I have some news, Reader.

I’m going to be extending the Inside Marketing Design brand into a job board!

When I saw my friend Femke start one a few weeks ago for product & UX roles I started thinking about how great it would be if there was a job board focussed on design roles in marketing, growth & brand teams. That “I wish that existed” feeling is what has driven most of the things I’ve created over the past 7 years, so naturally I’ve decided to create it myself!

My goal is for it to be the go-to source for web, marketing & brand designers to find a job; and for companies to find the top quality design talent to help improve their brand & marketing. If you lead a design team and you’re currently (or soon) hiring for a role like this, click here to let me know, and I’ll reach out with more information.

I’ll let you all know when the job board launches.

Anyway, let’s get in to todays issue, where I’m sharing my thoughts on Spotify’s latest marketing micro site.

Marketing site review - Spotify for Artists Fan Study

The Spotify marketing team are world-class when it comes to the strategy, design and build of microsites.

They get shared widely, are filled with interesting and useful information, and the design is always something a little more special than the main marketing site. As a Creative Director it’s the kind of project I wish me & my team had the time & resources to invest in! Instead though I’ll be content with sharing some analysis on their latest project, the Spotify for Artists Fan Study, with you.

Right from the start this header tells me this is going to be one of Spotify's data-driven reports and I'm excited to dive in. The UX on these sites is always interesting (even if not always intuitive and functional...) and in the middle of the top nav there's a menu that opens up a carousel of all the sections in the report. It's subtle, so first time visitors to the site will likely ignore it and scroll. But it's useful to have it there for if you want to revisit a certain section.

As you scroll the site, the background color changes. I love their use of the gradient to deepen the shade at the bottom of the viewport. It gives so much texture to the design and makes you want to keep scrolling to explore the depths! However, I'd hazard a guess that the color contrast ratio's for the background and text often only work when the text is at the top of the viewport.

On desktop your cursor changes to a "View insight" bubble when you hover on one of the sections. The extra content is less visible on touchscreen devices, but once you click into one they all open, and as you scroll through them the data visualisation follows you like particles forming different shapes. You really have to click through to see it in action!

The Spotify team have done a great job of layering the data details to make them easily consumable. The section heading itself provides information, they sum up the data with a clear insight and action, and you can click through to see the data presented in a chart if you wish. I was expecting the charts to be a little more detailed to be honest. They're still displaying useful information, but they feel so simple that I'm not sure why they had to be hidden behind an overlay.

The page is a nice experience to scroll through, and given that they've included links to additional information or Spotify features that can help an artist take action on the insight I think it's an effective piece of marketing too. It comes across as genuinely useful and helpful, especially for smaller artists who don't have access to big research studies themselves.

Hope you enjoyed this site review! Back in issue 5 of this newsletter I did a deep dive on the 2020 Spotify Wrapped page design, and I'm sure you'll see more Spotify projects pop up in this newsletter in future as they're always interesting.

If you have recommendations of other marketing sites to dig into in future editions of the Dispatch, let me know! It's fun to check out the creative ways companies are marketing their products & services.

To end this issue I want to share a song I've been loving, partly to keep with the music theme and partly cos I wanted to use the cool new Spotify embed feature in ConvertKit 😅

I've been listening to this track on repeat, hopefully it'll hit you with some Monday motivation

hollywood sucks// KennyHoopla

See you next week,

Charli