Regular readers have likely noticed the updates we’ve been rolling out over the last few weeks and now that we have all of them in place, we wanted to take a moment to give everyone a little tour of what’s new and improved.
New Topic Categories
One of the most exciting improvements comes by way of revamping the topic categories. Thanks to your feedback from our 2019 reader survey, we have completely revamped the marketing category, which is now Marketing & Communications.
We’ve expanded the sub-categories to better focus on the day-to-day topics you’re engaging with most or were on the top of your request lists:
- Audience Development: Engaging new audiences and deepening connections with existing ones.
- Design & Branding: Graphic design and branding strategies and inspiration.
- Direct Mail: Postcards, brochures, and mailers, oh my!
- Display & Search Advertising: Online advertising tactics and best practices.
- Email: Using email to communicate with and engage target audiences.
- Messaging & Content: Creating engaging messaging that achieves goals.
- Metrics & Analytics: Analyzing data to make more informed decisions.
- PR & Media: Expanding reach through earned media.
- Resources: Stats, data, and tools to inform and execute your strategies.
- Social Media: Tactics and tools to run better social media campaigns.
- Strategy: Creating effective communications strategies.
You can access the list via the left hand sidebar menu on laptops and desktops and toward the bottom of pages on mobile devices. If any of the sub-categories don’t have any articles, fear not, inaugural posts are on the way!
Colors and Typography
The ArtsHacker color palette has been updated to meet web accessibility compliance. All the color contrasts should appear stronger, making it easier for everyone to engage with and enjoy content. If you’re interested in upgrading your web site’s colors, you can find two articles in our series about website accessibility compliance that focus on this topic.
We also updated our font families; we use Halyard for headings and Transat for body copy. We increased contrast in size and weight between headings and body copy and expanded the amount of spacing between all text elements. This helps improve overall readability across all device types.
The Little Things
There are dozens of tiny tweaks such as new navigation menu animations, new form designs, higher contrast text link animations, a new svg logo, and more. If you find any bugs, drop us a note otherwise, we’d love to hear more about what you think of the updates.
