A powerful, branded online community can be a great way to promote interaction between a brand and its users.

It's often much more successful than relying solely on pre-designed social media platforms.

At Deeson we’ve built plenty of community sites and we’ve helped organisations develop and deliver their community strategies too. 

As a digital designer, I wanted to take a look at how creative design is being used across the web to help create a more engaging experience for members in online communities.

Long gone are the days when forums were just long lists of grey gradient boxes, with a place reserved for only the highest tech-savvy geeks.

In 2015 they can be bright, engaging, highly topical and definitely not to be hidden at the bottom of your website.

Don’t be afraid to let your brand come through

Macmillan Cancer Support is an example I like of an online community that takes a holistic approach. The charity has embraced its branding strategies from across print and advertising, successfully pulling them into one effective online resource.

Covering such a sensitive issue and with the primary purpose as a charity to provide support to others, the brand and online forum needs to be informal, approachable and familiar. Careful layout and colour palette choices help achieve this. The instantly recognisable Macmillan typeface reinforces brand trust.

As a charity that deals with cancer, the topics and emotions when using the resource can be very overwhelming for a user.  The design here does a very good job of counteracting this by breaking each section of the community down into smaller accessible blocks of information.

Posts of the week and feature quotes are highlighted with the bright green and blue colour palette, but do not over power the more detailed threads of conversation that can be scanned easily too.

Encourage user participation

Online communities can be a great tool to generate content outside the services of your own team.

Not only can this broaden topics and save money, it also makes users feel valued and involved.

The Buzzfeed Community, ‘home for awesome posts created by BuzzFeeders', is one of the most successful examples of this.

With the rise of social media came the unstoppable need to gain online credibility and profile. A leaderboard page ranking top posts and users is the perfect mechanism for BuzzFeed to successfully play on this thirst for online fame and self promotion.

Larger than normal profile images, a unique set of designed award virtual stickers and a delightful visual rating system of ‘cat power’ certainly provides encouragement to post valuable submissions.

The design of this online community is somewhat cringeworthy but very well considered and tailored to the audience.

Unlike some other communities, the user's main purpose here is often not to gain a specific answer from the site, but to browse freely until something sparks interest.

Large bold story titles and on trend icons over thumbnails are the perfect tool for free spirited navigation.

Consider your audience

It doesn’t always have to be text heavy and not all communities need to focus around conversation.

DIY is a fantastic online community for kids that encourages them to develop skills across a huge range of subjects - its main feature is delightful illustrations.

Full of creativity, with a unique badge drawn for every skill set, it remains on trend with flat design and the merging of pastel and bright colours.

Every page is instantly visually engaging, perfect for the target audience.

The community works by allowing members to upload videos and images of them completing a certain skill task. This instantly provides a visual portfolio for each member that children can engage with.

Buttons are large and accessible and the navigation is simple to use, with another unique set of icons.

As a neat little commemoration to the origin of earning 'skill set' badges (from the likes of Scouts and Girl Guides), you can purchase hand-sewn patches to show off the illustrated badges you’ve earned, offline.

Consider medium

It’s not just children’s online communities that benefit from avoiding text heavy sites. For brands like YouTube and Spotify, the main medium associated is video and sound so it makes sense to make these the feature.

Soundcloud, an audio platform for sharing and promoting originally created sounds, is doing exactly that through creative visuals of sound.

Rather than opting for simple play button and song title, a visualisation of each soundtrack is the feature of each post. A creative display that is both engaging and informative.

Community members' comments can also be placed along exact positions of tracks, removing the need to pause and type out the time you're referring to.

This simple design idea is a great example of finding creative ways to address specific subject user needs and it is addressed with great attention to detail.

The brand's Orange is re-introduced to mark which sections have been played and the background to the player is customisable. This takes in to account that community members have their own 'brands' they may want to display.

Don’t forget that simplicity can work

Lonely Planet’s forum may not be the most groundbreaking in design, but it’s simple, clean, modern and effective. Covering a broad range of topics and conversations, the amount of content could easily become overwhelming, so in this case the design is better stripped back and decluttered.

With a clean menu to the left, the main content paragraphs sit to the right with a short, readable line length and generously spaced line height for maximum readability.

The design is minimal, with titles differentiated in the brand blue. Its only flaw would perhaps be the slightly small font size used on the navigation, which could prove negative to accessibility.

The online Lego community also keeps it simple, but has a creative addition to tools available within forum conversations.

Expanding on the ever popular emoticon series, now standard with most phones, Lego has devised their own set of characterised Lego heads. Bringing in this iconic shape allows users to subtly interact further with the brand.

Overall, the design of an online community should consider your existing brand, the community members and the purpose of the community.

Sometimes a huge number of features is not always best and the information in the community needs to speak louder than the members or brand. Equally, it’s good to get creative and break away from the dated, plain, grey forum list.