How pretty pages boost project collaboration for teams
Fight TL-DR and improve engagement and retention
They say beauty is only skin deep, but when it comes to project collaboration, looks matter.
Still sending your team long emails or text-heavy documents to read before a meeting? Chances are, they’re quickly scanning them over or, worse yet, ignoring them all together. When you get into the meeting, meaningful communication gets put on hold while you walk everyone through what they should already know.
It’s commonly believed that people remember much of what they see and very little of what they read, which makes long, dense blocks of text the death of engagement and retention. You can’t effectively share information and knowledge if no one is reading your work.
That’s why text alone won’t cut it, whether it’s in an email, document, or even a text message. You can hop on a call instead, but sometimes you just need it “on paper” – especially for async collaboration. When you need to put your thoughts in writing, the right presentation breaks up all that text with imagery, color, and white space. Making your pages gorgeous boosts engagement and comprehension, which energizes teams and spurs innovation. Putting in just a bit of effort with a collaboration platform can get you there, allowing you to create beautiful pages that your team will actually read.
Making your pages gorgeous boosts engagement and comprehension, which energizes teams and spurs innovation.
There are plenty of collaboration platforms that let you build good-looking pages, but Confluence blends the capabilities of word processing and coding to take it a step further. To get started, type the / command to choose from a host of Macros to format your page, or use the top menu to scroll through all the various page enhancements. The latest additions include table visualizations, customized panels, and more. You can even go to the Marketplace to find integrations that let you bring in Mural templates, Figma illustrations, and other enhancements. The result is a page as pretty as a slide or website with minimal effort.
Here are a few of our favorite options for creating beautiful Confluence pages that boost engagement and move project collaboration forward.
Take some space
Swiss typographer Jan Tschichold called white space “the lungs of a good design,” and in art, negative space combines with the subject itself to create a balanced composition. It may be empty, but white space is also critical!
Think of white space on your page as the room your words need to breathe, allowing you to get your point across without overwhelming your team with text. All of the same information is there; it’s simply a matter of formatting it to look less cluttered.
Using headers, line returns, and line rules is the most basic way to add negative space to your pages, but you can also rely on premade Confluence templates, which are formatted to keep pages looking light. Or create your own layout in a blank page with the / command to structure sections.
Then add columns and tables to keep things organized with plenty of white space around your words. And tables aren’t just for data. Use them to keep track of project status (use the /status macro!), tag team members, or add an integrated Jira ticket.
It’s easy to make pages prettier in Confluence with simple elements including white space, columns, images, emojis, and SmartLinks. Learn how.
Mix up your text
While we love whitespace, a page that’s all black-and-white seems very dull when you have technicolor at your disposal. Not only do a variety of colors and font sizes add visual interest; they help break up text and call attention to important information.
Using the top-bar edit menu, select from various header types to choose your font size and create titles and subtitles that keep content organized. Plus, a whole host of text colors lets you express yourself beautifully.
A panel with a background color is your best bet for highlighting the text that matters most. Choose one of the five standard panel types, each with its own color and icon, for important information, notes, errors, successes, or warnings. New customizable panels let you mix and match background colors and icons, remove the icon altogether, and nest different panels.
More tips for pretty pages: a blue info box, big image, emoji, and using headers in large font make the page delicious to read and easier to digest.
