Bonus Episode: Web Design with Brittany Baum

Brittany Baum

Brittany Baum

Creative Manager

Gabe Gotay

Gabe Gotay

Senior Marketing Coordinator

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GABE GOTAY

Good afternoon everybody, welcome to this bonus episode of Promo Perspectives. Last week we sat down with Dakota Smith and we talked about SEO. Today I’m sitting down with Brittany Baum, Creative Manager here at SAGE, and we’re going to talk about the other side of the coin. We’re going to talk about web design and web design trends. Brittany, welcome to the show.

BRITTANY BAUM

Hi Gabe, thank you for having me.

GABE GOTAY

Thank you for coming on. Before we get started on web design, why don’t you kind of tell the audience a little bit about who you are and what you do here at SAGE.

BRITTANY BAUM

Of course! So, I am the Creative Manager here at SAGE. Um, basically, what I do is I am a graphic designer and I oversee all the other terrific graphic designers that we have on our team. And we do all the branding for SAGE, so we do all of the emails, the websites, um, all of the print flyers, all of our banner ads, anything that is colorful and um, designed.

GABE GOTAY

And I’ve had the pleasure of working with you, Britney, on a lot of projects here at SAGE, including a lot of website redesigns, either for the main SAGE World website itself or every time we have an upcoming trade show or event. We don’t just use another cookie-cutter page on our website, we usually come up with a fresh design every year. And it’s really cool to get to work with you and your team on that process. So, kind of excited to dive into that process with you a bit here today.

BRITTANY BAUM

Yes, thank you. 

GABE GOTAY

So, to kick us off, why don’t we start before we get into kind of the emerging trends, why don’t we start with the foundation, basic web design principles to kick us off? What are the essential elements to consider when you’re starting to design a new website?

BRITTANY BAUM

Yes, so when I actually start a new site, I start with three elements. First, it’s branding. So, this is coordinating your colors, fonts, your logo, or even creating a mood board to kind of um, have an feel of what the design is going to feel like. Uh, secondly, is know your audience and your message. Um, this is kind of knowing who, who your audience is, um, what taglines are included, things like that. And then third, is where I kind of grab inspiration pieces and pull them together and uh, research trends. So, that’s actually what we’re talking about today.

GABE GOTAY

Well, let’s dive into each of those three things. So, right off the bat, you talked about branding. How important is a company’s branding in the development of a website?

BRITTANY BAUM

Branding is very important. Uh, designing a website with branding consistency can provide a strong connection with your audience while presenting the vision and idea of what your business actually stands for. 

GABE GOTAY

It’s really cool to see the way that comes together. You mentioned that you put together those mood boards. That’s usually like kind of a first step in some of our design processes. And it’s great because you don’t have to spend all of the time, right off the bat, laying out the web page and getting into the nitty-gritty of what goes where. You’re starting off with kind of a just a vision of the overall look and feel, just based on the colors, the style, you know, is there images, is it graphics? Um, and it’s always really cool to see that come together.

Now, you also talked about knowing your audience and your messaging. Um, how do you go about defining your target audience and then tailoring the design to their needs?

BRITTANY BAUM

Right, so that’s kind of what marketing does in general, right? So, you’re um, conducting through market research and identifying who your target audience is. Uh, this is understanding their demographics, their preferences, things like that, that kind of help you in your design. Um, for example, like if, if the Gen Z was my target audience, um, I would maybe include maybe bold, bold uh, typography or um, bright colors or um, things that kind of relate to that demographic in general.

GABE GOTAY

Right, or, you know, lots of … I used to work for a company where a lot of their clientele tended to be an older demographic, and we would have to have large-sized font just because otherwise we would get complaints from our customers that they couldn’t read the font on the website. And we might have thought it looked cool, but if it’s ineffective for the person looking at the site, you’re missing the point right off the bat. Uh and then the very last thing you talked about looking at inspirations and trends. Are you telling me that the entire website isn’t in your brain from the moment we tell you about it?

BRITTANY BAUM

No, not at all! 

GABE GOTAY

So, how do I go about finding some of those inspirations?

BRITTANY BAUM

Of course. So, as a designer, I use some design tools and some design sites that I go to. For example, um, Dribbble is one of them. It’s where designers can go and share their work with other designers. So, that’s Dribbble, with three Bs – dribbble.com. There’s also Behance.com, which is great for designers as well. Um, for website designers, there’s Awwwards.com, again with three Ws – a w w w a r d s. That’s where a lot of web designers come in and share their sites and their user experience through their sites, kind of grabbing ideas from that as well.

I also use Envato Market for designing too, where I can grab fonts and different things, um, images. Um, and then also from images, I use Adobe Stock and Adobe Spark. So, there’s definitely a lot of different design sites that I go to to kind of bring my ideas kind of all together.

GABE GOTAY

Well, you and I were talking beforehand about some of the trends and ideas that have come up in your research because if you were to ask me like what are the trends in web design, I’m going to give you an old answer that’s just based on aesthetics, like uh, I don’t know, a big banner up top or something like that. But obviously, there’s always new things coming out and it’s not always just about aesthetics. A lot of the time, the trends are about the way that people actually engage with the website. And you were telling me about some really cool immersive experiences that are starting to trend, especially moving into 2025. Can you kind of tell me a little bit about that and about some of the VR and AR stuff that’s on the horizon?

BRITTANY BAUM

Of course. Virtual reality and augmented reality are letting users kind of explore that 3D space within your website. They’re also interacting with virtual products and basically kind of playing around as if your website is a digital playground. It’s a big thing that we’re kind of seeing in 2025, especially with e-commerce sites. They are kind of letting your audience try on the virtual product before actually hitting that click-that checkout button – to kind of get an idea of what it’s going to look like before they actually buy the product. 

GABE GOTAY

It’s really cool the way it works, and it might be hard to get across just how powerful that is over this audio podcast, but can you kind of give some examples of some websites that are doing that?

BRITTANY BAUM

Yes, so Warby Parker is one of those websites that are doing that. You can actually try on virtual glasses. So, you go in and there’s a video, and you can take a video of yourself, and those virtual glasses kind of stick to your where your face is so you can see what it’s actually going to look like before you purchase those glasses. Ulta has a virtual platform where you can take a picture of yourself, and it actually expresses what color you want to use on your hair. As a woman, I know that can be kind of scary having permanent color on your hair and not knowing what it’s going to look like. So, they actually have where you could take a photo of yourself and you can try on different colors before you actually buy the product. Home Depot, they have where you can take a picture of your room and you can put in whatever um colors you want or elements that you want on your walls so you can look at it and see what it’s going to look like before you actually buy the paint.

GABE GOTAY

That’s super cool! It’s like turning the real world into a video game, like your character builder or like playing Sims and painting your house, but you can do it with yourself or with your actual house. Like, I know I’ve seen the mobile app for Amazon has some augmented reality features where if you’re looking at buying, say, a piece of furniture, you can see it in the room, and it looks through your camera and places it like a 3D model in the space in real size. And it’s amazing cuz it’s helped me, you know, I have kind of a smaller place, so when I was looking at you know, some new table or some new shelves for my kitchen, I’m the kind of person who before I would sit down with a notepad and draw a grid and like literally measure out the space I had and it’s so cool just to magically put it in the room. And I’ve seen some other industries use this kind of thing too. 

I used to work for a company that sold school equipment, and one of our vendors who produced all kinds of new school furniture created a virtual school that you could fly through on their website and like see the classrooms, see the furniture as it’s meant to be laid out. And it goes back to like knowing your audience and your marketing goal, right? So, like, for example, for that company, the marketing goal was not just to sell chairs to schools. They were all about the 21st-century education and different ways that you can lay out a classroom and how that benefits the teaching environment. But a lot of people who aren’t in that environment might just think, “Let me buy 30 chairs and put them in a grid.” 

So, to put this experience on their website where you can fly through the school that’s laid out the way that they designed it with collaboration groups and the furniture that can move into these things, something that’s really hard to get across in a static website or in a pamphlet. And these new accessibility things, you can see why it’s going to be a big trend in web design moving forward because it gives you whole new ways to really get your messaging across to your target audience or in the examples of like Ulta and Home Depot and Amazon, just making the conversion process easier because the things that make you scared to convert and buy that product, they’re kind of solving those points right there from your computer and your smartphone. It is really cool to see that come up. Another way that is kind of changing the way that people like actually interact with a website. You were telling me a little bit about voice user interfaces, and I have some thoughts on that based on what you were telling me, but why don’t we start off which kind of tell people what is voice user interface and and how is voice search and VUI changing the way people can interact with these websites?

BRITTANY BAUM

Yeah, so voice user, voice user interface is definitely on the rise in web design in 2025. So, what it does, it allows users to interact with websites through voice commands. Um, it also enhances accessibility and convenience. Uh, this is particularly beneficial for users with uh, visual impairments and also with those who just prefer hands-free navigation. We have now in our homes, we have Alexa, we have Siri, all those hands-free virtual assistants, and now they are actually interacting that into web design, which is very cool. 

GABE GOTAY

It is. I was, I was honestly a little skeptical when you had told me you were going to tell me about voice user interface because I can’t, when I first read that, I was like, “So, what, I’m sitting down at my desk, and I’m talking to my computer? I don’t even want to talk to people, you know, let alone my computer.” But then I realized two things. Like you said, one, it’s an accessibility thing, like an accommodation kind of thing for people who have some type of impairment that makes it more difficult for them to browse a website in the traditional way. And you know, you don’t want to lose business because you’re not accessible to everybody who could use your website. But then even for people who don’t have any kind of accessibility issues, I always seem to forget when talking about web design just how prevalent mobile is because it’s, we’ll talk about the stats later, but a significant portion of mobile traffic for all websites is on mobile now, including the way I personally browse. And I use the voice commands on my phone all the time. I’m always asking Siri to set a timer for, you know, something that’s cooking or to set an alarm or to create a reminder. And I can easily see if it’s going to be integrated in intuitive ways that allow me to execute the functions of the websites that I’m already using in a faster way, I will totally adopt the voice user interface stuff if it becomes available. So, I’m very interested to see how that comes about. I haven’t really started to see that yet in many of the websites I’m on, but I can see how it’s coming, and I’m excited for that.

Um, I want to touch on another, this is kind of a more popular, newer trend. I swear we’ve talked about this topic in more episodes of this podcast than not, um, and that is, of course, AI. How is AI changing or enhancing the user experience on websites or even just like the web design process in? 

BRITTAN BAUM

In web design AI is becoming more of a tool for us to use. So, um, AI-generated images is something that we definitely use in web design now. I did a website the other day, and I used Adobe Firefly to um, generate some new images. So, my, my website had certain colors, it had blue, it had purple, it had pink in it, and I wanted to kind of generate some ideas of having images in there that match the website design. So, I actually went into Adobe Firefly and um, generated some images that had, you know, pink, blue, purple pens or um, you know, a blue notebook or um, a woman who had a purple jacket and who was looking at a laptop. Um, those types of images made it more, um, made my website look and feel uh, the way that I want it to versus going to Adobe Stock and just finding a random, you know, stock image. Um, this way it was, I was able to generate the images that I exactly what I wanted, the colors that I wanted, the feel that I wanted um, in order to bring that into my web design. 

GABE GOTAY

It is very cool to see those things coming up. Adobe Firefly is such a fun, I mean, it’s a tool. So, this is kind of the difference between that. I’m in marketing, and you’re in design, so I tend to be more on the, the spreadsheets and planning side of things, whereas you’re actually in the creating cool stuff. So, for you, it’s a tool. For me, it’s almost a toy. I love, I remember when it came out like in the group Slacks, we would send the crazy things that we could generate, and now it’s just, it’s common. We have AI generation in our SAGE products, and it really is a great way. Now, I know some people might have like, they might not want to use AI images, they might want to produce their own images and videos eventually, but even in the beginning place, you can use them as placeholders. Like, sure, later on, you want to go and get a photo of your sales reps at this event, but you don’t have that yet, but you need to start laying out the website. You can generate it with Adobe. 

BRITTANY BAUM

Yeah, and another great tool that Adobe’s coming out with is Adobe Gen Studio, which it’s not out quite, quite yet, but that way, um, videos, you can generate videos coming through. You don’t have to have a big place to, you know, produce a video. You can put in a simple little video that you may want, um, and it can generate that for you. So, that’s a very cool new tool that’s coming out as well. 

GABE GOTAY

Very exciting to see how that’s going to evolve. I feel like we’re going to do another episode like this next year just to see how everything has changed.

Um, all right, well, let’s talk about some other trends. So far, things like the AR, VR, voice interfaces, and AI, those have all kind of been accessibility things or just functionality things, but we touched down at the end with the image generation, some of the visual trends that are starting to come on. So, let’s talk about those. I know that last year when you and I were talking, like Parallax scrolling was starting to become more and more popular. Is that a trend that you see continuing into 2025?

BRITTAN BAUM

Definitely, uh, Parallax scrolling continues to be a popular technique when creating dynamic and visually engaging websites. Um, basically, what parallel scrolling is, it’s moving background elements at a slower pace than the actual foreground. So, it kind of helps um, make a sense of depth and motion in your website, um, what all over while enhancing the all-over user experience. So, in definitely 2025, we’re going to see more of um, parallel effect effects. 

GABE GOTAY

Just about everybody listening has seen this, even if they don’t know if about we’re talking about, but it’s kind of like when you’re driving in a car and you look out the window and you see the power lines in front of you are moving faster than the cows behind them, which are moving faster than the, well, not mountains here in Texas anyway, but the mountains even further beyond them. Uh, and they move at different speeds because of your relative position to them and you don’t – when you look at it – you can see it but it’s not something you consciously register just in your day-to-day life. So when you have an element like that on the website where the foreground and then different levels of background elements all move at different speeds it’s just something your brain automatically picks up on and your brain tells you that this is a more real thing and it raises engagement I think that’s a very powerful tool for web design.

BRITTANY BAUM

Yeah, and um, talking about your brain as well and like seeing that natural element, another visual design trend that’s coming about is dark mode. So, basically, um, dark mode is where you have a darker background with lighter text in front of it. Um, and this is a pro in the design trend. It’s not always about how it looks, um, but it also helps kind of your mind, um, settle and it reduces your eye strain when you look at it on a screen. Um, and not only does it help kind of reduce your eye strain, it helps you make you feel a little bit more comfortable. Um, it can also save battery life on your screen as well.

GABE GOTAY

Well, it’s cool because, you know, talking about visual trends, people might think it’s kind of a fickle topic like, well, it’s all subjective, what looks, looks good, and what doesn’t look good, and it’s always going to change, but a lot of these trends aren’t just about what looks good. Now, dark mode for me, it is partially about what looks good. I think software looks better in dark mode. It upsets me when I have to upgrade a computer or something, and suddenly everything’s in the default light mode, and it’s blinding, and it’s not what I want it to look like. But these visual trends are also just for it. Kind of ties back into that accessibility thing we were talking about earlier, reducing eye strain. All these little subtle things that you can do to really make the human brain feel more comfortable with the website that they’re looking at, it’s going to go a long way in converting your website visitors to whatever your business goal is, um, even if it’s just to keep them on the site longer, so they get more familiar with your brand. So, that is really cool, and it kind of ties into the next thing I wanted to talk about, which is sustainable web design. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Like, what does it even mean to have sustainable or eco-friendly web design? Like, what, what steps can web designers take to make their design more eco-friendly?

BRITTANY BAUM

Eco-friendly design is not just about the environment. Instead, this trend is also about creating a better user experience. Uh, this includes faster loading times, for instance. Um, this not only reduces carbon emissions but also helps improve user satisfaction. So, using eco-friendly hosting and creating designs that last longer, um, also help with um, avoiding having to actually redesign the site over and over again.

GABE GOTAY

Yeah, like you said, it’s not just about about the environment. Like, I know a lot of people will think of like when they think about sustainability and eco-friendliness, like you were talking to me about how people might think of like cups and physical products and like what can be recycled or what was physically produced with the lowest uh, carbon footprint. And those are all, all important parts of sustainability, and I’m not trying to downplay those, but there’s so many other aspects that go into being sustainable and eco-friendly that you can approach with your website. 

So, like to kind of cover what you said there: one side of it, yes, there is the physical environment side, choosing a web host who uses environmentally friendly practices and standards, so that you’re not using a huge carbon footprint. Making designs that don’t have to be refreshed all the time, so you’re not expending human time and labor to constantly redo the designs. And then, this is why I was bringing it back to the visual trends of like dark mode and things like that. If you are causing less physical strain on a human being by the way you’re designing your website, that is eco-friendly, and it is a really cool, as we become more socially conscious of the way that the products we make and how we market them impact the planet and people on it. It is interesting to think how even web design fits within that niche.

Um all right I think the last thing I want to talk about is one of the most, it seems like it’s such an old trend but it’s only going more important and that’s just kind of the w,hole idea of mobile design and specifically mobile first design can you tell me a little bit more about why mobile first is becoming a more crucial approach in 2025?

BRITTANY BAUM

Yeah, so I actually have a stat. It says that 72.6% of internet users will access the web solely through their phones, which is about 3.7 billion people. So, if you think about it, whenever somebody goes to your site, they’re looking at it through a mobile phone first before they’re looking at it through a tablet or a laptop. That’s the first thing they’re looking at, so you definitely want to make sure that your site is responsive and that you have the information at the top of your site. That way, when they look at it, they have that information first off. They can scroll through, it responds really well, and overall, the look and feel of your site is definitely going to be on that phone first before any other devices.

GABE GOTAY

I think it’d be great to give our viewers just like a kind of rundown of the history of mobile websites, right? Where first, they didn’t exist. We had the internet for a long time before we had smartphones. And then when they came out, they were completely different web pages. Like, you would have a completely different file that would load if somebody accessed your website from their phone.

Which goes back to what we were talking about eco-friendly and not having a bunch of redone design work or extra design hours. Having people design entirely different websites is not exactly the most eco-friendly approach to design. So that’s where responsiveness came in several years ago as the big trend. So you have one design that changes depending on the size of the screen.

And so now to kind of talk about how this is going further into 2025, like we said at the top, the mobile-first approach which is to say yes, you still are going to have one responsive design, but now you’re thinking about the mobile design maybe first and then how that will expand out onto a desktop, versus the other way around. It’s interesting to see maybe in the future we’re going to go away from having, you know, as much of a focus at all on the desktop designs because everything’s going to move to phones and tablets. Interesting to see the way that’s going to go.

Alright, well, I feel like we’ve gotten a lot of great insights. I’m just going to kind of recap everything we talked about so far:

First of all, before you even decide what kinds of trends you’re going to implement, like with everything else in marketing, it depends on your intentions upfront. So sit down and think about what is your goal, who is your target audience, what is your messaging, and what are they going to respond to? 

And then you can dive into these trends. And these trends span the gamut from just visual things like what looks good or what feels good, to eco-friendly sustainable things, what is good for the planet, for the people approaching it, and then all the way to the more fun interactive things. How can I change the way that my audience is physically interacting with my website in ways that are going to improve the customer experience and drive more conversions? And this is the kind of stuff that you’re thinking about all day, Brittany. So I really appreciate you coming in to share your expertise with us.

BRITTANY BAUM

Yeah, thank you so much, Gabe, for having me.

Alright, everybody, thanks again for sitting down. Make sure to head to SAGEworld.com to register for the next live episode of Promo Perspectives. Got some really great stuff coming up at the end of the year. We’re going to have some guests from PPAI in November. We’re going to be talking about getting ready for the Expo that’s coming up in January. Get the behind-the-scenes scoop and what goes into setting that up and how you can get the most out of it. And then in December, very exciting episode, going to sit down with some people from PPAI and also our very own Dana Porter from here at SAGE. We’re going to talk about the government action committee that PPAI has organized, so you can see how SAGE, PPAI, and members of that committee are advocating for you and the promotional products industry on Capitol Hill. Lots of really great stuff, so stay tuned. Register for the next episode if you haven’t already. Please subscribe. Thanks again, Brittany. 

BRITTANY BAUM

Thank you.