January 7, 2025
January 7, 2025
Design can shape our understanding of and discourse on complex issues. It can be the difference between confusion and clarity in high-stakes environments -- we’ve all seen the powerful “flatten the curve” graphic take the center of the coronavirus pandemic narrative -- but even in everyday contexts, design can help to explain esoteric concepts and bring ideas to life.
As our world gets ever more complicated, designers have an increasingly difficult task: explaining intricate technologies and layers of systems in a visually arresting, educational way.
As the senior designer at Mission North, my work involves taking abstract, technical B2B technology topics and finding the human, engaging elements that will help people make sense of them. The more complex the issue, the greater the challenge.
That challenge is magnified when B2B technology intersects with other complex topics, such as legislation and compliance. For instance, the 2018 roll-out of GDPR (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation law) was mired in bureaucratic and technological complexity. Designers were strapped for original ways to explain GDPR -- if you searched on Twitter, you would see little variation between images of EU flags, locks and random code snippets.
As designers, many of us have had the same struggle when designing for blockchain, marketing and advertising tech, AI, AR, VR and most recently, CCPA (the California Consumer Privacy Act). Yet, where some would see an insurmountable maze of thankless design needs, some designers have approached the challenge with strategy and creativity.
At Mission North, we have been following the technology and design community's work related to CCPA and personal data while partnering with our clients on communications and content about these topics. While collecting the best examples, we have identified some of the common elements behind the most practical, compelling visuals.
Here are our four biggest takeaways and the lessons that B2B technology marketing professionals can learn from them.
1. Add humans -- and animation.
WIRED has done an exceptional job of creating intriguing and informative guides for topics varying from personal data (animation above), to 5G, VR, blockchain and even aliens. A London- and Cape Town-based studio, Made By Radio, accomplishes what personal data collection feels like to an average consumer in less than 15 seconds. This animation is a powerful example of how a foreign concept can become familiar through a clean narrative and fun visuals.
2. Keep it short, sweet and organized.
CCPA is expansive. It could be overwhelming to try to fit everything related to this legislation in just a few pages. That very challenge is why we liked Ethyca’s 9 Steps to Getting Privacy Right. The guide contains three groups of three steps that any team can implement into their transition as CCPA takes effect. The information is bite-sized and coupled with simple and neat iconography. The guide has a limited color palette, limiting any visual distraction.
3. Make it meaningfully interactive.
Most CCPA guides live as downloadable PDFs and sometimes feel static. In contrast, our client BigID produced an interactive CCPA Readiness Checklist that encourages the reader to engage with the content. Once downloaded and brought into Preview, or any other basic software, the reader is able to literally check items off as they go. This makes the guide one of the most practical that we’ve seen. Totaling only two pages, the BigID guide is a brief but helpful overview of the CCPA basics, California consumer rights and penalties for noncompliance.
4. Put it in a useful format.
We created an extensive CCPA guide for another client, Scale Venture Partners, that lives digitally as a downloadable and interactive PDF and as a 35-page, 5x7-inch pocketbook. Because of the complexity and depth of CCPA, Mission North’s Content Studio and design team worked closely together to wireframe and map out the booklet from the start. We were diligent in keeping our copy digestible and leaned on visuals to explain processes where words were beginning to overflow.
One of the most important elements of the guide is a simple one -- a table of contents and sections that read like chapters. This segmentation allowed us to reference definitions throughout the book, making it as practical and user-friendly as possible. Knowing how valuable expert opinion can be, our team highlighted quotes from legal, tech and privacy thought leaders. A tight color palette and clean iconography kept the guide feeling light.
Looking ahead
So, what can designers and B2B marketers take from the lesson of communicating complexity? First, give yourself permission to experiment. It takes a lot of wireframing, observation, and trial and error to arrive at the solution that works best.
Second, remember that you might be too close to the subject matter. Take a step back and view the work as if it’s your first time. Because, for the audience, it is.
Third, organization (both of words and visuals) is everything. Mapping the audience’s visual and textual experience will help them get the most out of any design.
Fourth, don’t try to do it all alone. The partnership of design and content marketing often leads to the best results. When designers have an expert storyteller as a counterpart, they gain more than a writer; they also gain a thought partner.
Finally, lean on the broader design community. We’re all in this together, so look to the community to find help in shaping the visual language for complicated processes, technologies, laws and platforms.
