Unless the imagery supports the story directly, most teams don’t want to stop the presses to produce new design concepts for each piece of content. But skipping visual interest makes the inevitable text-heavy page more boring than it has to be.

Good background patterns are the snazzy socks of long content on the web. They’re a subtle showcase of a brand’s thoughtfulness, creativity, and polish.

Like a great sock, a touch of interest on a content-heavy page shows that your brand is more than just blah-blah-blah–even when you have to deliver the blah-blah-blah.

Our suggestion: Align on a few formats—photos, illustrations, fills, parallax effects or textures—and generate an assortment of options that work together. Authors can mix it up as they go, without pause. They’ll love the pace and variety, and you’ll love taking care of the design all at once. Design and technical considerations can be tackled in one fell swoop. You can even bake the library into your CMS when you’re done, so authors can simply select the option they want to use.

Viola! Now your long content has a well-stocked sock drawer.