Fish friends, Here’s where we’ve landed on a new Glassdoor brand identity, with the fine folks at Koto.
bit.ly/3KFxBxg for animations and attribution.
What’s new? We’re all in on green as our core brand color, we have a new icon, and have updated animations. Now we get to build stuff.
Launching later this year. Tell us what you think. Thanks for playing along!
I find using cartoons is an interesting choice. Finding a new job is so impactful in every aspect of a job seekers life, it seems like a missed opportunity to not showcase that using actual people and real life scenes.
Bowl Leader
Such a great discussion about photography and illustration. I totally agree that photography plays an important role and is able to connect with people in a unique way. As we build out the brand guidelines, we are looking at how we might select and use stock photography in a way that highlights those human moments, such as finding images that show relatable scenes like kids running into your home office during a zoom call.
Similar to photography, it has been interesting to see how illustration has different strengths and can connect in ways that photography can’t. For example, illustrations are great at visually communicating complex concepts like discovering a solution or navigating the obstacles in a career path. Illustration also gives our brand personality a wider range of expression, letting us add humor (where appropriate) which can help lighten the sometimes frustrating experience of balancing work and life.
Long story short, I’m excited that the new brand will incorporate both photography and illustration. Thank you all for your thoughtful comments and insightful points!
I'm really liking this version. I was always too slow to comment on all the previous iterations but there was definitely stuff I wasn't digging in those iterations. This totally works for me.
Apparently in contrast to everyone here, I really like the quotes. Sure, they don't look standard, but that is what I like, a little touch of uniqueness. This is branding and not typesetting a newspaper or a book. I didn't get that the quotes look like a gd at first, but I don't know that it matters; it is at least a cute easter egg.
I really like the non-logo typeface, though I'm not sure what I think about the bar on the G poking out. The thing about that typeface that I don't like is how the circular curves end up making the 6 look a little funny. I would have done that differently.
I like the general idea of the cartoons, though the people are a little hard to read from a distance. The dog made me say "I like that" in my head right away.
The colors are alright. The palet certainly seems cohesive. I especially enjoy the orange and yellow elements.
I like the off-level parentheticals.
The one thing with the quotes that I'm not into is the use of a single quote above a block of text as on the right of page 10.
Hell yes! I'm all in. Love what I see right now!
I have to be honest, I'm not in love with this. I actually dislike it quite a bit. I think a rebrand/refresh can be done without a complete overhaul of who we are and have always been. I'm sure the team ran this through test audiences, but I'm struggling to understand the concept or how this imagery aligns with our transformation to conversations other than the weird quotations.
+1 to setting Glassdoor apart from competitors. It's very clearly not LinkedIn, Indeed would never do this, and it's different from Fishbowl. This new style is very ownable.
Actually think the new (quotes) logo is creative and distinct, but what really throws me off from its intention is the capitalization of GLASSDOOR. Wouldn’t it make more sense to lowercase everything and incorporate the “quotes” in their respective spots within “glassdoor” so that it makes immediate sense to the user when shortened? Capitalization feels authoritarian to me, not warm and inviting.
Also isn’t a capitalized logo going to look weird alongside Indeed’s logo? Did we consider this? I understand we seek differentiation from them but it does not feel cohesive and co-branding is going to be important for us.
Appreciate all the work that went into this project but it really just looks like we ripped off the COSMOPOLITAN magazine logo and called it a day.
Bowl Leader
Thanks GD12. We undertook an exhaustive review of possible treatments for the Glassdoor word mark: uppercase, lowercase, title case, in many different fonts. We explored the inclusion of the quotes into the word mark as you suggested — good idea! — and found that it looked disjointed and juvenile.
To us, the all caps word mark worked best in combination with unique quote marks because together they balanced authority with the liveliness of conversation. We are known as a place to get the facts about companies and their culture, and the caps are confident reflection of that. And now with community conversation about work + life, we will also be known as a place to find a lively and supportive group of professionals.
We have also met with our counterparts at Indeed and pressure tested how the two logos will look together. Our uppercase is a good foil to their lowercase, and they were as pleased with the pairing as we are.
Branding is a subjective blend of art and science, and we each bring our own perceptions to the party. Thank you for your appreciation of this work.
At this point I'm convinced that those cheering this rebrand on either worked on it, or are in marketing and know we spent a ton of money, and put a ton of effort, into something that ultimately doesn't REALLY signify our transformation to anything other than a company with bad punctuation.
Bowl Leader
GD4, let’s talk more about this! Feel free to ping me on Slack.
I'm curious how the upside down quotation marks were tested for the new branding. I have a really strong "this is wrong" brain response, and it seems I'm not alone in the bowl discussions. Did you find that users in general understood it, and had a more positive reaction than those of us who are having a hard time with it?
Bowl Leader
Thanks for the question, GD14. While the ‘g’ and ‘d’ quote marks will be considered part of the logo and as such not translated, we foresee addressing the different types of quote punctuation in different languages through animation. In our advertising and communications, those marks expand and contract to reveal snippets of conversation. We will likely use animation to morph the ‘g’ and ‘d’ quotes into the marks used in French, German, or other languages so that they can perform the same accordion action for those languages as well. We’ll work with the localization team once we reach the point of mocking up this experience.
Not going to lie, pretty disappointed in the lack of change between the last round of feedback and this round. Why make it an open design forum if you don’t listen to feedback? Multiple people have asked to see the written out glassdoor in lowercase to match the logo, multiple people have said they dislike the colors… seems like some strong trends in the feedback that are being ignored. I’d also like to call out the use of pee yellow in the new design. Why would we associate that with Glassdoor? Seems like a time where we should be saving money as an org, not blowing it on some external group to destroy our brand. Why not keep this in house? We know how our brand feels and have tons of beautifully creative minds internally who can do this better. This is not us.
That’s fair enough, but I think all colors are subjective and up for interpretation, no? In any case, let me try that again. I think the shade of yellow in the slide above has a murky and green twinge to it. It doesn’t feel like daffodils which is lighter and brighter imo. A daffodil yellow would be great.
Thank you all for sharing your candid opinions about the rebrand. This is transparency in action, people! As we shift the focus of our business from reviews to a workplace community, we need a fresh, new face that signals that shift to customers. Our old brand has lived a full, rich life but it is no longer relevant for our target audience or the direction our business is taking. We need to reach new markets and new demographics. And now is the time for us to be bold. To be courageous enough to explore an identity that will make a splash, create some buzz, and help differentiate us in the marketplace. Change can be hard, and for some of us, this will be difficult. We may not all agree, but hang in there. Trust in our team. Trust in the process. The end result will be worth it.
I understand the sentiment, but I don't believe a new word logo or icon logo has any impact on the scope of available markets and users available to us. Do we have data showing our brand, and specifically our name logo and icon logo, is a detractor for potential users of the Glassdoor + Fishbowl value proposition?
I also don't believe there's anything bold or courageous about this new brand identity. This is a brand identity primed to be a thud, not make a splash. It's boring, esoteric, and visually unappealing.
Nobody in this thread appears to be opposed to change, we just don't think the proposal as it currently stands is a positive change. I understand that a lot of work went into this, but it seems like we're trying to be too clever and it's leading us astray. Our new brand identity needs to draw in the masses. We want a broader cohort of users. This is not going to necessarily prevent us from doing that, but it certainly doesn't appear devised to fuel it.
I can't speak for anyone else, but this isn't about having a hard time dealing with change because of some emotional attachment for me. It's kind of insulting that anyone would dismiss others' opinions in that way tbh. I've been here for 11 months so I actually don't have a real attachment to the current brand. I was part of a major rebrand at a more recognizable company than ours with my last employer, so I understand the amount of work and research that goes into these. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it's clear that the response from our employees says we should take a closer look at this before rolling it out to the masses.
I'm not so sure about that. There are only like... 20 actively engaged people in this bowl. 30 max. And some are external. Unless there's another discussion happening somewhere else, this hardly seems like enough of a quorum to halt the presses.
The word logo looks very stiff and uninviting.
The icon logo just looks wrong. What is it supposed to represent (I assume a G and D but I hope I'm wrong)? Our current one is a glass door and is relatively unique and simple, easy to spot and recognize. The new one feels pixely and makes my brain hurt because it's backwards. Nobody is going to know its a G and a D unless we tell them.
It seems like we are changing just to change. These are not improvements.
Bowl Leader
GD8, I’d be happy to connect and talk more about the strategy behind this brand refresh and the decisions we made along the way, and to hear more about your impressions. Feel free to Slack me and I’ll set up time for us.
Love this! GD quotations as the mark is such a clever touch!
This looks sick. Great job. This is the much needed refresh for Glassdoor without being too disruptive. Quotations idea is smart.
Makes me feel really proud of being at a company like this. Love that we’re expanding the colors beyond that corporate green (HR block, Upwork…) - makes the brand feel more fun and on par with the great brands of today.
Also it’s totally normal for people to feel emotional and negative about it because people don’t like change. For Glassdoor to survive this new era of people turning to brands with top tier aesthetics and character, I’m thankful it is changing.
I really like the colors, fonts, and new logo. However, the examples shown feel very stats-heavy and not social or conversational. Would introducing chat bubbles or something help show that it's a community? The illustrations don't give a social or community vibe.
Also wondering about the scalability of using illustrations as we test new hooks to get users into community. Will product & design have a library of illustrations to use? Have we tested illustrations vs. photographs?
Bowl Leader
Good questions, GD7. We will have a large library of illustrations for use across product and marketing surfaces to represent industry bowls, for instance, and to show scenes of work-life community (such as on page 12 of the deck linked above). We will also have photography in our toolkit. That will continue be used on company pages, for instance, and selectively for blog posts, emails, etc.
On the new Glassdoor, conversations will be primary in the product experience and we’ll use quotes from those conversations in our marketing. We will also draw attention to key data points in our communications so that users can quickly scan and understand a highlight without having to wade into full details.
Thanks for the engagement here!
Bowl Leader
Thanks for those thoughts, CD1. While unorthodox, our twist of the quote marks is deliberate. As quotes, they signal our product transformation into a community for work-life conversation. Brought together as a ‘gd’ icon, they suggest the hard consonants in “Glassdoor.” To us, these benefits overcome any concerns about running afoul of punctuation norms. Curious to hear what other fishes think!
Bowl Leader
Re the KIA example GD11, it’s interesting how the mind is drawn to solving little puzzles that pique our curiosity: the arrow hidden inside the FedEx logo, the a to z of Amazon. Once we crack the code, we feel smarter than the average bear.
While KIA has borne some blowback about the “confusion” provoked by its new logo, the reported 30k people a month who see the logo on a car and Google “KN Car” immediately learn that it’s KIA. That little quirk is adding to their brand awareness after all.
In our case, “Glassdoor” is totally readable and, for people who associate our brand with green, rendered in a familiar color. Since we are a digital brand with no signage or packaging IRL, we don’t run a risk of people mistaking us for another company. In advertising, folks will either get the puzzle of our quirky quote marks at a glance or they’ll come to understand it later. Either way, it won’t be a barrier to them finding or exploring Glassdoor.
Treating our consumers as people who are smart is a plus for us, making our brand more memorable and signaling to that there is something new here worth paying attention to. Thanks for being a part of this conversation.
Could the quotation marks be both on the top left of our logo, so that it's clear it's a GD / signalling conversations?