop or are less engaged? This is what Securiti.ai did.

Adil Advani, their Associate Product Owner, told me they decided to dig into the data to fine-tune their customer journey. They were aware that every click and every scroll tells a story, so they started analyzing behavior patterns on their site.

“We realized our potential customers were getting stuck at the same points, so we reshaped our site's navigation to make it more intuitive. By simplifying the journey from the homepage to the contact form, we saw our bounce rate drop by 18%, and our leads shoot up by 23%,” says Advani.

The team didn’t stop there; they kept testing different layouts and messages on their main landing pages, which boosted their conversions by another 15%. “It's all about making the experience as smooth as possible for our visitors, and the numbers really do speak for themselves,” adds Advani.

6. Consider implementing dynamic pricing and limited-time offers.

I already briefly mentioned this method when discussing prediction models, but it’s a topic that calls for a separate point.

I worked at a few startups in the mid-2010s, and I recall that their pricing schemes were almost “set in stone.” One of the companies had a “custom” pricing option with a CTA to reach out, which hinted at the company’s openness to tailor the offer or discuss discounts.

Still, it doesn't compare to the level of proactivity AI enables when it comes to negotiating prices.

Depending on your company, you can either create rules for all customers, or specific segments, as to when the AI should send over a discount or display a limited time promo. Recently, my favorite example of this AI conversion rate optimization strategy (albeit, from the perspective of a buyer) comes from Etsy.

I’ve picked up sewing as a hobby and started purchasing printable patterns through the platform. As you’d expect, a lot of sellers use upselling techniques like “Buy 2, Get 1 free.” However, the platform also offers them intelligent conversion optimization methods.

After I added some patterns to the cart and then went on with my day without finalizing the offer, I received an automatic, time-sensitive discount code from the seller.

This type of AI can act on your behalf, with agreed minimal prices or maximum discount rules, and react to even the subtlest user activity — like clicking on an image or watching a video.

I love how it helps sellers offer the perfect deal at the right moment, without any direct human oversight.

7. AI-powered email campaigns.

Email is still one of the most effective communication channels. And I believe that creating an attention grabbing email is both art and science.

If this is something that you struggle with, then I highly recommend using AI to not only personalize your content and optimize your send times, but also segment your users more accurately.

AI tools can help you decide on the best subject line, format, and content to maximize both your open and click-through rates. Journaling Supplies use AI-driven customer segmentation.

Their manager, Karen Chen, says that “by analyzing user behavior and demographics, we’re able to spot those who are more likely to convert. For instance, we implemented AI to segment our email marketing campaigns based on user engagement.”

What was the result?

After personalizing content for these segments, they saw a 25% increase in click-through rates and a 15% boost in conversions over three months.

This targeted approach allowed the brand to deliver relevant content, significantly enhancing user engagement and, ultimately, driving sales.

8. Use a co-pilot with many AI capabilities.

After reading the previous sections, you might be thinking that you’ll need to subscribe to a whole ton of different AI software.

The good news is you don’t have to — instead, I suggest that you try out a co-pilot, which will serve as your all-in-one AI CRO tool.

For example, HubSpot’s Breeze is a platform that has everything you need to boost your customer-facing teams’ productivity and scale growth. Among others, you can use it to automate repetitive tasks, pull real-time insights on buyer intent, and run better conversion rate prognostics.

These are just a few of the possible use cases. Take a look at the different ways HubSpot users apply Breeze in their CRO strategy.

AI gives your CRO specialists what they need to grow revenue.

There are so many areas where AI can support your customer-facing teams — from running large-scale data analyses at a fraction of the time needed for human work to predicting demand and optimizing your email campaigns and landing pages.

It’s the resourceful assistant whom I think most of us need, particularly if we want to stand out from our competitors.

Once you decide which tasks should be completed manually and which ones can be automated, there will be no looking back — you’ll love how much CRO creativity you’ll unlock.

If you’ve followed the news or opened X this fall, you’ve probably seen Polymarket.

It’s that prediction market for politics (and more) that’s been all over the place lately. I’ve been following their rise for the past year from a no-name niche betting market to over $1B assets under management — with the CEO on the cover of Forbes and presidential candidates mentioning them in speeches.

Throughout the rise of Polymarket, I’ve become friendly with a few members of their growth marketing team here in NYC. And the one thing I keep asking them again and again is: “HOW ARE YOU GUYS EVERYWHERE????”

Here’s what I’ve learned.

A Breakdown of Polymarket’s Marketing Strategy

Screenshot Marketing

The first time most people come into contact with Polymarket isn’t their site or app.

It’s usually a screenshot posted on social media or across the news. And if you look at any screenshot of Polymarket, you’ll see their name and logo.

This placement was not an accident, I promise you that.

During talks with their team, I learned there was quite a lot of A/B testing done to make sure their logo would appear on almost any possible screenshot.

Anytime a screenshot is shared across the internet, from X to LinkedIn to TikTok to Reddit, Polymarket is right there.

The logo and name are colored light gray so it’s not too in-your-face to the point where you’d want to crop it out. They’re smarter than that. Instead, the logo is just subtle enough to be seen, but it doesn’t take anything away from the image.

This is a genius strategy built for the age of social media that couldn’t have existed a couple decades ago.

In fact, there’s even a term for this style of marketing: it’s called screenshot marketing, and it involves using screenshots to make your marketing feel more natural.

It’s like sending screenshots of someone’s messages to a group chat. It’s juicy. Intriguing. And in the age of AI pictures and Photoshop, screenshots are unfiltered and raw.

Polymarket lives and breathes off screenshot marketing. $23B cybersecurity brands like Wiz do it. And I’ve used screenshots to go viral dozens of times.

In marketing, you always want to be as authentic as possible — and there’s nothing more authentic than sharing a basic unedited screenshot with your following like you would with your friends in a group chat.

Founder-Led Marketing

I’m a firm believer every startup should be doing founder-led marketing.

Whether you’re Elon or an 18-year-old AI founder, you should always be the biggest voice and proponent of your company. If the founder isn’t yapping about the company, then no one else will be.

The founder of Polymarket, Shayne Coplan, definitely believes in the importance of founder-led marketing.

He’s built his audience up to 26,000+ followers on X, and he keeps his content to a strict diet of 100% Polymarket-related tweets and retweets.

When Polymarket hit #1 on the App Store this October, Shane tweeted a simple screenshot (*cough cough* screenshot marketing) showing their success.

Because there’s been a lot of questions and attention on Polymarket betting versus regular polling, Shayne wrote a tweet to address this concern.

When Shayne spoke with famous political poller Nate Silver, he tweeted out the podcast to share this perspective on building Polymarket.

Shayne is locked in!

All Polymarket 24/7. No selfies with his dog. No pictures of his Lamborghinis. Not even any pictures of his team. All business all the time. And that business is making billions on the internet. You gotta respect it.

Social Proof

Typically when we think of social proof, we think of customer reviews.

But for Polymarket, it’s a little bit different.

Rather than customers “reviewing” Polymarket, their social proof strategy revolves around two things:

1. Amplifying thought leaders who are talking about Polymarket.
2. Sharing new big bets on Polymarket (thus normalizing the act of betting on Polymarket).

When other business leaders reference Polymarket, they repost it and hype it up.

When Polymarket hit #1 on the app store, Shayne tweeted a picture of it. When a presidential candidate talked about Polymarket during a speech, they tweeted about it.

But talk is cheap.

What’s more important for them is showing that people are actively putting money into the platform. They frequently tweet out screenshots of big bets and share updates around them.

(There we go with the screenshot marketing again!)

Capitalizing on ‘The Current Thing’

The public’s attention shifts like Charlie Sheen checking in and out of rehab programs. Remember him? Oh yeah, it’s been a while since he was The Current Thing.

See, with the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, there’s always a new current thing. And whatever The Current Thing is, people can’t get enough of it.

Polymarket is built perfectly to capitalize on The Current Thing.

Anytime there’s something happening in the news, Polymarket spins up a betting market for it, which they then make content to promote. It’s the perfect cycle. And during the election season, there’s a new current thing everyday.

Here, you can see their post about the latest swing state odds keeping people up to date with the swing state current thing. When a new big movie is hitting theaters, they’ll spin up a market for that too.

Because The Current Thing is always changing, there’s literally a never-ending flood of good content ideas … which also means a never-ending flood of memes to be made.

Meme Marketing

The Polymarket team are some of the best memelords on the internet.

I originally became friends with the Polymarket growth marketing team because they’re customers of my meme marketing software, Memelord Technologies.

(If you haven’t already read my last HubSpot post on meme marketing, check it out.)

While Polymarket is a serious business with billions of assets under management, they also have a team of silly viral memelords on staff — and even more meme pages and freelancers on a consulting basis.

That’s because when it comes to capitalizing on The Current Thing, memes are the #1 tactic. They’re free, fast to make (and great for time crunch), and by nature, they can easily be shared and go viral.

The tactic that really blew me away though was how their social media intern put Polymarket merchandise on popular memes. It’s literally such a smart hack. You take an easily recognizable meme and put your brand assets on it. Easy.

The coolest part though is that they don’t just use memes for their content. Memes are baked into their product UX and philosophy.

Not only do they post memes, but they spin up silly memey non-serious betting markets about whatever The Current Thing is. Like betting markets on whether presidential candidates will say “skibidi” or “brat” before the election.

These silly betting markets are a perfect recipe for virality. Money + Absurdity = Virality.

How You Can Market Like Polymarket

Obviously, not all of us want to talk about politics in our marketing.

And even if we do, most of us can’t at work.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t incorporate trends and whatever The Current Thing is into our strategies.

Every industry has its own current thing — whether it’s OpenAI’s exodus of employees in the Silicon Valley startup community, the Met Gala in the fashion world, or maybe Black Friday for the e-commerce industry.

Look out for The Current Thing and jump on it as soon as possible. Whether it’s using my daily email of new viral memes, X’s new trend analysis tool, or Hubspot Trends, make sure you’re incorporating new trends into your marketing.

BUT …

... That being said, you can’t just rely on trends.

Even me as the meme marketing guy, I don’t think you can just rely on just memes or capitalizing on The Current Thing for your marketing.

Yes, I wrote a book called Memes Make Millions, but they can only make you millions if you have a good product and message.

This is what Polymarket has done so well.

It’s not just memes and trends and news that is stale 24 hours later.

It’s Shayne clearly explaining why he’s building Polymarket. It’s Shayne going on podcasts with industry leaders like Nate Silver.

It’s the social proof of retweeting people like Elon Musk talking about Polymarket.

It’s the constantly updated screenshots of political markets. It’s the Forbes cover and billions of assets under management.

Polymarket’s marketing perfectly blends capitalizing on The Current Thing and using timeless marketing techniques. It’s truly brilliant to witness.

Watch out folks — I think we’re witnessing the beginnings of a generational company.

HubSpot recently conducted a video marketing survey and found that 73% of respondents agreed that video marketing has been effective in reaching their marketing goals.

However, over a third of respondents (34%) say the most challenging aspect of video marketing is the lack of content ideas.

Fortunately, I‘ve got 15 video content ideas to help you achieve your business goals. But before we get to that, I will share my secret for finding video marketing ideas and what kind of video content is popular among consumers.

Table of Contents

• How do I find video content ideas?
• What video content is most popular?
• 15 Business Video Ideas

How do I find video content ideas?

My method for finding video content ideas is pretty simple. I typically go to YouTube and social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Facebook and follow accounts that are within my niche or similar.

For example, I recently started creating TikToks for a new dance studio in my neighborhood to help attract more students.

To determine the type of video content I should create, I started following other dance studios on TikTok and observing their videos.

I bookmarked the ones that seemed to get the most views and started brainstorming ways to make similar videos for the dance studio. I found that the following videos seemed to do well:

• Videos of dancers doing complicated choreography
• Beginner-friendly breakdowns and tutorials on how to do certain moves
• Information on what exercises can improve the strength and stamina needed to dance

That's the manual and, I guess, “old school” way of finding video content ideas. You can also pair this method with AI by asking tools like ChatGPT to generate video ideas for you within your niche.

I did this for a blog post and YouTube channel, but the same can also be applied to individual videos.

What video content is most popular?

According to Statista (and Statista hasn't let me down yet), the most popular types of videos worldwide are:

• Music videos (48.2%)
• Comedy, meme, or viral videos (35%)
• Video live stream (27.7%)
• Educational videos (26%)
• Tutorial or how-to videos (25.8%)

So, what should your takeaway be? Consider ways to incorporate music, comedy, or trendy memes into your video marketing. Duolingo is a company that does this well.

I often reference its video marketing skills and wonder if the company is sick of me yet.

Whenever there's a viral trend or song, best believe Duolingo will find a way to incorporate it into its TikTok content, and the videos almost always go viral.

You can also opt for how-to tutorials, which Fenty Beauty executes very well on its accounts. Most Fenty Beauty videos will feature a person showing the products they're using and how to apply them to achieve specific looks.

How-to videos are a great way to show the quality of your products and how they work.

If you're looking for inspiration regarding educational videos, Girl With The Dogs is a great account to follow.

Girl with the Dogs is run by pet groomer Vanessa De Prophetis. She details her experience grooming various breeds of dogs and cats via YouTube and TikTok videos.

In each video, she explains her process, shares grooming tips, and provides detailed information about each breed, its temperaments, and grooming needs.

This allows her to establish herself as a trusted expert in her field so future clients know their animals are in good hands.

15 Business Video Ideas

Now, let‘s discuss some business video ideas. Most of the videos I listed below are fairly easy to create, but if you want to generate videos even more easily, check out HubSpot's Clip Creator.

Clip Creator is a free AI-powered video maker thart can convert text into professional videos for your business. All you need to do is desdcribe your video and preferred tone. Click here to learn more.

Okay, I‘m done stalling. Here’s my list.

1. Demonstration Video

As I said earlier, Fenty Beauty has how-to tutorials and demonstration videos down to a science.

Whether it‘s simple 60-second clips of the products being swiped onto a person’s lips or an in-depth long-form video of their founder, Rihanna, using the products to create a red carpet look, Fenty Beauty's demonstration videos tutorials give its audience a detailed look into the function and quality of the products.

2. Customer Testimonials

Do you have customers who have been purchasing your products and services since the beginning of your business? Or naysayers who turned into believers? Feature their testimonials in your next video!

Real customer testimonials and feedback will establish trust with potential clients, so next time a consumer sings your praises, ask them if they're will to go on camera or are comfortable being quoted.

3. User-generated Content

I'm not sure if other marketers share this sentiment, but I see user-generated content (UGC) as another form of customer testimonials.

Think about it: customers sharing videos using your products is almost the sale, if not better, than them going on camera and talking about how your company is.

One of my favorite ads featuring UGC is Ring LLC's commercial, which shows a compilation of videos taken by consumers who use their door cameras.

The video shows everything a Ring camera can capture, from special family moments to heartwarming neighbor interactions to chaotic pet shenanigans to attempted thieves.

Pro tip: Encourage consumers to tag your brand on social media anytime they post a video or other forms of content. Or you can just look up your brand on video platforms like TikTok to see what you can find.

4. Behind-the-Scenes

Do you want to show your audience the care and craftsmanship that goes into making our products? A behind-the-scenes look into products is a great way to go.

I've mentioned them in a few posts, but Gibson is an excellent example of behind-the-scenes video content. Videos like the ones below show the time and quality materials that go into making its iconic guitars.

If your consumers care a lot about craftsmanship, create something similar for your brand.

5. Product Comparison

While I prefer hotels to Airbnbs (I‘m not on vacation to do chores, sorry), I have to hand it to the company’s current video marketing tactic of comparing AIrbnb experiences to hotels.

The video below, though animated, effectively shows that travelers looking for a specific experience are more likely to find it at an Airbnb than they are at a traditional hotel.

6. Trend / Current Event

Yes, I‘m bringing up Duolingo again. How can I not?

The bulk of their TikTok strategy hinges on tapping into the latest trends and discussions on the app. I don’t have to go into too much detail again because I think you get the point by now.

7. Interviews

Crunchyroll is a streaming platform known for its variety of anime programs. For the longest time, Crunchroll's video strategy mostly featured compelling clips from their catalog, which is a great strategy in and of itself.

Lately, however, the platform has branched out into featuring interviews with big names and faces in the anime industry, from musicians to voice actors to directors.

This results in excellent video content that showcases its catalog and leaves audiences with new information about their favorite shows.

8. Offbeat Comedy Videos

As I said, comedy videos are pretty popular among viewers, so don‘t be afraid to inject a little humor into your video content.

I love this TikTok from Scrub Daddy because it’s a perfect combination of funny and current, as we‘re in election season when I’m writing this post.

9. GRWM

I don‘t know why, but I find "Get Ready with Me" videos (often shortened to GRWM) to be mesmerizing. Maybe it’s because they make me feel like I'm hanging out with a friend as we discuss a topic.

My favorite GRWM comes from my colleague Ramona Sukhraj. In the following Instagram Reel, Ramona does her makeup and casually explains how brands can go viral.

10. Announcements

Do you have a highly anticipated announcement to make? Why not share it via video? Let‘s say you’re restocking a beloved product or finally collaborating with an influencer your audience has been raving about.

A fun video is a great way to announce the big news.

It doesn't even have to be complicated. For example, they have been begging for a collaboration between content creator Amelia Dimoldenberg and actor Andrew Garfield ever since they bumped into each other on the red carpet.

The video below announced the collaboration with a simple shot of them saying hi to each other.

11. Follow Me / Walk With Me

Similar to GRWM videos, Follow Me / Walk with Me videos (I don‘t know if there’s a proper name for them) give the vibe that you're engaging in a conversation in a friend while they complete a task.

This video by my fellow HubSpotter, Alana Chinn, is a great example. In it, Alana explains work-from-home statistics while walking her adorable dog.

12. Listicle

Listicle videos can be pretty simple to make. You can opt for a list of reasons people should choose your brand over others, a list of ways to you use your products, or its top features.

13. Unboxing

An unboxing video is when a content creator (typically an influencer) unboxes items they‘ve received from a brand. If there’s an influencer you'd like to work with, consider sending them a PR package for them to unbox on their platform.

14. Live Shopping

We are in the era of live shopping, which has essentially become the new QVC. Live shopping is when a brand or seller live streams showcasing products, and viewers can buy directly from the live stream.

It's most popular on TikTok and a great way to achieve multiple goals at once: boost brand awareness, demonstrate your products or services, and generate direct sales.

15. Person on the Street

A person on the street video consists of someone out on the street or at an event interviewing people randomly. These videos are fun and simple to make because they involve minimal production and you never know what someone's genuine answer might be.

Crunchyroll created a person-on-the-street video while attending a convention, which provided an opportunity to engage with consumers while showcasing its catalogue of programs.

I told you I had you covered, didn't I? Now you have my secret sauce for finding business video ideas, and you have 15 video content ideas to choose from for your campaign.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in June 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Icons might be one of the most important – and underrated – examples of design in your portfolio. Here’s a look at icon design with some inspiring examples.

Icon elements are shown almost everywhere, but sometimes get produced as an afterthought. That shouldn’t be the case. Great icon design can be distinctive and add finesse and flair to a project.

Let’s take a look at what’s new, and what’s hot in icon design!

Y2K Icons

Y2K icons draw inspiration from the late ’90s and early 2000s, incorporating elements like metallic textures, vibrant gradients, and iridescent effects. The style often combines 3D shapes, futuristic typography, and playful motifs, evoking a sense of nostalgia for the digital culture of that era.

This trend appeals to a younger audience that finds nostalgia in the early digital age, but it can also be used to add a quirky or dynamic look to branding, apps, and websites. The juxtaposition of early internet culture with contemporary design techniques offers endless possibilities for creative expression.

For effective Y2K icon design, focus on balancing nostalgia with contemporary usability. While the style is visually distinct, it’s essential to keep icons recognizable and functional, especially for digital interfaces. Incorporate familiar shapes and symbols but give them a futuristic update through textures and lighting effects.

Pixel Art Icons

Pixel art icons bring back the charm of vintage video games and retro digital aesthetics, appealing to those who appreciate the lo-fi, pixelated look of early computer graphics. This trend embraces the limitations of pixel-based designs to create playful, nostalgic icons that feel authentic and relatable.

The pixel art style often features a limited color palette and chunky, grid-like shapes that are easy to recognize, making it ideal for applications, games, and even websites that want to add a touch of retro fun.

The resurgence of pixel art icons is partly due to the ongoing fascination with retro gaming and vintage computing. It provides an opportunity to infuse a sense of nostalgia into contemporary digital experiences.

With careful planning and creativity, pixel art icons can stand out as a fresh, vintage-inspired trend while adding a playful and nostalgic touch to modern digital designs.

Glassmorphism Icons

Glassmorphism, characterized by its frosted glass-like appearance, continues to gain traction in the icon design world. Glassmorphic icons often feature semi-transparent layers, subtle blurs, and reflective surfaces that mimic the look of glass. The trend creates a sense of depth and elegance, making icons appear to float on the screen.

Incorporating gradients and light reflections can further amplify the glassmorphism effect, making icons appear dynamic and visually captivating. Designers can use a variety of colors, from soft pastels to bold neon tones, layered over frosted backgrounds to achieve different visual impacts.

To implement glassmorphism effectively, you should focus on maintaining balance and contrast to ensure icons remain clear and distinguishable. Too much transparency or excessive layering can make icons difficult to understand, especially for users with visual impairments.

Retro Groovy Icons

Retro groovy icons take inspiration from the bold and colorful styles of the ’60s and ’70s, featuring curved shapes, psychedelic patterns, and playful illustrations. This trend brings a fun, vibrant vibe to icon design, using bright colors and swirling patterns that evoke the spirit of the era.

You can experiment with lively color schemes, combining pastel tones with saturated hues to create eye-catching icons. Adding textured details or hand-drawn elements can also enhance the groovy effect, making icons feel more authentic and dynamic.

This trend works especially well when paired with organic shapes and fluid lines, giving the icons a sense of movement and life. The style’s playful nature can help communicate a brand’s personality while still delivering functional iconography. When creating retro groovy icons, it’s important to balance vintage inspiration with modern usability.

Isometric Icons

Isometric icons offer a unique, three-dimensional perspective by using angled viewpoints to represent objects or scenes. This style gives icons a sense of depth and realism, while still maintaining a clean, graphic look. Isometric icons are perfect for illustrating complex concepts, technical subjects, or even entire environments in a compact, easy-to-understand format.

The trend is often used in infographics, mobile apps, and dashboards to convey detailed information with a visually appealing approach. This style allows you to create miniature worlds or detailed objects with precision, making the icons suitable for projects that require more than flat graphics can offer.

To maximize the impact of isometric icons, focus on using consistent angles and lighting to maintain a cohesive look. Too much variation can make the icons feel disjointed or chaotic.

Thick Line Icons

Line icons have been a big trend for quite some time. It’s something you see almost daily when browsing the web. The new take on this design trend is line icons with thick lines, as opposed to the thin styles that have been dominant.

Thick line icons are a little big trickier to work with because they need some space and size to render well. You can use them as a single color design element or filled with color and for almost any type of design need.

Thick line icons are probably best suited for oversized use and can be a fun theme option for a design project.

3D Icons

Everywhere you look, there are big, bold bubble-style three-dimensional icons in web projects. We like this icon trend because it is a lot of fun and includes a great deal of personality.

You can create 3D icons in almost any style, but the illustrated bubbles are the ones that are drawing a lot of attention as a design trend that we expect to see a lot more of.

These icons can be almost any size – from small to giant – and include animation (or not). What’s great about icons in this 3D style is that they are pretty flexible and can integrate with the rest of your planned design scheme.

The one thing to keep in mind is that this style has a light feel, so it might not work with super serious content.

Google-Style Icons

You probably recognize the look and feel of icons using primary colors and simple shapes as being a lot like the icons for Google’s family of products. And that style is trending for other projects as well.

These icons feature a flat style with a distinct color family that’s used throughout the icon set. Most icons use a few colors, although some are single color.

This icon style works for any size element, but is actually most effective for smaller icons because the design can be a little flat – literally – in oversized usage.

Fully-Illustrated Icons

Icons have been pretty simple for the most part for a while, but more designers are experimenting with fully-illustrated icon styles that are beautiful and engaging. These more complex icon elements are often used at larger sizes and contribute even more to the overall story of a design.

As with the example above, this style is perfect for a design with a more childlike tone or for icon elements that can show more of a creative flair.

Color, scale, size, and design consistency are important to keep in mind with this style so that your icon set looks like it is should go together.

Icon Doodles

Those stray doodles in the corner of your notebook might just be your next neat icon set. Doodle-style icons that have imperfect styles feel authentic and interesting and are a great accent for a project such as a personal portfolio.

The fun thing about doodle icons is that they can make a design feel a little more unique. Just the visual element of a doodle implies spontaneity and individuality. Use these concepts to your advantage when thinking about how to use this style best.

Don’t forget to play with colors and subtle adjustments between icons as well to really play up the unique, individualized nature of this design trend.

Pop-Art Style Icons

On the other end of the icon design spectrum is pop-art style icons, which are colorful, elaborate, and a little over-the-top.

Pop-art elements are a lot of fun and can inject plenty of personality into a project. The trickiest thing here is to not let color overwhelm the icon set individually or collectively. These icons can work best in a design without a lot of other dramatic color or effects.

The other trick to using this style of icon is to consider oversized usage with plenty of space around them. Let the art of each icon shine through.

Hand Drawn Icons

Hand drawn icons are not only a trendy style, but they also create a more intimate, authentic feel for a design project. Styles for these icons can vary widely, from simple shapes and lines to full-color icons.

The best part of hand drawn styles is that you don’t actually have to draw them yourself. There are plenty of hand drawn icon sets available so you can find just the right style, even if you aren’t feeling overly artistic.

Icons with Depth

Creating depth in icon design is somewhat tricky, but more designers are using this trend with oversized icon sets. Using shadows and geometry to create just the right shape combinations with an element that adds an almost three-dimensional effect.

These styles are quite fun and sometimes use hints of trends that have come and gone such as long shadows.

These icons tend to be on the more complex side and are best suited for use where the icons are fairly large or work in combination with another element, such as text for a logo.

Icons with Hover States

When it comes to icons for the web, one of the most popular techniques is to pair a set of icons in such a way that creates a hover state or animation. This might include using an icon that with a color fill and then not or almost creating a button around an icon.

If you plan to use some sort of hover state with an icon, it is important to think about this in the icon design phase. Not all icons or icon sets are optimized for this technique. Look for a complete icon set with variations that make creating a hover state that much easier.

And don’t try to get too complicated here. An elaborate icon can get lost with a hover state. This works best for simple icon pairs.

Simplified Icons

Even websites and designs that previously featured complex icon styles are moving to more stripped down and simplified icons.

What’s nice about them is that each icon portrays an identifiable thing, but the representation isn’t always 100% literal. Icon designers may take liberty with shapes or lines to create icon shapes that are the most simple version of the item it represents.

Line Icons with Color Shapes

Line icons are always a popular choice, thanks to a versatile style that looks good with almost any other design element. The trend adds just a little more visual interest with a pop of color, often in the form of a circle or square, behind the line icon.

The color shape might fill a part of the line icon design, but more often than not it’s just floating in the background. This tiny bit of visual interest can tie an icon set together, emphasize a brand color, or just freshen up an older site of line icons.

The tricky part of the icon design is placement and size of the color shape element. If it’s too big or too bright in color, it can take away from the icon. If the shape is too small, you risk it looking like a mistake.

While there’s no perfect size, most of the icons using this trend keep the color shape to about one-quarter of the full size of the icon.

Abstract Icon Shapes

Not sure what icon represents your content? An abstract icon shape might be the answer.

More designers are creating abstract style icons for use across websites. The nice thing about this style – and trend in general – is that abstract styles create a sense of whimsy and wonder that matches some of the bigger overall trends in design.

The key to working with abstract shapes is to make sure you aren’t replicating something by mistake and that icons truly are abstract. (Don’t try to create icons that are similar to your logo, for example, they might just look like errors.) For something that really matches, use the same color palette for icons and brand materials.

Icons with Background Icons

Some trending icons have icons of their own. Seriously!

For more elaborate uses of icons – we’re not taking tiny favicons here – icons can be stacked and layered to create more of an art element.

This trend often uses color and shading to differentiate between the main focal icon and background icons. The primary icon is often full color or a filled icon. The background icons are almost always line style and might have light color palettes.

You can create this effect with many premade icon kits by mixing and matching icons in different ways. Create depth and visual interest with icons of a similar theme and stick to just a handful of elements to keep the scene from getting too busy. Don’t be afraid to use and reuse elements and use the same icons (alternating line and filled) in backgrounds and foregrounds.

Two-Color Icons

Another icon design trend that builds on popular line icon styles is to create two-color elements.

Two-color icons can build on your existing color palette or brand colors or combine almost any other color pair. When designing using the icon trend, look for color pairs that will stand out from the background on which you plan to use them.

When it comes to the design, pick a primary color for most of the icon. Use a secondary color to accent an element of the icon. (Think of using the primary color for 70% to 80% of the design and the secondary color for the rest.)

This creates an accent in the icon design that will help draw the eye into the design element, and hopefully, surrounding content as well.

Bright Color

Bright color choices have been a big deal in all aspects of design. That is no different with icons. A bright color is an enticing way to draw the eye to the icon.

Color is being used in a few different ways when it comes to the icon design trend:

• As a background with a white or black line-style icon
• For full color icon elements with a more realistic look
• For icon elements with a more flat, gradient or super-bright design

Popular color choices in the bright family include yellows, blues, greens, and purples. These colors tend to be on the bright side and crafting a color palette with three to five hues for an icon set is popular.

Not sure where to start? Material Palette showcases colors that are a big part if the color icon design trend.

Icons in Logos

Take note of how many logos feature icons. Once you start thinking about it, not seeing all the little icons in logo design will be tough.

What’s nice about an icon in a logo is that it works with the brand name, and with some time and brand equity can stand alone. Think about the example above, Spotify. Even though the music provider hasn’t been around all that long (in the scope of brands), the circle with three lines is highly identifiable.

The icon works in color and without – a key of a strong icon – and can stand alone or with lettering. This versatility makes it easy to see why icons are a popular element in logo design.

Circles

Circles are one of the most harmonious shapes. And when it comes to icon design, they are rather popular. From icons that are contained inside a sphere to circles within objects, creating a design mark using circles can establish just the right feel for users.

(Want to know more about circles in design? We’ve got that here.)

Part of the influence of circle in icon design might connect back to some of the guidelines set forth by Google with Material Design. All those circular buttons are perfect for tapping on mobile phones. And that same philosophy applies to icon design. (Just think how often an icon is a touchable or clickable element.)

The part that can be a little trick about this icon trend is meshing circles in all the places where other shapes are used. App icons tend to be square; social media profiles are circular (and square).

When creating a round icon, make sure that the content of the icon design is easy to understand at small sizes, because you must shrink it often to fit in other places.

Line Style Icon Design

Line style icons seem to be the trend that never gets old.

Part of the reason is that this icon style can work practically anywhere on any background type. Many of the popular, downloadable icon packs often include a line style design because of this versatility.

It’s easy to see this in the example above. Each icon is easy to see and understand at practically any size.

Simple Elements and Representations

As with most other design trends in 2025, simplicity is part of icon design as well. Simple shapes and geography combine to create almost over simplistic representations for icons.

The result is a quite an artful design that makes users look.

In the example using food icons above, each icon uses the common thread of a circle in the icon. This can be the overall shape of the icon itself or a part of the icon design. This shape connects each icon to one another in the project.

Icons with Gradients

The gradient color trend that has become one of the dominant themes of 2019 is a factor in icon design as well. From simple gradients in line strokes (such as the example above) to full gradient coloring to white icons on a gradient background, this color scheme is popular.

That might be what’s so appealing about the use of gradients in icons (and overall) – there are so many different ways to use the trend. You can add a gradient and still not have a project that looks just like something else.

Focus on Simple Coloring

Icon designers are taking the opposite approach with color as well and sticking to simple, more limited, more basic color palettes for these small design elements.

Using a limited palette is a great idea. With a design that’s so small, too much color or detail can overwhelm the space quickly and cause strain on the eye.

You don’t want users to have to think about what the icon is or what color means. Limiting the amount of detail – including elaborate coloring – can make each individual icon a little easier to see and understand. This is most important with icons that will be used at the smallest sizes.

Everything App Style

One of the reasons that icons have grown in popularity so much is that we are already designing them for almost everything. From app icons to app-style icons for favicons or desktop icons, this style is practically everywhere.

App-style icons have a distinct style almost of their own. This includes:

• Square in shape
• Rounded edges
• Colored background (usually one color)
• Simple shape inside icon
• Plenty of contrast between icon and background color
• No text or lettering

Thick, Uniform Strokes

Not only are line-style icons popular, but icons with thick line strokes are especially popular.

Designed often for single-color applications, these icons are frequently used in white or black on top of color or photo backgrounds.

Icons with thick, uniform strokes are most frequently used on their own, such as a cart icon or contact icon. They aren’t often used in a collection of icons.

Flat Icons Remain Popular

While much of the hard focus on flat design has evaporated, icon design is still pretty flat (or at least almost flat).

This is likely due to the super-simple nature of flat design and the idea that this look can integrate with a number of other styles fairly easily.

Even looking at some of the icon design examples and trends featured here, you’ll see that many of them are flat. (Line style icons are almost always flat, for example.)

Emoji Icons

Emojis have almost become their own language – a more visual form of communication that’s getting more generally accepted all the time.

Icons design is also taking on an emoji-esque flair. These icons are identifiable because of a focus on the head shape of a person or creature. (The Star Wars-inspired emoji icons above are a great example of how to have fun with icon design.)

This style of the icon could work great for a contact page or for representing people or personas in a design.

How to Design a Better Icon

Crafting a good icon or set of icons is more than just hopping on to some of the latest trends in icon design. Because of the small size of icons, attention to detail and precision are an important part of the design process.

Simple rules still hold true for icon design in 2019. Pair these guidelines with some of the trending ideas above to create something you’ll love:

1. Start with a grid
2. Build with geometry
3. Create a unique shape
4. Give icons plenty of room
5. Stick to your brand colors
6. Use consistent divots
7. Design for the smallest size you need
8. Don’t decorate

Icon Design Guidelines

A good way to keep up with what’s “in” is by looking at graphics standards and style guides. Each time Apple or Google changes their approach so does everyone else. Partially because they have to and partially because the new style is often reflective of the times and trends in icon design.

You can find guidelines here:

• Apple App Icons
• Android App Icons
• Material Design Product Icons
• Material Design System Icons

Conclusion

Icons are a useful design tool. From use as app icons to website marks or favicons to divots that can be used in a logo or throughout a design project, the icon is a mark that’s here to stay.

Approach icon design in the same way you would almost any other project, but really think about simplicity and size. Icons are made to look at quickly and are often small. This can have a great impact on the design.

In the medical world, it’s not just about what you say but how you say it—right down to the letterhead you use. Think of your letterhead as your professional handshake; it’s often the first visual cue patients, hospitals, and partners receive. Done well, it radiates trust and competence. Done poorly? Let’s just say it might be a case of “wrong prescription.”

Whether you’re introducing new services, sending patient reports, or communicating with other healthcare professionals, your letterhead is an extension of your practice’s reputation. So, how do you strike the right balance between sleek professionalism and that touch of approachability? It all starts with the design basics—getting your doctor letterhead format just right and possibly exploring a free doctor letterhead template if you’re just dipping a toe in. But more than just visuals, your letterhead should reflect your brand’s unique pulse.

In this guide, we’ll dive into some practical steps to make sure every document that leaves your office is on-brand and on-point. Because at the end of the day, your letterhead isn’t just paper. It’s your practice, distilled.

Free Gradient Doctor’s Prescription Template

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Free Doctor Letterhead Templates

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Doctor’s Letterhead Template

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Doctor’s Letterhead Templates

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Free Medical Letterhead Template

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Abstract Hospital Doctor Letterhead Template

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Pharmacist Prescription Template

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Medical Healthy Letterhead (Premium)

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Medical Doctor Healthcare Service Letterhead Template

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Black White Medical Classy Noble Caduceus Letterhead (Premium)

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Medical Professionals Letterhead Template

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Medical Letterhead (Premium)

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Doctor Prescription Letterhead Template

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Blue Modern Doctor Letterhead Template (Premium)

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The post 20+ Professional Doctor Letterhead Formats and Templates for Immediate Use appeared first on CSS Author.

On September 25, 2024, Meta released the Llama 3.2 series of multimodal models. The models are lightweight yet extremely powerful for image-to-text and text-to-text tasks.

In this article, you will learn how to use the Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model for general image analysis, graph analysis, and facial sentiment prediction. You will see how to use the Hugging Face Inference API to call the Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model.

The results are comparable with the proprietary Claude 3.5 Sonnet model as explained in this article.

So, let's begin without ado.

We will call the Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model using the Hugging Face Inference API. To access the API, you need to install the following library.

pip install huggingface_hub==0.24.7

The following script imports the required libraries into your Python application.

import os
import base64
from IPython.display import display, HTML
from IPython.display import Image
from huggingface_hub import InferenceClient
import requests
from PIL import Image
from io import BytesIO
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Let's first see how to analyze an image using the Llama 3.2 vision instruct model using the Hugging Face Inference API.

We will analyze the following image.

image_url = r"https://healthier.stanfordchildrens.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Child-climbing-window-scaled.jpg"
Image(url=image_url, width=600, height=600)

Output:

To analyze an image using the Hugging Face Inference, you must first create an object of the InferenceClient class from the huggingface_hub module. You must pass your Hugging Face access token to the InferenceClient class constructor.

Next, call the chat_completion() method on the InferenceClient object (llama3_2_model_client in the following script) and pass it the Hugging Face model ID, the model temperature, and the list of messages.

In the following script, we pass one user message with the image we want to analyze and the text query.

The chat_completion() function returns the response based on the image and the query, which you can retrieve using the response.choices[0].message.content.

In the script below, we simply ask the Meta Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model to describe the image in a single line.

hf_token = os.environ.get('HF_TOKEN')
llama3_2_model_client = InferenceClient(token=hf_token)

model_id = "meta-llama/Llama-3.2-11B-Vision-Instruct"
query = "Describe the image please in one line please!"

response =  llama3_2_model_client.chat_completion(
    model=model_id,
    temperature = 0,
    messages=[
        {
            "role": "user",
            "content": [
                {"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": image_url}},
                {"type": "text", "text": query},
                ],
        }
    ],
    max_tokens=1024,
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Output:

A young child with blonde hair and blue striped pajamas is climbing on a wicker chair in front of a window.

The above output shows that the model describes the image precisely.

Now that you know how to analyze an image using the Meta Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model and the Hugging Face Inference API, let's define a utility function analyze_image() that takes in the user query and the image_url and returns the response answering the query related to the image.

In the script below, we ask the model if he sees any potentially dangerous situation in the image and how to prevent it. The response shows that the model correctly analyzes the image and suggests potential prevention measures.

def analyze_image(query, image_url):


    response =  llama3_2_model_client.chat_completion(
        model=model_id,
        temperature = 0,
        messages=[
            {
                "role": "user",
                "content": [
                    {"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": image_url}},
                    {"type": "text", "text": query},
                    ],
            }
        ],
        max_tokens=1024,
    )
    return response.choices[0].message.content


query = "You are a baby sitter. Do you see any dangerous sitation in the image? If yes, how to prevent it?"
image_url = r"https://healthier.stanfordchildrens.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Child-climbing-window-scaled.jpg"

response = analyze_image(query, image_url)
print(response)

Output:

Overall, the Meta Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct seems capable of general image analysis and performs at par with advanced proprietary models such as GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Let's see how well the llama 3.2 Vision Instruct performs for graph analysis tasks.

We will analyze the following bar plot, which displays Government gross debts as a percentage of GDPs for the European countries in 2023.

image_url = r"https://globaleurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2023/12/Folie2.jpg"
Image(url=image_url, width=600, height=600)

Output:

Let's just ask the model to summarize the plot.

query =  "You are an expert graph and visualization expert. Can you summarize the graph?"
response = analyze_image(query, image_url)
print(response)

Output:

The above output shows that the model provides detailed insights into different aspects of the information in the bar plot.

Let's ask a slightly tricky question. We will ask the model to convert the bar plot into a table.

query =  "You are an expert graph and visualization expert. Can you convert the graph to table such as Country -> Debt?"
response = analyze_image(query, image_url)
print(response)

Output:

The above output shows that the model's conversions were not precise. For example, the plot shows that Greece's GDP debt percentage is around 170%. However, the model shows it as 180%. In fact, the model shows the values in units of 10s.

On the other hand, the Claude 3.5 sonnet provided exact values.

Let's test the Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model for the image sentiment prediction task. We will predict the facial sentiment expressed in the following image.

image_url = r"https://www.allprodad.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05-12-21-happy-people.jpg"
Image(url=image_url, width=600, height=600)

Output:

Run the following script to print the facial sentiment.

query =  "You are helpful psychologist. Can you predict facial sentiment from the input image"
response = analyze_image(query, image_url)
print(response)

Output:

Based on the image, the individual appears to be smiling, which is a common indicator of happiness or positive sentiment. The person's facial expression suggests that they are feeling content or joyful.

The above output shows that the model correctly predicted the facial sentiment in the image.

Like the advanced vision models like GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, you can also analyze multiple images using the Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model.

We will compare the following two images using the Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model.

# URLs of the images
image_url1 = r"https://www.allprodad.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/05-12-21-happy-people.jpg"
image_url2 = r"https://www.shortform.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/sad-woman-looking-down-eyes-slightly-closed-750x350.jpg"

# Fetch the images from the URLs
response1 = requests.get(image_url1)
response2 = requests.get(image_url2)

# Open the images using Pillow
img1 = Image.open(BytesIO(response1.content))
img2 = Image.open(BytesIO(response2.content))

# Create a figure to display the images side by side
fig, axes = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 5))

# Display the first image
axes[0].imshow(img1)
axes[0].axis('off')  # Hide axes

# Display the second image
axes[1].imshow(img2)
axes[1].axis('off')  # Hide axes

# Show the plot
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()

Output:

To analyze multiple images, you must add the images to the content list of the user messages, as shown in the following script.

The script below defines the analyze_multiple_images() function that accepts a text query and two images and answers the query related to both images.

def analyze_multiple_images(query, image1_url, image2_url):


    response =  llama3_2_model_client.chat_completion(
        model=model_id,
        temperature = 0,
        messages=[
            {
                "role": "user",
                "content": [
                    {"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": image1_url}},
                    {"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": image2_url}},
                    {"type": "text", "text": query},
                    ],
            }
        ],
        max_tokens=1024,
    )
    return response.choices[0].message.content

query =  "You are helpful psychologist. Can you explain all the differences in the two images?"
response = analyze_multiple_images(query, image_url1, image_url2)
print(response)

The above script attempts to find all the differences between the two input images.

Output:

The output shows that Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct can find most of the differences between the two images, and its findings are very close to those of the Claude 3.5 sonnet model.

Meta Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct is a lightweight yet extremely powerful model for text-to-text and image-to-text tasks. It is open-source, and you can use it for free using the Hugging Face Inference API.

In this article, you saw how to use the Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model for image analysis tasks such as graph analysis, sentiment prediction, etc. I suggest you try the Llama 3.2 Vision Instruct model for your image-to-text and text-to-text tasks and share your feedback.

The 2023 We❤️NYC campaign was intended to encourage New Yorkers, still pessimistic in a post-pandemic world, to show love for their city.

And boy, did it ever.

Last year, Maryam Banikarim royally pissed off the Olsen twins and the Jonas Brothers with her We❤️NYC campaign. But that same campaign earned twice the impressions of a Super Bowl ad … in 48 hours.

I caught up with Banikarim to get her top marketing lessons, and it was immediately clear that she’s the embodiment of “do what you love” — and it all stems from asking herself, "What if I did that?"

So we talked about purpose-driven work, how to use curiosity to power your marketing campaigns, and the best way to stay on top of new tech.

“What if I did that?”

1. Good campaigns have tension. That’s what gets people talking.

I can see Banikarim’s eyes sparkle through my computer monitor as she tells me how she ruffled the feathers of two sets of celebrity siblings. She’s relishing the memory of it.

Her agency worked on the city-wide ad campaign, which was funded by members of the Partnership for New York City to encourage civic action and community engagement. It capitalized on something New Yorkers care very, very deeply about: New York.

Once “We❤️NYC” began appearing on bus stop signs, at Barclays Center, and across Times Square, “everybody thought we were trying to get rid of the I❤️NYmark,” she says. They weren’t, but “communication isn’t what I say, it’s what you hear.”

So once somebody (incorrectly, angrily) posted that the new campaign was trying to oust Milton Glaser’s iconic I❤️NY, it became a reality of sorts. A reality that was picked up by talk shows, Mary-Kate and Ashley, and the Jonas Brothers — “it was just a whole thing,” Banikarim says with a laugh.

There’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube: We❤️NYC was now a putative threat to New Yorkers’ identity and their iconography. Tension built up; tweets rolled in. “Milton Glaser would be so mad.” “Can we please let Milton Glaser rest in the peace he deserves?” “Milton Glaser got it right the first time.”

Banikarim is delighted by this. “We couldn’t have bought that media,“ she says.

Your next campaign probably won’t pique the ire of the Olsen twins (though a girl can dream). But know what your target audience feels ownership over, and where to tease out the tension in your marketing campaign.

2. DIY — with curiosity.

“I always seem to have a side hustle these days,” she tells me. (One gets the sense that Banikarim has always had to have a side hustle.)

It’s just that Banikarim’s side hustles would make most primary hustles envious. Last weekend, she celebrated the third year of The Longest Table, a community-building event born out of a need for human connection back when everyone was masking up and sharing tips on finding Lysol wipes.

She saw a neighbor put a folding table outside so they could eat dinner with a few friends. She introduced herself and thought, “What if I did that?”

One also gets the sense that Banikarim doesn’t do rhetorical questions. She started with a few posts on Next Door and an eight-person outdoor potluck on her street in Chelsea. On October 6, 2024, over a thousand people showed up for dinner.

Together they cobbled together a Squarespace website, and “we use HubSpot to email people.” (We did not bribe, pay, or threaten her to say that.—ed.) Banikarim doesn’t complain about DIY marketing tech; on the contrary, she refuses to be outpaced by evolving technology.

“Marketing has always been for people who are curious,” Banikarim says. And “in order to constantly be learning, it’s really helpful to be touching the tools yourself and not just directing from up high.”

3. Move sideways, move quickly. And take small bets.

Moving sideways means that sometimes you take a job that feels like a lateral move, or even a step backward. That’s not unusual now, but Banikarim jokes that she was a millennial before her time, because she’s had so many jobs for somebody in her 50s.

“But I was always looking for purpose in the job.” Like millennials, she’s “looking for impact.”

Your marketing career “doesn't have to always be moving up. You can move sideways. You can move off, you can move in.”

Of course, millennials don’t need Banikarim to tell them that it’s okay to have a non-linear career. But are you moping about it or are you learning from it? (No judgment; glass houses and all that.)

“I think there‘s a lot of lip service given to this idea that if you fail, it’s ‘okay,’” she tells me. And then she says what so many of us feel in those moments: “but it's not really okay.”

When I ask her what the biggest waste of money is across the marketing landscape, she says that it isn’t a tool. It’s that “we all have to be better at finding things that we can test and learn from” — and we have to stop thinking that if those tests don’t work, then they’re a mistake or a waste of time.

Her advice: Move quickly. Take the small bets. See where you get signal — and then go big.

A whole bunch of years ago, we posted on this idea here on CSS-Tricks. We figured it was time to update that and do the subject justice.

Imagine a scenario where you need to split a layout in half. Content on the left and content on the right. Basically two equal height columns are needed inside of a container. Each side takes up exactly half of the container, creating a distinct break between one. Like many things in CSS, there are a number of ways to go about this and we’re going to go over many of them right now!

Update (Oct. 25, 2024): Added an example that uses CSS Anchor Positioning.

Using Background Gradient

One simple way we can create the appearance of a changing background is to use gradients. Half of the background is set to one color and the other half another color. Rather than fade from one color to another, a zero-space color stop is set in the middle.

.container {
  background: linear-gradient(
    to right, 
    #ff9e2c 0%, 
    #ff9e2c 50%, 
    #b6701e 50%, 
    #b6701e 100%
  );
}

This works with a single container element. However, that also means that it will take working with floats or possibly some other layout method if content needs to fill both sides of the container.

Using Absolute Positioning

Another route might be to set up two containers inside of a parent container, position them absolutely, split them up in halves using percentages, then apply the backgrounds. The benefit here is that now we have two separate containers that can hold their own content.

Absolute positioning is sometimes a perfect solution, and sometimes untenable. The parent container here will need to have a set height, and setting heights is often bad news for content (content changes!). Not to mention absolute positioned elements are out of the document flow. So it would be hard to get this to work while, say, pushing down other content below it.

Using (fake) Tables

Yeah, yeah, tables are so old school (not to mention fraught with accessibility issues and layout inflexibility). Well, using the display: table-cell; property can actually be a handy way to create this layout without writing table markup in HTML. In short, we turn our semantic parent container into a table, then the child containers into cells inside the table — all in CSS!

You could even change the display properties at breakpoints pretty easily here, making the sides stack on smaller screens. display: table; (and friends) is supported as far back as IE 8 and even old Android, so it’s pretty safe!

Using Floats

We can use our good friend the float to arrange the containers beside each other. The benefit here is that it avoids absolute positioning (which as we noted, can be messy).

In this example, we’re explicitly setting heights to get them to be even. But you don’t really get that ability with floats by default. You could use the background gradient trick we already covered so they just look even. Or look at fancy negative margin tricks and the like.

Also, remember you may need to clear the floats on the parent element to keep the document flow happy.

Using Inline-Block

If clearing elements after floats seems like a burden, then using display: inline-block is another option. The trick here is to make sure that the elements for the individual sides have no breaks or whitespace in between them in the HTML. Otherwise, that space will be rendered as a literal space and the second half will break and fall.

Again there is nothing about inline-block that helps us equalize the heights of the sides, so you’ll have to be explicit about that.

There are also other potential ways to deal with that spacing problem described above.

Using Flexbox

Flexbox is a pretty fantastic way to do this, just note that it’s limited to IE 10 and up and you may need to get fancy with the prefixes and values to get the best support.

Using this method, we turn our parent container into a flexible box with the child containers taking up an equal share of the space. No need to set widths or heights! Flexbox just knows what to do, because the defaults are set up perfectly for this. For instance, flex-direction: row; and align-items: stretch; is what we’re after, but those are the defaults so we don’t have to set them. To make sure they are even though, setting flex: 1; on the sides is a good plan. That forces them to take up equal shares of the space.

In this demo we’re making the side flex containers as well, just for fun, to handle the vertical and horizontal centering.

Using Grid Layout

For those living on the bleeding edge, the CSS Grid Layout technique is like the Flexbox and Table methods merged into one. In other words, a container is defined, then split into columns and cells which can be filled flexibly with child elements.

CSS Anchor Positioning

This started rolling out in 2024 and we’re still waiting for full browser support. But we can use CSS Anchor Positioning to “attach” one element to another — even if those two elements are completely unrelated in the markup.

The idea is that we have one element that’s registered as an “anchor” and another element that’s the “target” of that anchor. It’s like the target element is pinned to the anchor. And we get to control where we pin it!

.anchor {
  anchor-name: --anchor;
}

.target {
  anchor-position: --anchor;
  position: absolute; /* required */
}

This sets up an .anchor and establishes a relationship with a .target element. From here, we can tell the target which side of the anchor it should pin to.

.anchor {
  anchor-name: --anchor;
}

.target {
  anchor-position: --anchor;
  position: absolute; /* required */
  left: anchor(right);
}

Isn’t it cool how many ways there are to do things in CSS?

Left Half and Right Half Layout – Many Different Ways originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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You’d be forgiven for thinking coding up both a dark and a light mode at once is a lot of work. You have to remember @media queries based on prefers-color-scheme as well as extra complications that arise when letting visitors choose whether they want light or dark mode separately from the OS setting. And let’s not forget the color palette itself! Switching from a “light” mode to a “dark” mode may involve new variations to get the right amount of contrast for an accessible experience.

It is indeed a lot of work. But I’m here to tell you it’s now a lot simpler with modern CSS!

Default HTML color scheme(s)

We all know the “naked” HTML theme even if we rarely see it as we’ve already applied a CSS reset or our favorite boilerplate CSS before we even open localhost. But here’s a news flash: HTML doesn’t only have the standard black-on-white theme, there is also a native white-on-black version.

If you want to create a dark mode interface, this is a great base to work with and saves you from having to account for annoying details, like dark inputs, buttons, and other interactive elements.

Switching color schemes automatically based on OS preference

Without any @media queries — or any other CSS at all — if all we did was declare color-scheme: light dark on the root element, the page will apply either the light or dark color scheme automatically by looking at the visitor’s operating system (OS) preferences. Most OSes have a built-in accessibility setting for your preferred color scheme — “light”, “dark”, or even “auto” — and browsers respect that setting.

html {
  color-scheme: light dark;
}

We can even accomplish this without CSS directly in the HTML document in a <meta> tag:

<meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">

Whether you go with CSS or the HTML route, it doesn’t matter — they both work the same way: telling the browser to make both light and dark schemes available and apply the one that matches the visitor’s preferences. We don’t even need to litter our styles with prefers-color-scheme instances simply to swap colors because the logic is built right in!

You can apply light or dark values to the color-scheme property. At the same time, I’d say that setting color-scheme: light is redundant, as this is the default color scheme with or without declaring it.

You can, of course, control the <meta> tag or the CSS property with JavaScript.

There’s also the possibility of applying the color-scheme property on specific elements instead of the entire page in one fell swoop. Then again, that means you are required to explicitly declare an element’s color and background-color properties; otherwise the element is transparent and inherits its text color from its parent element.

What values should you give it? Try:

Default text and background color variables

The “black” colors of these native themes aren’t always completely black but are often off-black, making the contrast a little easier on the eyes. It’s worth noting, too, that there’s variation in the blackness of “black” between browsers.

What is very useful is that this default not-pure-black and maybe-not-pure-white background-color and text color are available as <system-color> variables. They also flip their color values automatically with color-scheme!

They are: Canvas and CanvasText.

These two variables can be used anywhere in your CSS to call up the current default background color (Canvas) or text color (CanvasText) based on the current color scheme. If you’re familiar with the currentColor value in CSS, it seems to function similarly. CanvasText, meanwhile, remains the default text color in that it can’t be changed the way currentColor changes when you assign something to color.

In the following examples, the only change is the color-scheme property:

Not bad! There are many, many more of these system variables. They are case-insensitive, often written in camelCase or PascalCase for readability. MDN lists 19 <system-color> variables and I’m dropping them in below for reference.

Cool, right? There are many of them! There are, unfortunately, also discrepancies as far as how these color keywords are used and rendered between different OSes and browsers. Even though “evergreen” browsers arguably support all of them, they don’t all actually match what they’re supposed to, and fail to flip with the CSS color-scheme property as they should.

Egor Kloos (also known as dutchcelt) is keeping an eye on the current status of system colors, including which ones exist and the browsers that support them, something he does as part of a classless CSS framework cleverly called system.css.

Declaring colors for both modes together

OK good, so now you have a page that auto-magically flips dark and light colors according to system preferences. Whether you choose to use these system colors or not is up to you. I just like to point out that “dark” doesn’t always have to mean pure “black” just as “light” doesn’t have to mean pure “white.” There are lots more colors to pair together!

But what’s the best or simplest way to declare colors so they work in both light and dark mode?

In my subjective reverse-best order:

Third place: Declare color opacity

You could keep all the same background colors in dark and light modes, but declare them with an opacity (i.e. rgb(128 0 0 / 0.5) or #80000080). Then they’ll have the Canvas color shine through.

It’s unusable in this way for text colors, and you may end up with somewhat muted colors. But it is a nice easy way to get some theming done fast. I did this for the code blocks on this old light and dark mode demo.

Second place: Use color-mix()

Like this:

color-mix(in oklab, Canvas 75%, RebeccaPurple);

Similar (but also different) to using opacity to mute a color is mixing colors in CSS. We can even mix the system color variables! For example, one of the colors can be either Canvas or CanvasText so that the background color always mixes with Canvas and the text color always mixes with CanvasText.

We now have the CSS color-mix() function to help us with this. The first argument in the function defines the color space where the color mixing happens. For example, we can tell the function that we are working in the OKLAB color space, which is a rectangular color space like sRGB making it ideal to mix with sRGB color values for predictable results. You can certainly mix colors from different color spaces — the OKLAB/sRGB combination happens to work for me in this instance.

The second and third arguments are the colors you want to mix, and in what proportion. Proportions are optional but expressed in percentages. Without declaring a proportion, the mix is an even 50%-50% split. If you add percentages for both colors and they don’t match up to 100%, it does a little math for you to prevent breakages.

The color-mix() approach is useful if you’re happy to keep the same hues and color saturations regardless of whether the mode is light or dark.

In this example, as you change the value of the hue slider, you’ll see color changes in the themed boxes, following the theme color but mixed with Canvas and CanvasText:

You may have noticed that I used OKLCH and HSL color spaces in that last example. You may also have noticed that the HSL-based theme color and the themed paragraph were a lot more “flashy” as you moved the hue slider.

I’ve declared colors using a polar color space, like HSL, for years, loving that you can easily take a hue and go up or down the saturation and lightness scales based on need. But, I concede that it’s problematic if you’re working with multiple hues while trying to achieve consistent perceived lightness and saturation across them all. It can be difficult to provide ample contrast across a spectrum of colors with HSL.

The OKLCH color space is also polar just like HSL, with the same benefits. You can pick your hue and use the chroma value (which is a bit like saturation in HSL) and the lightness scales accurately in the same way. Both OKLCH and OKLAB are designed to better match what our eyes perceive in terms of brightness and color compared to transitioning between colors in the sRGB space.

While these color spaces may not explicitly answer the age-old question, Is my blue the same as your blue? the colors are much more consistent and require less finicking when you decide to base your whole website’s palette on a different theme color. With these color spaces, the contrasts between the computed colors remain much the same.

First place (winner!): Use light-dark()

Like this:

light-dark(lavender, saddlebrown);

With the previous color-mix() example, if you choose a pale lavender in light mode, its dark mode counterpart is very dark lavender.

The light-dark() function, conversely, provides complete control. You might want that element to be pale lavender in light mode and a deep burnt sienna brown in dark mode. Why not? You can still use color-mix() within light-dark() if you like — declare the colors however you like, and gain much more fine-grained control over your colors.

Feel free to experiment in the following editable demo:

Using color-scheme: light dark; — or the corresponding meta tag in HTML on your page —is a prerequisite for the light-dark() function because it allows the function to respect a person’s system preference, or whichever single light or dark value you have set on color-scheme.

Another consideration is that light-dark() is newly available across browsers, with just over 80% coverage across all users at the time I’m writing this. So, you might consider including a fallback in your CSS for browsers that lack support for the function.

What makes using color-scheme and light-dark() better than using @media queries?

@media queries have been excellent tools, but using them to query prefers-color-scheme only ever follows the preference set within the person’s operating system. This is fine until you (rightfully) want to offer the visitor more choices, decoupled from whether they prefer the UI on their device to be dark or light.

We’re already capable of doing that, of course. We’ve become used to a lot of jiggery-pokery with extra CSS classes, using duplicated styles, or employing custom properties to make it happen.

The joy of using color-scheme is threefold:

• It gives you the basic monochrome dark mode for free!
• It can natively do the mode switching based on OS mode preference.
• You can use JavaScript to toggle between light and dark mode, and the colors declared in the light-dark() functions will follow it.

Light, dark, and auto mode controls

Essentially, all we are doing is setting one of three options for whether the color-scheme is light, dark, or updates auto-matically.

I advise offering all three as discrete options, as it removes some complications for you! Any new visitor to the site will likely be in auto mode because accepting the visitor’s OS setting is the least jarring default state. You then give that person the choice to stay with that or swap it out for a different color scheme. This way, there’s no need to sniff out what mode someone prefers to, for example, display the correct icon on a toggle and make it perform the correct action. There is also no need to keep an event listener on prefers-color-scheme in case of changes — your color-scheme: light dark declaration in CSS handles that for you.

Adjusting color-scheme in pure CSS

Yes, this is totally possible! But the approach comes with a few caveats:

• You can’t use <button> — only radio inputs, or <options> in a <select> element.
• It only works on a per page basis, not per website, which means changes are lost on reload or refresh.
• The browser needs to support the :has() pseudo-selector. Most modern browsers do, but some folks using older devices might miss out on the experience.

Using the :has() pseudo-selector

This approach is almost alarmingly simple and is fantastic for a simple one-pager! Most of the heavy lifting is done with this:

/* default, or 'auto' */
html {
  color-scheme: light dark;
}

html:has([value="light"]:checked {
  color-scheme: light;
}

html:has([value="dark"]:checked {
  color-scheme: dark;
}

The second and third rulesets above look for an attribute called value on any element that has “light” or “dark” assigned to it, then change the color-scheme to match only if that element is :checked.

This approach is not very efficient if you have a huge page full of elements. In those cases, it’s better to be more specific. In the following two examples, the CSS selectors check for value only within an element containing id="mode-switcher".

html:has(#mode-switcher [value="light"]:checked) { color-scheme: light }
/* Did you know you don't need the ";" for a one-liner? Now you do! */

Using a <select> element:

Using <input type="radio">:

We could theoretically use checkboxes for this, but since checkboxes are not supposed to be used for mutually exclusive options, I won’t provide an example here. What happens in the case of more than one option being checked? The last matching CSS declaration wins (which is dark in the examples above).

Adjusting color-scheme in HTML with JavaScript

I subscribe to Jeremy Keith’s maxim when it comes to reaching for JavaScript:

JavaScript should only do what only JavaScript can do.

This is exactly that kind of situation.

If you want to allow visitors to change the color scheme using buttons, or you would like the option to be saved the next time the visitor comes to the site, then we do need at least some JavaScript. Rather than using the :has() pseudo-selector in CSS, we have a few alternative approaches for changing the color-scheme when we add JavaScript to the mix.

Using <meta> tags

If you have set your color-scheme within a meta tag in the <head> of your HTML:

<meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">

…you might start by making a useful constant like so:

const colorScheme = document.querySelector('meta[name="color-scheme"]');

And then you can manipulate that, assigning it light or dark as you see fit:

colorScheme.setAttribute("content", "light"); // to light mode
colorScheme.setAttribute("content", "dark"); // to dark mode
colorScheme.setAttribute("content", "light dark"); // to auto mode

This is a very similar approach to using <meta> tags but is different if you are setting the color-scheme property in CSS:

html { color-scheme: light dark; }

Instead of setting a colorScheme constant as we just did in the last example with the <meta> tag, you might select the <html> element instead:

const html = document.querySelector('html');

Now your manipulations look like this:

html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "light"); // to light mode
html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "dark"); // to dark mode
html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "light dark"); // to auto mode

I like to turn those manipulations into functions so that I can reuse them:

function switchAuto() {
  html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "light dark");
}
function switchLight() {
  html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "light");
}
function switchDark() {
  html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "dark");
}

Alternatively, you might like to stay as DRY as possible and do something like this:

function switchMode(mode) {
  html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", mode === "auto" ? "light dark" : mode);
}

The following demo shows how this JavaScript-based approach can be used with buttons, radio buttons, and a <select> element. Please note that not all of the controls are hooked up to update the UI — the demo would end up too complicated since there’s no world where all three types of controls would be used in the same UI!

I opted to use onchange and onclick in the HTML elements mainly because I find them readable and neat. There’s nothing wrong with instead attaching a change event listener to your controls, especially if you need to trigger other actions when the options change. Using onclick on a button doesn’t only work for clicks, the button is still keyboard-focusable and can be triggered with Spacebar and Enter too, as usual.

Remembering the selection for repeat visits

The biggest caveat to everything we’ve covered so far is that this only works once. In other words, once the visitor has left the site, we’re doing nothing to remember their color scheme preference. It would be a better user experience to store that preference and respect it anytime the visitor returns.

The Web Storage API is our go-to for this. And there are two available ways for us to store someone’s color scheme preference for future visits.

localStorage

Local storage saves values directly on the visitor’s device. This makes it a nice way to keep things off your server, as the stored data never expires, allowing us to call it anytime. That said, we’re prone to losing that data whenever the visitor clears cookies and cache and they’ll have to make a new selection that is freshly stored in localStorage.

You pick a key name and give it a value with .setItem():

localStorage.setItem("mode", "dark");

The key and value are saved by the browser, and can be called up again for future visits:

const mode = localStorage.getItem("mode");

You can then use the value stored in this key to apply the person’s preferred color scheme.

sessionStorage

Session storage is thrown away as soon as a visitor browses away to another site or closes the current window/tab. However, the data we capture in sessionStorage persists while the visitor navigates between pages or views on the same domain.

It looks a lot like localStorage:

sessionStorage.setItem("mode", "dark");
const mode = sessionStorage.getItem("mode");

Which storage method should I use?

Personally, I started with sessionStorage because I wanted my site to be as simple as possible, and to avoid anything that would trigger the need for a GDPR-compliant cookie banner if we were holding onto the person’s preference after their session ends. If most of your traffic comes from new visitors, then I suggest using sessionStorage to prevent having to do extra work on the GDPR side of things.

That said, if your traffic is mostly made up of people who return to the site again and again, then localStorage is likely a better approach. The convenience benefits your visitors, making it worth the GDPR work.

The following example shows the localStorage approach. Open it up in a new window or tab, pick a theme other than what’s set in your operating system’s preferences, close the window or tab, then re-open the demo in a new window or tab. Does the demo respect the color scheme you selected? It should!

Choose the “Auto” option to go back to normal.

If you want to look more closely at what is going on, you can open up the developer tools in your browser (F12 for Windows, CTRL+ click and select “Inspect” for macOS). From there, go into the “Application” tab and locate https://cdpn.io in the list of items stored in localStorage. You should see the saved key (mode) and the value (dark or light). Then start clicking on the color scheme options again and watch the mode update in real-time.

Accessibility

Congratulations! If you have got this far, you are considering or already providing versions of your website that are more comfortable for different people to use.

For example:

• People with strong floaters in their eyes may prefer to use dark mode.
• People with astigmatism may be able to focus more easily in light mode.

So, providing both versions leaves fewer people straining their eyes to access the content.

Contrast levels

I want to include a small addendum to this provision of a light and dark mode. An easy temptation is to go full monochrome black-on-white or white-on-black. It’s striking and punchy! I get it. But that’s just it — striking and punchy can also trigger migraines for some people who do a lot better with lower contrasts.

Providing high contrast is great for the people who need it. Some visual impairments do make it impossible to focus and get a sharp image, and a high contrast level can help people to better make out the word shapes through a blur. Minimum contrast levels are important and should be exceeded.

Thankfully, alongside other media queries, we can also query prefers-contrast which accepts values for no-preference, more, less, or custom.

In the following example (which uses :has() and color-mix()), a <select> element is displayed to offer contrast settings. When “Low” is selected, a filter of contrast(75%) is placed across the page. When “High” is selected, CanvasText and Canvas are used unmixed for text color and background color:

Adding a quick high and low contrast theme gives your visitors even more choice for their reading comfort. Look at that — now you have three contrast levels in both dark and light modes — six color schemes to choose from!

ARIA-pressed

ARIA stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications and is designed for adding a bit of extra info where needed to screen readers and other assistive tech.

The words “where needed” do heavy lifting here. It has been said that, like apostrophes, no ARIA is better than bad ARIA. So, best practice is to avoid putting it everywhere. For the most part (with only a few exceptions) native HTML elements are good to go out of the box, especially if you put useful text in your buttons!

The little bit of ARIA I use in this demo is for adding the aria-pressed attribute to the buttons, as unlike a radio group or select element, it’s otherwise unclear to anyone which button is the “active” one, and ARIA helps nicely with this use case. Now a screen reader will announce both its accessible name and whether it is in a pressed or unpressed state along with a button.

Following is an example code snippet with all the ARIA code bolded — yes, suddenly there’s lots more! You may find more elegant (or DRY-er) ways to do this, but showing it this way first makes it more clear to demonstrate what’s happening.

Our buttons have ids, which we have used to target them with some more handy consts at the top. Each time we switch mode, we make the button’s aria-pressed value for the selected mode true, and the other two false:

const html = document.querySelector("html");
const mode = localStorage.getItem("mode");
const lightSwitch = document.querySelector('#lightSwitch');
const darkSwitch = document.querySelector('#darkSwitch');
const autoSwitch = document.querySelector('#autoSwitch');

if (mode === "light") switchLight();
if (mode === "dark") switchDark();

function switchAuto() {
  html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "light dark");
  localStorage.removeItem("mode");
  lightSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","false");
  darkSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","false");
  autoSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","true");
}

function switchLight() {
  html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "light");
  localStorage.setItem("mode", "light");
  lightSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","true");
  darkSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","false");
  autoSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","false");
}

function switchDark() {
  html.style.setProperty("color-scheme", "dark");
  localStorage.setItem("mode", "dark");
  lightSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","false");
  darkSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","true");
  autoSwitch.setAttribute("aria-pressed","false");
}

On load, the buttons have a default setting, which is when the “Auto” mode button is active. Should there be any other mode in the localStorage, we pick it up immediately and run either switchLight() or switchDark(), both of which contain the aria-pressed changes relevant to that mode.

<button id="autoSwitch" aria-pressed="true" type="button" onclick="switchAuto()">Auto</button>
<button id="lightSwitch" aria-pressed="false" type="button" onclick="switchLight()">Light</button>
<button id="darkSwitch" aria-pressed="false" type="button" onclick="switchDark()">Dark</button>

The last benefit of aria-pressed is that we can also target it for styling purposes:

button[aria-pressed="true"] {
  background-color: transparent;
  border-width: 2px;
}

Finally, we have a nice little button switcher, with its state clearly shown and announced, that remembers your choice when you come back to it. Done!

Outroduction

Or whatever the opposite of an introduction is…

…don’t let yourself get dragged into the old dark vs light mode argument. Both are good. Both are great! And both modes are now easy to create at once. At the start of your next project, work or hobby, do not give in to fear and pick a side — give both a try, and give in to choice.

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