Creative and user-friendly design options in Modern SharePoint
Modern SharePoint has evolved significantly in recent years and today offers strong design capabilities that make it possible to create modern and user-friendly intranet solutions. Where design previously required custom development, is now an integrated part of the platform—based on flexible layouts, responsive components, and a consistent visual expression.
When Modern SharePoint is combined with IntraActive Intranet, these possibilities are expanded even further. IntraActive builds on SharePoint’s design foundation and adds intranet-specific functionality that makes it easier to work creatively with content—without compromising on structure, governance, and usability.
The design options can be viewed across three interconnected levels:
- overall design
- page-level design
- web part design
Overall design – a strong visual foundation
The overall design in Modern SharePoint sets the framework for the entire intranet and ensures a consistent and professional look across pages and content. With SharePoint themes, the organisation’s visual identity can be implemented directly in the platform. Colours, typography, and contrast are applied consistently in navigation, links, and interactive elements, so the intranet feels like a natural extension of the company’s brand.
At the same time, the design is built to be responsive and accessible, so the experience is just as good on mobile and tablet as it is on desktop.
IntraActive Intranet leverages this foundation by ensuring the design is applied consistently—even when many editors work in the solution. New pages and content are automatically aligned with the shared expression, so quality is maintained over time. Navigation and structure are used actively as design elements that create an overview and make it easy for employees to find relevant information.
Page-level design – flexibility and visual communication
Where the overall design creates coherence, it is at the page level that creativity truly unfolds. Modern SharePoint makes it possible to build pages using flexible sections and columns that can easily be adapted to the purpose of the content.
Pages can be designed with everything from simple information layouts to more visual and editorial pages with images, highlighted messages, and a clear prioritisation of content. Full-width sections provide space for strong visual elements, while classic column layouts create calm and structure.
With IntraActive Intranet, these capabilities are used to create well-developed page principles for, for example, news, department pages, and topic pages. This makes it easy for editors to produce polished and consistent content—while the pages support a clear user journey and high readability.
Web part design – creativity in the details
Web parts are the building blocks that pages in Modern SharePoint are made of, and they play a central role in both design and usability. SharePoint offers a wide range of modern web parts for text, images, news, links, and highlighted content. All web parts are responsive and designed to work naturally together.
The web parts make it possible to build dynamic pages where content can be presented in an engaging and clear way—without technical complexity.
IntraActive Intranet complements SharePoint’s standard web parts with its own intranet-oriented web parts. These are developed with a focus on communication, overview, and the employee experience, and make it possible to present content in a more targeted and context-aware way. The design follows SharePoint’s look & feel, so the solution is experienced as one unified platform.
Modern SharePoint and IntraActive Intranet – design options in combination
Together, Modern SharePoint and IntraActive Intranet create a solid foundation for creative and user-friendly intranet design. SharePoint provides the technical platform and modern design principles, while IntraActive adds structure, consistency, and intranet-specific functionality that makes the design work both easier and more efficient.
Design options in Modern SharePoint and IntraActive Intranet
Modern SharePoint provides, among other things:
- themes and colour management
- modern, responsive pages
- flexible layouts and sections
- standard web parts for content and communication
- a consistent, Microsoft-supported design foundation
IntraActive Intranet builds on this with:
- intranet-specific design principles and structures
- web parts targeted at communication, knowledge, and the employee experience
- consistency across pages and editors
- a professional, user-friendly intranet design that is easy to maintain