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Migration Cloud: Comment surmonter les craintes et saisir les opportunités

Migration Cloud: Comment surmonter les craintes et saisir les opportunités

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La migration vers le cloud peut sembler effrayante, mais elle offre de nombreuses opportunités. Découvrez comment surmonter vos craintes et saisir ces opportunités !

## Croissance du Cloud Computing au cours des dernières Décennies

Testing is a key factor in the success of cloud computing. It is essential to ensure that applications, services, and infrastructure are secure and reliable. Testing helps to identify and fix any issues before they become a problem. It also helps to ensure that the cloud environment is able to meet the needs of users. Testing should be done regularly and should include both automated and manual tests.

Depuis plus d’une décennie, le cloud computing est une tendance majeure. En 2015, sa croissance annuelle à trois chiffres a été enregistrée. Bien que, à la fin de 2019, les plus grands fournisseurs de cloud aient connu une croissance plus lente, à seulement 31 % par an, et que cette croissance devrait diminuer en 2020 et 2021 à mesure que l’industrie mûrit, la croissance du cloud a tout de même surpassé celle de nombreux autres secteurs.

De plus, en 2020, le marché du cloud a connu une croissance plus rapide qu’en 2019 selon certains critères. Cela s’est produit malgré la grave récession économique. La raison de cette croissance est l’augmentation de la demande provoquée par la pandémie, les confinements et le passage au travail à distance.

Le test est un facteur clé de la réussite du cloud computing. Il est essentiel de s’assurer que les applications, services et infrastructures sont sûrs et fiables. Le test permet d’identifier et de corriger les problèmes avant qu’ils ne deviennent un problème. Il aide également à s’assurer que l’environnement cloud est en mesure de répondre aux besoins des utilisateurs. Les tests doivent être effectués régulièrement et doivent inclure des tests automatisés et manuels.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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OTT Application Testing: What It Is and Why You Can’t Do Without It

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Over two years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic completely changed the business landscape for dozens of industries. For example, the eCommerce industry saw a meteoric rise, while cinemas and theatres have not yet fully recovered from the multiple nationwide lockdowns.

One of the industries whose rapid growth was also triggered by the coronavirus pandemic is the OTT or Over-the-Top industry. For millions of people stuck at home for months on end, with little to no social interaction, OTT services have become the go-to entertainment channel. Subsequently, the number of available streaming services also skyrocketed, and new players are regularly unveiled.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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Modern Application Security Requires Defense in Depth

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Perimeter security has been dying a slow death over the better part of a decade, as breaches of the corporate network have become commonplace. Most organizations now find it obvious that trusting devices and users merely for being « on the corpnet » is insufficient to maintain security in the face of evolving threats.

At the same time, the re-platforming of business applications to a SaaS model, coupled with a more mobile and distributed workforce, has made the need to « VPN into a corpnet » feel archaic and cumbersome. The pandemic created the perfect storm around these two long-term trends, accelerating this slow death into a fast one. Adopting a zero-trust architecture is no longer negotiable for any organization that wants to stay alive.

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4 Founder-Led Brands That Are Done Right

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When you hear the word “leadership,” do you think of a particular person?

If you’d been asked that question anytime before the 1900s, chances are you’d think of an accomplished politician or a battle-tested general. These were the people leading society for most of recorded history. Today, you might have someone else in mind.

Since the industrial era, the US has birthed a pantheon of founders who’ve arguably led our society as much as any statesman or president. We put Rockefeller and Ford right next to Lincoln and Jefferson. Think about it; these guys haven’t just changed the US; they’ve changed how the entire world lives and does business.

Founders of successful companies today command even larger amounts of capital and power than JD and Henry. With the rise of social media, they are often thrust to the forefront of their brands and the public, whether they like it or not. Some manage the responsibility better than others.

In my opinion, the best businesses use all that capital, manpower, and name recognition to do more than simply make a profit. By leading with authenticity, inspiring positive action, and influencing their brand’s vision for innovation – they try to make a change.

I wanted to take a minute to reflect on some modern founder-led brands I think are doing a killer job of creating unique, world-changing businesses and company cultures. I also want to discuss the lessons I have learned from them.

Elon Musk – Tesla

When talking about founder-led brands of the 21st century, it’s hard to pass over electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla and its outspoken CEO, Elon Musk. Love him or loathe him, he belongs in any conversation on influential founders.

While Musk isn’t technically the founder of Tesla, he is one hundred percent responsible for the company’s direction over the past decade. I think two of the strongest leadership points for Musk are his focus on branding and innovation.

Tesla created showrooms and charging stations long before his business had the sales to justify the expense. People saw the name Tesla everywhere, got curious about it, and now that’s paying off big time. Tesla today is at the forefront of the EV industry while all the other car companies play catch-up.

Behind the scenes, Tesla was also early to create a vertically-integrated supply chain – giving it almost complete control over its product and logistics. That’s another feature with a hefty upfront price tag but paid off when the pandemic hit. Now the biggest automakers in the world are rushing to copy that model.

Musk arguably even convinced China to deregulate foreign ownership of automotive companies. That’s hard to prove. However, China changed its rules around foreign ownership of EV companies shortly after he refused to enter the country.

Arguably, Tesla today is one of the frontrunners in redefining how traditional companies run. Musk is known to hate bureaucracy and traditional hierarchies. He hires other people to take care of bureaucratic processes for him.

Musk is also known for hiring relatively young, hard-working employees into high-power management positions in the company and letting them prove themselves. That inspires extreme loyalty from his employees from an early age. Musk’s focus on efficiency and rejection of traditional hierarchies has sparked a small revolution in tech companies.

Finally, I respect Musk because he has goals beyond showing year-over-year growth to shareholders. That’s hard to do day in and day out.

Sara Blakely – Spanx

Sara Blakely is an example of a founder with her hands in every part of her business, from product creation to sales. Most importantly, she created an authentic company culture with values she felt the business world lacked.

For those who know her story, Spanx very nearly didn’t happen. Blakely pitched her slimming undergarment to multiple women’s brands run by men. Most told her it would never work.

It might seem silly now, but men used to think they knew women’s fashion better than women. It wasn’t until one executive gave Blakely’s product to his daughters to try out that he agreed to start stocking Spanx. It’s a great example of how businesses can make a lot of money by listening to their customers.

Besides founding a women’s clothing company that sells products women want, Blakely strived to bring “feminine energy” into the workplace. I saw this poignant quote from her in an article:

“Twenty-one years ago when I started Spanx, I ended up in the paper in Atlanta, and I was at a cocktail party and a couple of guys came up to me and they said, ‘Sara, we read about you. Congratulations! We heard you invented something.’ And I said, ‘Yes I did, I’m so excited.’ They said, ‘Business is war,’ and then they pat me on the shoulder and they kind of laughed at each other. I went back home to my apartment that night. I was 29 and I just thought, I’m not going to war. I’m going to do this very differently. I’m going to honor a lot of feminine principles — intuition, empathy, kindness. Just allowing myself to be vulnerable through this process. And of course, a lot of the masculine energy has helped me also — it was a balance. But I wasn’t going to do it by squashing the feminine.”

Blakely worked hard to create a sales-oriented company culture that was purposely welcoming from that point forward. She regularly scheduled “oops meetings” where employees could stand up and say how they messed up and turn it into a funny story. At Spanx, it was okay to make mistakes and learn from them.

Blakely wanted everything about her product to be fun, including the way it was sold. She created a mandatory boot camp for salespeople, which, among other things, requires employees to perform standup comedy. Little things like that resonated with people and made Spanx synonymous with “fun.” Even famous actresses were flashing their Spanx on the red carpet.

The lesson we can all learn from Spanx and Blakely is that fun and positive energy are great marketing tools for any business. Many companies try to push a fun culture publicly without any authentic leadership that genuinely exemplifies that narrative, they won’t have the same effect. Blakely’s story of Spanx is not just a story of the brand but a story of her life and the experiences that shaped her vision and goals.

Jack Dorsey – Block (FKA Square)

While better known for founding Twitter, Jack Dorsey has recently been in the news for his move to solely running payment processing business Block. I admire Dorsey because he radically encourages his teams to think differently about how they work.

Dorsey is known for optimizing ways to stay productive and focused throughout the day. He manages through unconventional tactics like communicating only through voice memos on his phone that he runs through transcription apps. He says this prevents him from being sidetracked by distractions on his computer. I think that kind of mindfulness is necessary now more than ever.

Dorsey tries to bring this level of focus to his interactions with his employees too. I saw a great quote from him in this article discussing computer-less meetings at Block.

“When phones are down and laptops are closed, the team can discuss any issue at hand without distraction. We can actually focus and not just spend an hour together but make that time meaningful — and if that time is 15 minutes, then it’s 15 minutes and then we move on with our lives.”

Besides limiting distractions, Dorsey is known to walk five miles to work daily, theme each day, and create detailed agendas and goals for each team meeting. In his former company, Twitter, the culture was frequently described as a space where employees could speak freely to management about things they wanted to change.

On that subject, Dorsey has been known to push hard for employee control in his companies. Perhaps ironically, he was also quoted saying he wants Twitter to break away from its co-founders’- vision and control, calling founder-led companies “severely limiting.” However, it still seems he has some sort of vision for the world that he wants to bring around via Block.

His business goals are visionary, pushing the boundaries of innovation in the financial world.

Dorsey is a known cryptocurrency enthusiast but had pushback from the Twitter team, including his CFO, about making a crypto-centric product. His move to payments processor, Block, seems to be a bid to follow his passion and exert his vision on the world.

Block has since made headlines for being extremely bullish on cryptocurrencies, while many have expressed doubts. Dorsey even changed the business’s name to Block to better reflect its focus on blockchain and famously purchased $50 million worth of Bitcoin in 2020. All the while, Dorsey has been quietly creating arms of his business in the hopes of improving BTC’s usefulness. That may pay off down the line.

Melanie Perkins – Canva

I identify strongly with Melanie Perkins, co-founder of graphic design SaaS, Canva. Besides being roughly the same age, we both came from nondescript beginnings with no background in entrepreneurship or tech.

Canva is an excellent example of a business created by becoming intimately familiar with a customer problem and executing. Perkins spent years teaching people how to use design platforms like Adobe Creative Suite because they were so complicated. Taking that knowledge, she started a simple product to help customers create high school yearbooks. That expanded into a super app covering every aspect of design.

This super-app has unlocked a way for millions to learn design and produce high-quality content at any skill level. The cost to use Canva is many times lower than anything else on the market.

While Canva is an amazing product, what I like most about Perkins is that she believes business serves a higher purpose than maximizing profits.

When she was suddenly thrust into the limelight with a $40 billion valuation, people were even more impressed by Perkins’ philanthropic goals. She vowed to donate a 30 percent stake in Canva to a charity dedicated to eliminating poverty (about $12 billion). She is also known to regularly fundraise for 25,000 different nonprofits through her app. She doesn’t just inspire people with words, but by actions, she’s actually taking.

Canva is very public about its ethos. I like their values because they are general yet avoid the jargon many companies fall into. They are:

  • To be a force for good and empower others;
  • Pursue excellence;
  • Be a good human;
  • Make complex things simple;
  • Set crazy big goals and make them happen.

Besides revolutionizing how modern businesses design and harness goodwill marketing, Canva was also one of the forerunners of the remote work trend.

Most of Canva’s “Canvanauts” worked from homes worldwide even before the pandemic. Canva showed a lot of tired old businesses that you could still run a successful company without having employees in the office 24/7.

How I Try to Learn From the Best

Finally, I want to talk about what I am trying to contribute to my team and society with my current business, startup acquisition marketplace, MicroAcquire.

As I’ve mentioned, I think it is very much on myself as a founder to set the tone of my business – and that starts with who I hire. When I’m searching for new employees to join the “#Micromafia” I not only look for productive workers, I look for people I genuinely enjoy spending time with. It’s the best feeling in the world to go to meetings where you leave thinking, “That was really fun.”

Besides creating a great team, I’ve tried to address another problem I see again and again at major tech companies: employee burnout. There’s a reason the average tenure of a tech employee is three years.

I love working on startups. It’s like playing a video game for me, and it’s probably why I’m a founder. That said, I know my employees don’t always feel the same way. As CEO, I make sure my team knows I want them to live their lives outside of MicroAcquire.

On the business side of things, I take cues from the best. Like Musk and Dorsey, I want to preemptively create features that I know our customers will love. I knew people wanted an easy way to sell their startups because I wished I’d had one back when I was doing it.

Like Spanx and Tesla, I also strongly believe in the power of innovative branding – and I make sure we spend in areas that will give us significant returns down the line.

For example, we’ve made it easy to get MicroAcquire merchandise online completely free. The extra exposure we get from tech people rocking MicroAcquire t-shirts is more than worth the cost. We also created our own media publication Bootstrappers.com to tell the founder stories we thought major publications had missed. That’s been a huge hit with our customers, who also happen to be founders. These people traditionally have had to spam inboxes and pay for press because they didn’t raise billions in funding.

Finally, like Blakely and Perkins, I also want to actively listen to customer feedback and make sure we create a necessary and desired product. That’s why I make sure we’re constantly engaging with our community both on our website and social media. Many of the features we’ve added are just things we’ve heard mentioned multiple times from customers.

So far, I love the community we’ve created online and in the office. I don’t claim to have the winning formula, but I feel we are making a real difference out there. We’re lucky to live in a world with so many smart people getting their ideas out and making a positive change in the world.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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Why 1 Good UX Is Worth 5 Engineers w/ Toast’s Brad Pielech

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Few companies have mastered making products consumers actually want to use like Toast.

A $30 billion giant in the tech-food business, Toast faced their worst case scenario during the pandemic when the restaurants at the heart of their business were all forced to shut down.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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The 5 Healthcare AI Trends Technologists Need to Know

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Healthcare has been at the epicenter of everything we do for two years. While the pandemic has been a significant driver of the conversation, healthcare technology—artificial intelligence (AI) specifically—has been experiencing explosive growth. One only needs to look at the funding landscape: more than 40 startups have raised at least $20 million in funding specifically to build AI solutions for healthcare applications.

But what’s driving this growth? The venture capital trail alone won’t help us understand the trends contributing to AI adoption in healthcare. But the “2022 AI in Healthcare Survey” will. For the second year, Gradient Flow and John Snow Labs asked 300 global respondents what they’re experiencing in their AI programs—from the individuals using them to the challenges and the criteria used to build solutions and validate models. These are the top five trends that emerged from the research. 

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3 Essential Design Trends, March 2022

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This month all of our web design trends have a common theme – imagery. Whether it’s seasonal or just coincidence, there’s a shift in the styles and types of images on many designs right now. One thing that might push these design trends is a relaxation of COVID-spurred rules worldwide or even fatigue from the pandemic.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

1. Little Images Everywhere

The jury is still out on whether we love or hate this design trend – tiny images (and videos) everywhere.

The thing that’s nice is there is a lot to see and interact with. The thing that’s challenging is that these designs can feel a bit unbalanced and all over the place.

Most of these designs feature four or more images or videos at a time. That can be a lot for a user to digest when we are accustomed to having just one thing to look at in the hero area.

Those four or more images then include all of the other user interface elements that you would expect on the page – navigation, large headline, secondary text, scroll, or engagement interaction. It can be a lot to decipher.

Tokyu Garden City does it with a mix of still and moving images with sliders and other animations. The images are always changing and moving, and there’s constantly something new to look at with movement at the top and bottom of the screen.

Buro Jantzen takes the tiny image idea to an extreme with ten images on the homepage. And every one is smaller than a postage stamp. There is a cool effect that happens with each image though. On hover, the small image pops into the large black box at a size where you can really see the photo.

Oliver Guy uses a combination of video images on his website, which makes perfect sense for his industry of drone photography. There’s some interesting hover animation happening that allows you to see additional video clips without leaving the homepage. The contrast of small video on the white background makes this design easy to understand.

 

 

2. Big Detail Photography

Photographic details in all their glory. Images and elements that are so in your face that you can see every detail. That’s majorly trending in website design.

Big detail photography and videography is one of those image trends that can be so visually interesting that you can’t look away. It has other benefits, too, such as facilitating decision-making for e-commerce or helping someone better understand what an item is or the overall messaging.

Each of these examples shows something larger than life-size.

Karak creates ceramic tiles. The primary background image is so big and with such detail that it almost only serves as texture for the design. But it is paired with a smaller image and video that pull everything together for a complete understanding. The big detail image is beautiful and exciting and provides an extra layer of information.

Wuillemin Fleuristes features an off-balanced hero image with a large floral detail. What’s interesting about this design choice for a detail image is that it is the only image on the screen and partially obscured by a tinted box and text element. The overall design draws the eye but may leave the user wanting to see a little more of the image.

Horage pushes its watch in your face with motion in a video that zooms the product closer and closer into view. The combination of detailed video with very little text is a bold choice for e-commerce and might work because this item is still in the preorder phase. Detailed imaging is designed to help create a desire for the product.

 

 

3. Big Faces are Back

After two years of not having that many faces in design projects, designers are going big and bold and showing people again.

One of the reasons we haven’t seen as many faces in design projects is because there was concern over how to show people – masked or maskless, alone or in crowds – and it caused more concern than was worth just going another way.

But projects with big faces are back in a major way. And it’s refreshing to make virtual eye contact again.

There are plenty of ways to do it, as outlined in each of these examples.

Glassbox Media uses a full-screen oversized video on the homepage. You can see the subject’s eyes and feel engaged with the person on the screen. She seems happy, and the size and scale of the face make you feel almost like you are in a room with her, ready to have a conversation.

Reamarie uses smaller still images with tight crops to bring you into the faces on the screen. There are more, bigger faces throughout the scroll as well so that the user feels connected to the people and product. Even if an image isn’t super large, a tight crop can make it feel bigger and create the same level of engagement as something that has more size on the screen.

Recruit Holdings Co. uses a trio of people together, happy and smiling, to establish a connection with website visitors. The entire design features similar images throughout and makes you feel like you want to be a part of what they are offering. Note that the people are close together and without masks; that’s a culture shift we are starting to see in a lot of imagery.

 

 

Conclusion

Photography, videography, and image trends can be driving factors for website design projects. The types of images selected can set the tone for projects, relate to brand identity, and help engage users.

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Myth-Busting NFTs: 7 Claims Fact-Checked

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With all the marketing aplomb of basement-coders worldwide, NFTs were named with an acronym that does little to clarify their utility.

You probably know by now that NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token; what is perhaps less clear is what “Fungible” actually means; in this context, it means interchangeable.

Consider an ounce of platinum. That platinum is fungible, meaning it can be exchanged for any other ounce of platinum. Now consider a piece of jewelry made from one ounce of platinum. That jewelry is not interchangeable with any other ounce of platinum; it has the same core materials, but it has unique characteristics that may be artistically valuable, such as shape, or craft. The jewelry is non-fungible.

The letter that actually matters in NFT is T for Token. Tokens are little chunks of a blockchain that is a universally agreed dataset. You don’t need to know how it works any more than you need to understand how a computer processor works; you just need to know it’s in there.

Like any new technology, NFTs are surrounded by propaganda, counter-propaganda, skepticism, evangelism, and Facebook-confusion. In this post, we’ll look at some of the common misconceptions so you can develop an informed opinion.

1. NFTs Are Bad For The Environment

We’ll tackle this one first because it’s the classic argument leveled against anything in the crypto-space, whether Bitcoin or NFTs, and it’s nonsensical.

The root of this myth is that cryptocurrency transactions use vast amounts of electricity, the generation of which is terrible for the environment. The answer is threefold:

Firstly, electricity is used to run computers that maintain a blockchain, such as Ethereum. The blockchain is maintained whether NFTs are minted (registered) or not.

Secondly, NFTs tend to be minted on blockchains like Ethereum that are moving to less resource-intensive models, blockchains like Solana that already have less resource-intensive models, or blockchains like Algorand that are already carbon-neutral.

Lastly, the fact is that electricity is not inherently planet-killing. Renewables like solar and wind are perfectly capable of powering the grid; it’s just that power companies make higher profits by burning fossil fuels. That swanky new electric car you’ve bought so you can drive guilt-free is fuelled with fossil fuels on the power company’s end (and that’s before you consider the damage done getting those minerals out of the ground).

Until the computer you’re using is solar-powered, repairable, and upgradable, anything digital is terrible for the environment; NFTs are as bad, but no more so, than anything digital.

2. NFTs Are Just [Insert Patronizing Economic Metaphor Here]

NFTs, and crypto in general, are frequently referred to as a Ponzi Scheme. In the 1920s, Charles Ponzi duped investors into handing over cash. Returns were paid to early investors with the income from new investors. Early investors made a lot of money, and later investors lost everything.

One of the key characteristics of a Ponzi Scheme is that it’s a confidence trick that presents itself as low-risk. NFTs as an investment are widely understood to be high-risk. Calling NFTs a Ponzi Scheme is an excellent way of letting people know you don’t know what a Ponzi Scheme is.

In the 17th century, the price of tulip bulbs reached astronomical proportions. The Dutch tulip trade was a complex economic investment system that eventually collapsed, thanks in part to a global pandemic. Ever since, Tulpenmanie (Tulip Mania, in English) has been a byword for an economic bubble.

NFTs are frequently linked to Tulip Mania, thanks partly to the prices and the expectation (or hope) that the market will collapse. However, if you drive through the Netherlands today, you’ll see vast fields of tulips. They’re not being grown because they’re worthless.

While demand may fluctuate, it doesn’t fluctuate as much as media hysteria implies. And ultimately, tulips are nice.

3. You Can Buy And Sell NFTs

This is where pedantry plays a role. You cannot buy and sell NFTs; NFTs are the vehicle by which you conduct transactions for digital (or, in some cases, physical) goods and services.

If you have software installed on your computer, you probably have a license key. The license key identifies you as holding certain rights over that software, such as being allowed to use it to produce digital goods of your own. The license key is how the company identifies you as the individual to whom it has sold those rights.

NFTs are license keys for digital goods that are recorded on a blockchain instead of being held in a single database.

4. NFTs Can Be Easily Copied

When I was a kid in the 90s, I would record music off the radio with a tape player. I’d make mix-tapes and give them away. I was, in every literal sense, pirating music. And it wasn’t just me; home-taping kept the cassette industry going for decades past its use-by date. Despite this, the music industry did not collapse.

Art is even easier to copy than music because there’s no risk of a vapid DJ wittering over the intro to I Wanna Be Adored.

On my morning commute, I pass a shop that sells art prints. Around 80% are screen prints of Marilyn Monroe. They are original prints made by an artist and sold for not inconsiderable amounts. Not one of those pieces diminishes the quality, importance, or financial value of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe prints in New York’s MoMA.

The difference is that MoMA’s Warhols have provenance — they can be tracked to a time and place and authenticated as by Warhol. Precisely the same provenance that NFTs provide digital artists.

5. You Can Get Rich From NFTs

Earning money, potentially a vast amount of money, is one of the main driving factors behind the boom in NFTs.

But the truth is that while it is possible to make a lot of money — some NFTs sell for millions of dollars — most NFTs sell for a modest amount.

If you are an accomplished artist with original ideas, you may make money from selling your art as NFTs. If you are an accomplished trader capable of recognizing quality, you may make money from buying and selling NFTs. However, very few people get rich.

6. NFT Resale Rights Undermine Value

NFTs have many potential uses, but the earliest adoption has been in digital art. The main economic benefit to artists is not just an easy way to sell their art but a widely accepted royalty system in which the original artist receives a commission every time the artwork is resold. It represents the ongoing investment the artist is making by continuing to produce and promote their work.

It might seem a strange way to approach ownership, but resale rights are not new in the art world. In the EU and the UK, the resale rights of artists are legally recognized. In France, the legal rights of the artist or the artist’s descendants to be compensated from the sale of artwork have been established in law for over a century.

Despite high-profile artists like Robert Rauschenberg fighting for resale rights, and legislation in New York and California supporting the concept, resale rights are still not recognized in the US.

NFTs introduce a fairer system that grants the same rights to all artists, that Europeans already enjoy.

7. NFTs Are Worthless

Anything with value, whether physical currency, NFTs, or a block of wood, only has value because two or more people agree it has value.

The most expensive baseball card in the world is reportedly a mint-condition Honus Wagner, priced at $3m. It might be hard to understand why anyone would pay $3m for a piece of cardboard with an image of a 1950s sportsman on it, but apparently, someone would.

All goods, all the things we spend money on, are worth what we agree they are worth. To me, a tulip bulb is worth more than a baseball card, but who knows, perhaps you don’t like tulips.

There are plenty of flaws in the systems that use NFTs, and there are plenty of detractors, but if you want to create and sell artwork and someone wants to buy it from you, NFTs are an excellent way of facilitating that transaction.

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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5 Creative Management Trends to Watch in 2022

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Yesterday’s creativity won’t keep pace with tomorrow’s requirements; businesses need speed and agility without sacrificing creative quality.

“The creativity that was needed in the past is not the creativity that is needed today,” according to Matthew Rayback, a creative director at Adobe. He’s not talking about the function of creativity but rather about the process of creative management in a marketing context. 

What is needed today? Speed and agility without sacrificing quality. 

Why? Because the pace of change has accelerated. As Rex Salisbury, a deal partner for the venture firm a16z noted early in the pandemic, “Businesses of all kinds are experiencing two years’ worth of digitization compressed into months.”

This accelerated digital transformation has put pressure on marketing teams to turn campaigns around faster. In turn, that places pressure on creative teams to generate the requisite creative for those campaigns. Leaders need to sharpen their awareness of the unfolding creative management trends to keep pace. To that end, below are five such trends to watch in 2022. 

1. In-House Creative Teams Continue to Grow

Companies have been building in-house creative teams for the better part of a decade. A 2018 study by Forrester Research and the In-House Agency Forum (IHAF) found the number of in-house teams has grown 22% in the last ten years or so. As The Wall Street Journal reported, more than half of advertisers (64%) have shifted their creative organizations to an in-house team.  

According to a more recent version of that same study, the in-housing movement didn’t stop throughout the pandemic. It revealed, “80% of respondents said they have brought more marketing assignments in-house since the onset of the pandemic, with 50% saying the increase was directly triggered by the events of the past two years.”

Businesses seem well-satisfied with the results because the urge to in-house is poised to grow beyond creative teams. For example, a recent survey by the customer intelligence company Axciom found about 50% of respondents believe the “in-housing is currently a top marketing objective, and 40% expect it will remain a top priority in the coming years.”

2. Outside Agencies Hired for Specialized Skills

Despite the in-housing trend, there is still opportunity for agencies, consultants, and freelancers, particularly those with specialized skills. Even the consumer-packaged goods giant Proctor & Gamble, a leading example of brands bringing marketing and creative teams in-house, still needs outside service providers.

Indeed, while in-house creative teams produce the lion’s share of creative work, the vast majority (86%) also continue to partner with agencies and freelancers; according to our own research, published in our 2021 Creative Management Report, which was facilitated by Lytho (formerly inMotionNow) and based on a survey of 400 creatives and marketers. 

When the survey asked creatives why they hire outside resources, the top reason was access to specialized skills (60%). That was followed in a distant second by a need for increased capacity (44%), help with developing strategy (24%), and, lastly, to get work done faster (20%). 

“It is very unusual for an in-house team to have no outside resources that they lean on,” wrote Alex Blum of Blum Consulting Partners, Inc. in a written assessment of the survey results.

He says there are two primary ways to partner with agencies. “First, for overflow capacity. There is always a need for more creative resources, and agencies can offer that flexibility without the cost of maintaining larger teams,” he wrote. “Second, in-house teams can divide areas of ownership with an agency based on the skill sets they have in-house.”

3. The Creative Process Evolves

Marketing today is dominated by an insatiable thirst for fresh content, produced and polished by creative teams. The demand for that content continues to explode. 

What does this portend for creative teams? Despite adding headcount, creative requests exceed the creative team’s capacity to produce it – even as lead times shrink. Matthew Rayback, the creative director at Adobe, suggested the creative process must evolve. 

He likens creatives to an auto factory, where “creatives used to be the assembly line to make a single car.” However, today, creatives are tasked with creating more cars, each with unique adjustments such as personalization. 

“The assembly line we built can’t accommodate that speed or volume,” he says. So the whole factory – the entire creative process – must be overhauled to adapt. 

4. Quantitative Measurement Drives Creative Priorities

Current methods for measuring the value of creative teams center on outputs. That is to say, the metrics tracked tend to quantify the number of creative projects in progress, the rounds of review, and the number of projects completed over time. 

These metrics are important, but alone they are insufficient. A complementary way to prioritize large volumes of creative requests is focusing on those tasks most likely to move the business needle. The barrier to achieving this is that most creatives aren’t kept informed as to the outcomes of marketing campaigns fueled by their creative efforts. This must change.

With the growing demand for content, the margin of error for applying creative resources to projects that don’t correlate to business results shrinks. Marketing organizations must build a feedback loop that brings quantitative results back to the creative team. In turn, creative teams must learn to use the data to drive their work priorities in collaboration with marketing. 

5. Creative Resource Management Becomes Essential

Resource management is both a leadership concept and technology (or a combination of technologies). It’s a means to plan, track, collaborate and measure creative operations, including people, processes, and budgets.  

Traditionally, planning and tracking of all things creative and marketing occurred in a spreadsheet. It works well when the future is generally predictable – yet cliché as it may be to say it – we are living in a state of uncertainty. 

Like many trends over the last 18-24 months, the global pandemic “forced virtual experiences, disrupted marketing channels and campaigns, and accelerated companies’ transition to digital marketing,” according to Forrester. The research firm calls resource management “essential” because it helps move “planning from static spreadsheets to a dynamic and real-time environment.” 

Final Thoughts

Yogi Berra paraphrased an old Danish proverb when he said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Even so, the pandemic has accelerated trends that were already underway, and these five trends are good examples. More than just watching them, creative and marketing leaders should take steps now to get ahead of them.

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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3 Essential Design Trends, January 2022

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Happy New Year, fabulous new website design trends!

This month’s design trends are a collection of the somewhat unexpected – from NFT website design to large text to illustrations; you won’t see a single photo or video here. Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

NFT Websites

This website design trend has more to do with the greater trends in digital marketplaces and commerce but has value in the design space as well. NFT websites are popping up everywhere.

Marketplaces for non-fungible tokens use modern design effects to draw users in and help them make purchases and view available images. If you haven’t delved into the world of NFTs, they are data units – often in the form of gifs – stored on a blockchain digital ledger. You can buy, sell, and trade these digital nuggets on various marketplaces.

The designs of NFTs could be explained as a trend of their own. Here, we’re focusing on the look and feel of the websites surrounding them. While some designs are relatively primitive, the best marketplaces have a full e-commerce feel with easy-to-use interfaces and a modern design.

Each of these three NFT marketplaces does it a little differently.

Styllar puts a focus on NFT avatars with a minimal aesthetic that gives plenty of room to individual NFTs. Sit on the website too long, though, and hundreds of options begin to cover the screen. Each visual element has a small text element to match that explains each image. It feels like a modern e-commerce experience that instills trust with users because of clean visual patterns. The site itself is just a gateway to a more traditional marketplace, but the calls to action are large, clear, and easy to follow.

OpenSea treats the NFT marketplace more like an art gallery with card-style buttons to look at different elements and images. Everything about the website design is tailored for the mobile user and quick browsing with large areas to click in the card format and easy-to-read headers that help you find your way through the NFT space, whether you want to buy, create, or sell. The site also does one more thing that’s not as common with e-commerce – it explains how to get started in this new digital territory with plenty of resources.

Rarible has an almost social media feel with lots of small blocks showing different NFTs. Digestible content in a grid-based design helps you navigate from images to rankings to what’s trending in NFTs. This site design is set up for high interaction and engagement, also featuring card-style elements and the ability to favorite items before bidding.

The key commonality with NFT website designs is that they are made for mobile users. These sites look good on desktops, but they are highly focused on a mobile, instant gratification user.

 

 

 

Text-Based Hero Headers

A trend in website design from 2021 is bleeding into 2022 with a lot of popularity: Hero headers that are mostly text. These designs have background texture and color, but for the most part, they don’t have a lot of other visuals.

These designs often rely on powerful language or messaging to help get user engagement. A secondary theme is the use of bright colors to help add focus and attention to the typography.

Font choices seem to be fairly neutral, with a lot of thicker sans serifs for the main headline and something a little lighter for secondary text options.
WeTransfer uses a smaller text block with multiple lines to create weight. The off-center placement draws the eye and is interesting even with the neutral background. Stacking elements create a nice focal area that encourages reading.

Halborn Blockchain Security goes with a less traditional font option and flips the color to the text to enhance the visual display. This design also uses an off-center, asymmetrical approach to create focus on the text element. The dark counterweight on the screen is an excellent guide to draw you back to the main hero headline.

FWD goes with giant oversized text elements to create a strong visual focus with this design. Other than the faint animation of the arrows next to “Here’s what they said,” everything is still and static. The color and blocky depth of the background help draw the eye through the text and to clickable elements so that you know what to do next.

 

 

Intricate Illustrations

Another trending design element is the use of intricate illustrations on homepages. These highly detailed images can tell a visual story, help add meaning to messaging, or serve as a remarkable visual element when you don’t have a photo or video.

The great thing about this trend is that the only limitation is your imagination.

Once you find someone to create the illustration (if you can’t do it yourself), the world is open to interpretation.

We are seeing three major themes within this trend, as showcased in the examples.

Multi-layer illustrations with hints of animation, such as the one from Highvibe Network. This illustration used lots of colors, layers, unexpected elements within outlines, and a little animation to pull it all together. The effect is rather stunning and provides a lot of interest for the user.

Realistic, painting-style illustrations, such as the one from Healthline, bring the content to life without real people or images. This technique is especially nice for industries where you may want to anonymize people in images. (Perfect for a healthcare website design because you don’t know if the illustrations are of real people or not.)

Detailed geo shapes and lines, such as the design from Radio Meuh Circus Festival. With great color and lines that draw the eye, this design can keep you looking and finding new depth for a long time. Color also helps draw you into the striking imagery.

 

 

Conclusion

What’s nice about all these design trends is that they have flexible elements that you can use and replicate across industries and projects. The common factor is that they lack traditional dominant imagery, which works exceptionally well.

These trends are likely a result of the worldwide pandemic as well. With less social contact, creating without conducting photo or video shoots is an ideal situation. Good luck trying some of these trending design elements on your own.

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