Did you know that you can apply the designs from your favorite websites to your intranet design? Read on to learn how!
The designs from your favorite websites can be applied to your intranet design. Read on to learn how!
Some of the website designs from the ‘90s were so awful, they make me cringe. You know what I’m talking about, the sites full of Comic Sans font and animated GIFs? To think how far web design has come since then is pretty amazing. However, I have some bad news and good news for you. The bad news is that some of your intranets still look like those cringeworthy ‘90s websites. The good news, they don’t have to.
With web design evolving so fast it can be hard to keep your intranet looking fresh and up to date with the current design trends – but that doesn’t mean it’s not important! I spoke with our very talented graphic designer Ellie on what the top design trends are now and how you can apply them to your intranet.
Five ways you can revamp your intranet design easily
1. Visual elements: A picture is worth a thousand words
People are extremely visual, and capable of processes visual information almost instantaneously. For this reason, try swapping out some of your text with images. Using storyboard, you are able to add a visual explanation to your top content. It’s a great way for users to recognize instantly if there’s new content to review on the intranet.
You can add content to your storyboard in versions IC 14.5 Elevate Experience, or later. Just click on the storyboard icon in the admin bar at the top of your page, click ‘add a story’, upload a link to your video or content and an image.
2. Big, bold typography: Simple yet powerful
Typography is a simple tool with a big impact on your intranet. It’s able to convey personality, evoke emotion and sets the overall tone on the website. It’s a great tool to use for simplifying the process of scanning. Users can make a quick assessment of whether they are about to read content that is relevant to them or urgent. Big and bold typography has become an important trend important due to the rise in the use of multiple devices with sharper resolutions.
TIP: interchanging between sans and serifs are more appealing to your readers, improve user experience, and create a more engaging intranet.
Intranet Connections provides users with a default set of fonts used for the Intranet Connections application theme. If you’d like to add custom fonts, check out our Help Center for step by step instructions.
3. Flat design 2.0: New and improved intranet design
Flat design 2.0 is found in nearly all web designs these days. The design still encompasses the sleek and minimalistic characteristics of the original Flat, but instead of removing all multidimensional elements, such as textures, drop shadows and gradients, it uses subtle gradients and shadows to move it a bit closer to a 3D look.
A great place to include flat 2.0 icons is in your ‘Company News’ widget. When you’re adding a new announcement to your company news, at the bottom of the widget you can find an option to select a custom icon to accompany your announcement. Not only does including a flat 2.0 icon look great, but they help catch users’ attention without distracting them with too many details.
Incorporating flat 2.0 design trend into your intranet design is relatively simple. Simply upload images with shadows or gradients to your intranet to use in the background design.
4. Minimalism: Less is more
Negative and/or white space is an important part of every design and key in a minimalist web design. With an emphasis on simplicity, it helps keep the focus on important content by removing unnecessary elements. Minimalist design focuses on the use of balance, alignment, and contrast. It has recently grown to be a very popular web design trend.
Applying minimalism to your intranet design involves cutting back on any superfluous elements. Try not to overcrowd your home page with too many apps or widgets, as this can distract users from the important content. You can always create other pages for your favorite widgets that aren’t homepage worthy.
Try replacing content with visuals, and removing apps or widgets that distract the user from what they really should be focusing on.
5. Vibrant colors & gradients: Bring life to your intranet
Deciding on the right color scheme for your intranet can be tricky. Muted, dull colors palettes are becoming a thing of the past as rich, vibrant color palettes and irregular shares with blur and distortion effects are popular and can help capture attention. A common place for gradients we’re seeing is in secondary elements such as hovers, titles, 3D elements, and icons. That doesn’t mean you should clash with your brand colors, but you should consider adding a pop of color where you can. Be careful – having too many competing, bold colors on your intranet can be distracting.
Try using a duotone background or header image, another popular color trend. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to hear a duotone color scheme is a color scheme of only two colors. An easy way to create a duotone image is by taking a grayscale photo and adding a bright color over top with a slight opacity.
Modern intranet design
I think we can expect to see most of the existing trends in web design for quite some time. Don’t be afraid to try applying some of them to your intranet design, your employees will thank you for it!
Need some more design inspiration? Download our ‘5 Best Practices for Intranet Design’ eBook! It is full of great tips, tricks and best practices for intranet design. Or, request a live demo with one of our product specialists to see our intranet design tools in action.
Looking for some more intranet design insights? Book your FREE DEMO call with our product specialist to see our intranet design tools in action. Not sure about a demo? Then take our complimentary internal communications assessment to see how your intranet efforts stack up!
