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Comment by modo_ | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to be a bit meta here-- but a question about the design of the site.

This style of pastel colors, wavy svg graphics, and happy avatars seems super popular right now [1] [2] [3]. I'm curious if it has a name and where it originated from (if anywhere?)

Overall I like the aesthetic quite a bit, but it's such a distinctive look. I'm surprised I keep seeing it crop up nearly copy+pasted between all of these companies

[1] https://www.gusto.com [2] https://www.tandem.chat [3] https://www.notion.so

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You'll see a similar thing in branding and advertising. For all the new yorkers on here, have you all seen the consumer brand ads on the subway? Almost every brand looks the same.

I'm imagining it has to do with the way designers work. They generally have stakeholders moodboard (basically creating a pinterest board with inspiration from different brands), and then they create a similar "feeling".

As humans, we're kind of evolved to recognize patterns, so when we start seeing the same branding art direction it stands out to us and we may try to conflate some deeper meaning to it. But in reality, it's just a few brands that share the same branding art direction probably because some execs liked the way it looked and felt and asked their designers to do something similar.

Not sure if there's a specific name for the avatars, but there's two near similar resources here:

[1] https://undraw.co/illustrations

[2] https://www.humaaans.com/

This style of web design is super in at the moment. Not sure it has a specific name, but I believe the previous Intercom site started it. Possibly Wealthfront as well. A lot of companies seem to be using it to take more risks with their aesthetic, particularly Dropbox and Mailchimp.

Another question about the design of the page: Does this kind of conversational / persona based pitch actually work to convert users? E.G. "Hi I'm Clara, my life's goal is... I struggle with..." "If you relate with Clara, try X now..."

At least for me the net emotional effect of the "For Desigers & Developers" section of the homepage was a strong impulse to bounce. (I'm in the target market.) Ultimately for the sake of research I clicked through to the ~/product page, where I found the diagrammatic graphics much more compelling.

Great feedback! I guess we just need to find our best target market. We believe the decision makers will be managers and not technical people (engineers that relate more with the product page instead of the emotional illustrations). But I could be wrong...

Right, how to be relevant to both the decision maker as well as the end-user is a key question.

I'm working on a product in a similar space, and struggling with the question for our own marketing materials. Amy Hoy's material [1] on audience "worldviews" has been helpful so far. (No personal affiliation.)

Best of luck with your launch!

[1] https://stackingthebricks.com/niches-are-for-suckers/

A lot of this looks like the next iteration on the semantic ui [1] look (particularly the avatars).

[1] https://semantic-ui.com/

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