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Modular Illustrations – Scaling modular designs over 100+ pages
Writen by Bogdan+ / Comments Off on Modular Illustrations – Scaling modular designs over 100+ pages
As many small business owners know all too well, you’ve got to stretch a small budget to go a long way. In the ever-changing Amazon affiliate world, it means now more than ever website owners are having to be creative with how they allocate, spend, and achieve results. Back in April Amazon slashed commission fees from 5% down to 1% in certain categories, reducing revenues to many affiliate businesses. With many affiliate websites looking like cut, copy, pastes of the next one’s it’s important that they individually build a strong recognizable brand identity to stand out.
In the Automotive area, it can be sometimes too easy to pick the next free to use image for your piece of content but as mentioned you’ll miss out on a key opportunity to use design to help build your brand. We discovered mechanicguides.com, a vehicle parts site that has created a clever solution to this issue. They’ve created modular schematic designs to help scale across all their pages. An example can be seen on this page here.
“We had this big issue when trying to scale the site. We had 100+ pages that needed unique imagery but we also wanted to stand out from the competition. Everyone was using stock images and that’s what we relied on for so long. Working with a designer he proposed we create a modular design so that we could get more from less. After this clever design solution, we realized we could get 23 designs to create up to 529 unique designs. As most of our content is modular – we usually look for the best tuner for the X engine, it meant we could create a standard tuner design for use on all tuner pages and then bespoke engine designs for use on those pages. Then all it took was plugging it into our existing color scheme which is classic automotive – dark with red highlights.” ~ Adam, Head of Operations at Mechanic Guides.
For example the best tuner for 6.7 Cummins design:
Can easily be modified to work for the best tuner for 5.9 Cummins design:
But the 6.7 Cummins engine can get used for the best upgrades for 6.7 Cummins design:
And so on for up to 529 different variants:
We love this clever solution to a common problem, it’s creative design work at it’s best. Secondary to the solution, the designs are great as they take a schematic approach that completely fits in with the target audience who may be used to the classic Haynes guides of the past or by nature just more familiar with engineering in general. Also by creating an image library they will not have to spend painful hours sourcing, resizing, and editing images. A simple Illustrator file setup with the right dimensions and layers will cut edit times considerably.
Branding is hugely important in the automotive industry as users often identify themselves as a follower of a certain vehicle, product, or brand. Loyalty is key and it’s not always the best product that prevails. Take for example Harley Davidsons – known extensively across the world but is it the best motorbike on the market, probably not. Yet still, it has a cult-like following as they were successful in creating a powerful brand that resonates in their product, on their website, and even trickles down into “Biker” culture. As they say “If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you” and within the automotive industry there’s plenty of ways to get it right!