Ultimate Guide to Hero Images Whether or not you realize it, you judge every website by its visual appeal. And it only takes about 0.05 seconds to form an opinion. That means the hero image (the first photo, graphic, or video people see) has to be eye-catching enough to keep people scrolling the site. High-quality hero images are the key to a great first impression. If done well, they represent the essence of your brand identity and the overall theme of your web page. Yes, it's a lot of weight for one piece of visual content. That's why it's the most heroic of all. This guide will explain how to level up your website with the perfect hero image, from choosing a graphic inspired by the latest design trends to ensuring your image is the optimal size. We'll also walk through hero image examples to spark ideas for your own website. Get ready for some design eye candy. Hero Image In Web Design If engaging visuals are the sprinkles on top of every great design system, a hero image is the shiny, red cherry. It draws your eye in and makes you want more. In web design, a hero image is the first photo, graphic, illustration, or video people see on a web page. It typically incorporates both an image and text in order to convey a company's core message. Hero images sit above the fold and often feature a call to action (CTA) that encourages people...

A Non-Designer's Guide to Visual Hierarchy Ever click on a website, take one look and say "Hm, that's going to be a no" while you look for the exit button? For me, it's usually because of three reasons: the site looks outdated, crowded, or hard to navigate. Bad design can keep your target audience from gaining any interest in your brand. That's why it's important to understand the key design principles that will help you draw your audience in, keep them on the page, and generate conversions. Here's an easy guide on a specific design principle: visual hierarchy. We'll cover all the elements that contribute to visual hierarchy and look at good and bad examples. Visual hierarchy affects what you look at and focus on in a design, whether it's an image, graphic design, or web design. It's a key player in ct (i.e., how information is organized and displayed for easy understanding and navigation) and can greatly impact the user experience (UX). When thinking about visual hierarchy, you want to ask yourself a few questions: What do we want to draw attention to? What actions do we want our users to take? Where does the eye naturally go to and where do they land? Asking these questions will help you use the principles outlined below to create a clear visual hierarchy. What constitutes bad visual hierarchy? When it comes to visual hierarchy, there's a golden rule: If every element appears important,...

Outsourcing a Design Project? Here's How to Write a Design Brief During my career, I have freelanced on and off. The biggest lesson I've learned in working with clients was the importance of setting expectations from the very beginning. It helps both parties get on the same page and can prevent miscommunication down the line. That's why you often have initial discovery calls, set meetings, and draft contracts. Another way to set expectations is by creating a design brief. It's essential in the early stages of your design project, whether you're working with someone in-house or outsourcing it to an agency or independent contractor. Here's everything you need to know about what to include in a design brief and the templates that will help you create one quickly. Think of this brief as a blueprint: It lays out all the information your designer will need to complete the project and helps align both parties on the expectations. Typically, the client (or brand) will fill out most sections in the brief once they know what they're looking for. The assigned designer will then complete it based on conversations with the client. It serves as a baseline from which to build the project. So when would you use a design brief? For: A website (re)design A logo (re)design A (re)branding package Creative assets for social media or ad campaign Video assets What to Include in your Design Brief Template 1. An Overview of...

How To Design An Annual Report An annual report offers a comprehensive overview of your business’s yearly operations. As the content in these reports is heavy-hitting, it’s essential to present it in a way that helps your audience understand and visualize your successes. These reports also incorporate various design elements that support your metrics and create a unique, creative, and visually appealing story of your business activities. In this post, we’ll outline annual report design best-practices, provide a template you can use to create your own, and go over examples of annual reports from other businesses that you can use for inspiration. What is an annual report? As a refresher, an annual report is a document created by businesses that display yearly performance, including successes and challenges. It gives a big-picture view of operations and strategies while also going in-depth on key performance metrics. Annual reports differ from weekly reports in that they address anything and everything that has happened over the past year, including content you’ve already mentioned in weekly, monthly, or any other style of report you’ve made.   Designing an annual report is a careful process, as it is crucial to find a balance between powerful graphics and clarity and understanding. Most reports contain data visualizations, like charts and graphs, to enhance the experience and really call attention to heavy-hitting metrics. Below we'll provide a template that you can use to design an annual report for your business and outline the sections that should be...

The Ultimate Guide to Design Templates If someone asked you to create an infographic, where would you start? Surely not with a blank Google Doc or sheet of paper. No, you’d likely search for an infographic design template to use as a starting point — or at least draw ideas from. Design templates are incredibly helpful tools for today’s marketers. They provide guidance and inspiration for almost all types of content and save precious time and energy. We created this guide to help you make the most of design templates for your business. Keep reading to get started or use the chapter links below to jump ahead. Benefits of Design Templates Good design is valuable, but not everyone can afford to hire a freelance designer or in-house design team. Design templates remove any complicated design steps and equip even the most novice graphic designer to create gorgeous visuals. Here are some other reasons to use design templates. Design templates are convenient and fast. Design templates save marketers (or business owners or even designers) the energy it takes to recreate the same design time and time again. They provide a shortcut so you only have to spend time filling in the critical details. Design templates also save you time. Facing a deadline for print ads or postcards? Preparing for a restaurant launch and need a new menu? Grab a design template, fill in the necessary text, and send it on its way. Design templates are systematized....

The Ultimate Collection of Free Content Marketing Templates Does any aspect of your job intimidate you? For content creators, sometimes the most stressful part of the role can be opening a completely blank document to start a new project. Whether it's writing a blog post, designing an infographic, or creating an ebook, it's challenging to start creating a new piece of content from scratch, especially if you've never done it before. Here in the HubSpot content shop, we want to take the work out of it for you. Instead of trying to master how to create every type of content in existence, cut down on the stress and inefficiency and read about our collection of nearly 400 free, customizable content creation templates. We've broken this list down by each type of content marketing template represented. Jump ahead if you specifically want: Content Management & Calendar Templates Written & Editorial Content Templates Design Content Templates Social Media Content Templates Email Content Templates Content Management & Calendar Templates A Content Planning/Goal-Setting Template (Download the content planning template here.) HubSpot teamed up with Smart Insights to create a content planning template that will help you put together an effective content marketing plan for either your business or those of your clients. These templates will help you complete a SWOT analysis on your content marketing efforts (and develop a plan to improve them), define the right objectives and KPIs for that plan, brainstorm content ideas and map these across...

18 Beautiful New Ebook Templates Did you know that landing pages have the highest conversion rate at 23% than other types of signup forms? But landing pages don't convert visitors to leads all by themselves -- without attractive and compelling offers behind them, they won't generate the tons of leads for your sales team that you want them to. That's why it's so important to create valuable content people want to download, and then package it in a way that's visually appealing to your readers. A big part of the ebook creation process is making it look both professional and attractive so people want to read it and share it. We know not every team has someone in-house who can (or has time to) whip up a slick, highly shareable ebook design. But we have good news: You don't need to be a designer by trade to design beautiful ebooks yourself. With the right resources and approach, it doesn't have to be a daunting task. We created ebook templates to help make this process easier for you -- and they were so popular that we decided to revamp the offer for 18 new-and-improved ebook templates for you. We hope these templates minimize the time you spend on the details of design, allowing you to concentrate on writing valuable, lead-generating content your readers will love. Download the Templates Now Start With One of These Free Ebook Templates Here is a preview of some of the ebooks you'll find in the template bundle: 1. Artistic Theme This template...

How to Create an Ebook From Start to Finish At age 11, I dreamed of being an editor at a major magazine. I even put together my first publication, Teen Scene Magazine, using colored construction paper, yarn, and in-depth feature interviews with ... my dad. Flash forward to today. I've swapped my colored construction paper and yarn for PowerPoint and InDesign. I've replaced my dad with marketing experts and influencers (in the office, that is). And week after week, I have the satisfaction of being an ebook creator. What Is an Ebook? Ebook is short for "electronic book," and uses either a computer, mobile device, or ebook reader to display long-form texts in book form. Ebooks have multiple digital "pages" that people can navigate through, and are often packaged as a PDF document so they can easily be sent from one user to another. What Are the Benefits of an Ebook? Let's say you have an amazing blog full of long-form content. Why in the world would you want to offer your readers an ebook? Is it even worth your time? Here's some advantages ebooks offer content creators: Unlike long-form printed media, an ebook is immediately accessible. You can put it behind an opt-in of some kind, incentivizing your website visitor to become a lead if they want the information. In some ways, ebooks have design capabilities you may not be able to achieve on your blog. After the initial creation of the ebook, you...